What was your special flight in a special aeroplane?

Simple, every time the wheels leave the ground, thats special;)

I can’t think of a single thing wrong with you comment BM. I feel much the same way. I don’t care what the machine is the sheer joy of being airborn does it for me every time. In my case even airliners and helicopters give me the same joy (ok, I’ll admit I’m a heathen:) but I don’t care).

Great topic and some wonderful thoughts and memories. for me:

Right hand seat of dan Air Comet 4 IBZ/MAN….what a great crew !

Concorde out of MAN on a perfect winters day, M2.0 over the north sea.

First solo….at LPL….in a PA 28. Called down-wind and was asked to take up “an orbit due commercial traffic”..ended up as 50 mins chock to chock.

Finally a taxi ride in Just Jane. Bought for me by SWMBO for my birthday. How those guys flew those night after night is just amazing…..at the going down of the sun we will remember them !

Simple, every time the wheels leave the ground, thats special;)

In more or less chonological order…
As a very young child flying from San Francisco to Tokyo in a DC-6…via Honolulu and Wake Island. For the better part of two days we were low enough to see the whitecaps on the ocean and it gave me a appreciation for pre-jet, pre-GPS, ocean flying and a love of the droning of recips.

A B-52 flight at 500 feet over the wilds of Montana and seeing the pilot (a friend of mine) wrestle the beast at low level. A few years later I did the same thing in a B-1B and despite the high Texas temperatures and thermals, the flight was a smooth as a car on the motorway.

My first ride in a Bell 47…all my childhood dreams that formed while watching the Whirlybirds came true. It was only topped by my first solo in slightly newer 47 a few years later and on the other side of the continent.

A cross country B-17 flight to Dallas. Got to try every position (except tail & ball gunners). The passing countryside didn’t look like Italy (where my father flew 17s in the war) but the spirit was there.

Flying from Duxford in a Rapide. I can’t get enough of the English countryside by air. And my first bi-plane flight was over northern Idaho in a RAF-marked Tiger Moth back in my university days.

A February flight over a nearby lake and mountain range in a friend’s perfectly restored 1940 Beech 17 Staggerwing. We gave the skiers at the top of the mountain a sight as we circled the peak at 5-700 feet. It was a great sight from the plane, but it would have been a great sight from the ground as well.

Hopefully there will be several more….

I’m not a pilot so I owe my experiences to others.

Flying in an Army Sioux in 1968, full fuel, three pax, looking for a harbour area in the forest to harbour up my troop overnight. Driver of the airframe came to a hover over a beech forest and tried to move off downwind, up hill, with no ground effect. We fell through the trees. On impact the skids folded up and jammed the doors closed. The handbrake broke, the blades flopped around for ages, the full fibreglass (?) tank popped and fuel splashed over the engine with rather a loud hiss. No explosion followed. Eventually got out through large split in canopy in front of instrument panel. Walked four miles with the driver to nearest German house where he reported in by phone that he was unable to complete the next job as his aircraft was unserviceable. He declined the offer of a REME fitter to repair it and eventually mentioned in passing that it was Cat 5 (or was it cat 1). Anyway, a write off.

Flying in a RAF Comet over Mount Vesuvious at night. It was glowing.

Flying on a hot day in Northern Ireland in a Sioux with no doors on, in shirt sleeve order. Five or six trips up and down the football field in ground effect to try and get some air moving. Eventually got unstuck. At five thousand feet, discovered thunderstorm. Hail hurt (No doors). Roaring with laughter as the Sioux entered a spiral descent as we struggled to put our DPM jackets on.

Stalling in an SF Herc low level over Wales.

A sortie in a Herc during the Falklands when we dropped to the Task Force and were followed (unknown to us; radio silence) by a Russian Bear which eventually flew over us at fifty feet vertical separation, which caused the captain some concern.

A second sortie of about twenty five or six hours. Near the FI we had to hide in a cloud as there was an Argie fighter looking for us. This concentrated ones mind. Later I talked to Sharkey Ward about how he shot down an Argie int-gathering herc. My sympathies and empathy were entirely and completely with the Argie aircrew.

Many of my ilk will have better stories to tell.

You giving the owner’s name and aircraft leaves me in no doubt that those pics show the ever beautiful Old Warden.

You would be correct. She is a lovely aircraft to fly in and i found her suprisingly stable even with the turbulance on take off. It took me a week to get rid of the grin,

I haven’t flown masses of times but the two flights which stand out most for me were about 30 years apart.
As a teenager one of our school teachers fixed a trip to London Gliding Club at Dunstable. We helped get the gliders out of the hangar and were meant to get an aerotow to 1000ft behind a Rollason Condor but some over enthusiastic taxying resulted in a broken tailskid so we returned to the hangar for the reserve Tiger Moth. I remember vividly watching the Tiger turn on its back and dive after we cast off and being fascinated by the towrope snaking down behind it. I was also convinced that it was going straight in but the pilot certainly knew what he we was doing as he dumped it on the ground and stopped with the end of the rope almost level with the nose of the next glider.
The second memorable flight was when I won the draw for a flight at Old Warden in the Shuttleworth Tiger Moth. The pilot originally planned some aerobatics until I admitted to the ground crew strapping me in that I was suffering the early effects of flu and felt pretty rough. He spoke to the pilot and when he returned he said don’t worry you are going to do a bit of formation instead.
After 20 minutes or so touring the area around Old Warden we returned and orbited tightly with the airfield gently rotating around one wingtip. I watched the Magister taxy and take off and once he was airborne we dived to formate alongside and after a while we ducked under the tail and came up on the other side. Our formation flight ended with a low pass which turned into our approach while the Maggie did another circuit.
I think I will always regard this as my best flight ever and was worth every draw ticket I ever bought over the years at Old Warden. My one regret was that I left my camera on the ground because I had been worried about losing it during aerobatics and it was with a little envy that I watched the passenger in the Maggie snapping away.

