Come and see us too….

Hi CM,

If you can fit a trip to Old Warden in (30 minutes ish from Duxford by road) I’ll give you a go in the PT22 or the Magister (the latter only if you are anything as lardy as I am….!)

A ‘behind the scenes’ should be possible too.

We also have a fairly new wooden (!) 4 seater if you want to visit some of the 8th Air Force bases.

Nicky and I received the most stunning hospitality from Steve Patterson at Reno. Anything we can do here to reciprocate will be done.

Best regards

HP

Keep it original

How is the restoration progressing?

You will not find a non-original spec fastening or screw on either of my Miles aircraft. I have seen cross-head screws etc. on some restorations and these stick out like a sore thumb (ugh!).

Call Gordon Spooner, the restorer of the exquisite Messenger G-AJWB. A Messie is virtually a single-engined Gemini – you may find that he has boxes of everything you need and won’t need on his latest Navion project(!).

Good luck!

HP

Stephen Patterson

We spent 5 days with Stephen at Reno and beyond, finally watching him disappear on a 5 hour flight into the clag in his beautiful Sea Fury and in formation with Nelson Ezells Fury and Howard Pardu in the Bearcat.

Mrs P took the sensible decision earlier and took a Boeing!

Stephen is a diamond geezer (with crossed swords and oak leaf cluster) who went to enormous trouble to look after us country folk in Reno.

The whole experience was mind-blowing from start to finish ( pun pun).

We started with an upgrade on the way out and had a grandstand seat of Iceland and Alaska – icebergs the lot – in gin clear weather.

We missed Stephen at the airport and took a cab to Circus Circus hotel in the City. Stephen followed on and we were immediately impressed with his ‘nothing is too much trouble’ kindness and hospitality.

4 days at Reno was plane overload for me – I wanted one of everything I saw. A pity our CAA would only laugh at the prospect of a Sea Fury with a Skyraider donkey, otherwise it just could happen…..

We also toured Lake Tahoe by road – nearly hit a Coyote.

We finally stopped off for a night in Santa Monica in a hotel recommended by Stephen – a bottle of bubbly from the man was chilling in our room later on.

So, it is perfectly feasible to plan a wonderful trip to the States and maybe just do the Sat/ Sun at the races unless you are died in the wool enthusiasts who need to do the qualifiers too.

A wonderful country full of polite respectful people and who generally like the Brits a lot.

Wonderful food at realistic prices, tips expected for everything and, hey, the Coors ain’t that bad! Mind you – the Margueritas were sensational!

Nicky and I are truly indebted to Stephen for ‘showing us the ropes in Reno. We have now become experts ourselves and wil be pleased to help others plan their itinerary. THere is, for example, no need to hire a car to get to and from the races – there is a cheap shuttle bus operation from the city. The races are a biiiig event in the Reno calender.

Next year?

You bet! Stephen will probably also be racing then.

We might even take Stephen up on his offer to let us play with his planes ( he also has an L39 and a Mig 17) a little sooner. I think we will see him playing with my albeit more modest toybox here too!

Thanks again Stephen!

HP

Weald Weather

I must admit that we were a bit concerned about bringing the Magister and Ryan over from Old Warden on consideing the worsening weather picture and strengthening, blustery crosswinds at each end.

We couldn’t let Ken Ellis down though could we?!

My original plan was to return the Ryan to my home Shotteswell strip in view of the work starting on the Old Warden runway next week.

However, having tucked the Maggie away at OW I got as far as some horrible squalls near Turweston, figured that Shotteswell would have a 90 degree, well out of limits crosswind so didn’t bother to even try it.

The PT is now safely tucked away in the hangar at Turweston. As it turns out, my aircraft features on the front cover of the programme for their Vintage Flyin next weekend and they pleaded with me to let them keep it anyway as a static. As I’m off to Reno next week it seemed rude not to!

Shame about the weather guys – it will come good one year!

HP

Pilot suitablity

Can you honestly imagine the Royal Navy saying to the Royal Air Force, ‘Can we borrow one of your pilots?’

Er… I don’t think so!

Cdr. Paul Stone is a Shuttleworth pilot/ test pilot of great skill. He gets my vote.

None of these old birds can be that difficult to fly otherwise they wouldn’t have made so many. They went off to war at weights that would would make us gasp these days, in weather not of the pilots choosing and often with little more than a brave, low time youngster in the hot seat – in constant fear of getting drilled by another youngster in the same position.

Paul, or anybody like him will learn what he can about an aircraft he is invited(?!) to fly and when happy to do so, spear off in the thing and learn how to fly it.

Thats how it works at Shuttleworth.

Getting a RN pilot current on the aircraft isn’t the issue. Relax and be certain that he will wear his wings on his sleeve and not his chest.

HP

Polishing….

Hi everybody, Hi JDK – it was a pleasure to fly with you and thanks a lot for posting the excellent images. We need to do the other 2.

The ‘polishing’ comment is interesting. I get inundated with requests from people ‘at the fence’ to take them flying. I don’t get inundated with offers of help….

My aircraft cost me around £300 per hour each to operate, plus a lot of elbow grease.

At the end of the shows, there is little time to clean them down hence the silly sight of me waltzing along the flightline from one t’other with a bucket and rags. I hate to put them away grubby. It takes a good 20 minutes per aircraft to remove the bugs and – especially in the case of the Maggie with its seemingly ‘total loss oil’ (non-ring modded) Gipsy 1 – to get the oil off.

I am not getting any younger so after a days flying, pushing, pulling and polishing my planes – I tend to get pretty knackered.

So, happy to fly the hard core enthusiasts, especially if they demonstrate their hard cores by rolling their sleeves up as JDK did.

New aquisition? – the P51 is more likely than not to happen. Patience is a virtue that I have limited quantities of but it is still 18 months – 2 years away.

A P51, more likely than not, will have acres of polished aluminium.

If I can persuade a hard core that elbow grease might be rewarded by the odd (maybe very odd?!) flight in the exisiting fleet then those ‘regulars’ may well be first in the queue for the occasional jump-seat rides in the 51.

Add a nought on the above hourly rate for a P51 and I reckon that a lot of polishing for a little flying will still be a good deal.

A Hairyplane supporters club (no donations other than sweat and beer in my direction) sounds like the deal of the century to me.

How about it?

SVAS – Always keen to recruit the ‘right’ volunteers – again no time for the engineers to clean the aircraft down immediately afterwards. Please therefore also consider the prospect of ‘moving on’ to the Collections machines after mine have been bulled up. The volunteers do get to fly occasionaly, usually in the Maggie or Tiger.

HP

Gone but not forgotten..

Pinky (so named because he lost his hair at a very young age apparently) was the airfield manager at Rochester back in the late 70’s when I instructed there.

He was a Typhoon pilot and told us some wonderful stories.

A classic WW2 fighter pilot type complete with huge handlebar tosh and plenty of ‘whizz bang cripes tally ho.’

RIP Pinky, I salute you.

HP