Hi again All,

Thanks for all of these tremendous posts and photos. When I started the thread I wondered how many replies would be posted.

The diversity and significance of these flights is amazing and serves to remind us how fortunate we all are to have such opportunities.

It’s great reading!

Cheers

OZ

OK it was nowt as grand as a Spitfire or a Lancaster but it was a genuine warbird that had served in N Africa in WWII-whilst working at Gamston I got to fly in an L4 Piper Cub(Grasshopper) after a few minuits I was allowed to take control which I did for a very short 10-15 mins.

Other than that Just a Sedberg out of RAF Lindholme (showing my age :), another one,a Yorks UAS Bulldog & Beagle pup out of Gamston,oh I also flew to Jersey 1 year in a Viscount- mustn’t forget the spare seat ride in the cockpit of a TCA (Take a Chance Airways )707 on my way back to RAF Waddington from Italy,where I swear as we approached the UK you could follow the coastline from the wash to the IOW.

🙂 Up the front of a Nimrod on a night exercise when in the air cadets from RAF Wyton,:D

Special flight?

Two flights tie for my first place. 1) Passenger in Concorde from JFK to Heathrow in 3 hrs.12 mins., mach 2.05, 58,000 ft., OAT -58 degrees C.
2) At the controls flying aerobatics up from Sandtoft in Eddie Todd’s JP4
Both were a great thrill for different reasons: I had been a design engineer on Concorde, the JP was my first trip in a jet fighter.
Geoff.

Seing this from my last flight:

And then landing:

With thanks to Peter Holloway for kindly allowing me to fly, i forget who was my pilot at the moment though. Doh. The aircraft being his Bucker Bestmann which at this time had not been his for long.

You giving the owner’s name and aircraft leaves me in no doubt that those pics show the ever beautiful Old Warden.

Flying a Ka-6E glider in the very dry and hot Summer 1978 over Northern Germany with a nearly constant thermic updraft of 2 m/s in horizontal flight.
We have a saying for his kind of weather: Barn gate weather (meant, that even a barn gate would fly 😀 )

We used to call it barn door weather meaning pretty much the same thing.

P-3 ride with the Dutch Navy. One of many P-3 and CP-140 rides, this one was special being on a beautiful, clear, moon lit night 8 days before Christmas. Flew down the N. Cornish coast from Mawgan, round Lands End and up to Plymouth FOST training areas where we flew low level between RN frigates and Lynx helicopters, all firing flares at us. An amazing experience. I flew it for 75 mins total, including the MAD shakedown manouvre, which if you get it wrong you have to return to base. Interesting to see how the on board crew members and external parties were in conversation with each other all the time.

One that came close, was a Shackleton ride fron Lossie. Unfortunatly it had magneto drops on the threshold and we had to taxy back to Disp. Lovely experience all the same.

Several flights in Air Atlantique’s Dakota’s and Rapides.
Flying in the Prentice from Halfpenny Green last year.
Flying in a Chippy at the 50th anniversary event at Downsview Canada.
All memorable, but the best was flying in an ex SAAF Havard from Swartkop Museum this year….

A couple for me

A pimply faced ATC going for a run in one of the Armies UH-1 Hueys going sideways through gorges near Williamstown then a high speed jaunt along the beaches near Newcastle(the Aussie one).Next day was a “loud” hop in a Chinook to land out in the bush where some Paras where waiting.Sitting down to watch them take off then jump remains one of my earliest memories.Latest one was after working a week for my ex boss him taking me in for a run into town in his 80%Fw190 replica.Strange and eerie looking out the wing and seeing a Maltese cross on it. Pure adrenaline it was with the power/weight ratio.

memorable flights

First flight was at St Athan in an Avro Anson ,three aircraft with reservist pilots playing at fighters over Port Talbot!That was 1958,next Ballykelly,test flight in a MK3 Shack nose wheel stuck up and had to be bounced down!Best one of all,leaving Waterbeach after a day of watching solo students going around,we flew at very low level down the bedford levels (long drainage canals in the fens!),this was in a Varsity and was about sunset on a winters day,wish I had had a camera with me!Iwas an air elect mechanic.

My special flight was in a Cessna 172.

I was about 4 or 5 years old and absolutely facinated by how the cars below looked just like the matchbox cars I had. I suspect that it was this flight which led to my lifelong interest in aeroplanes.

Wonderful that my sisters teacher decided to add a little joy into his students life be doing this for us and my mother.

My later flights in planes such as a Tigermoth, Catelina flying boat don’t seem to compare.

Same aircraft as Peter – C-GVRA! May 25th 07, from Republic Airport, Long Island.

Comet 4B London-Rome, early 70s. Dusk, and far away to port was a thunder cloud, flashing from within over and over again like a faulty neon sign. An extraordinary sight.

Sally B, Duxford-Blackpool, early 80s. ‘Nuff said.

BA 737 Manchester-Gatwick, couple of years ago. Usually I lose track of where I am fairly quickly, but this time I was able to ‘navigate’ every landmark and city all the way down…a fascinating houir or so.

And there was the time in Frankfurt when a nice man from lufthansa let me loose in his simulator. I now know how to land an A340 in Kai Tak in Hong Kong. Going to have to work on not ending up in the harbour, though!