Making Connections With Everything
from Concorde…
When the Civil Aviation Authority declared in 1997 that I was a risk to life and limb in a powered aircraft I decided so what, I’ve had a very good 40 years of playing with flying toys so far (school to Concorde). My Concorde days were over, and you have to retire anyway, but how do you follow that as a 55 year old Biggles without a licence? If you are not terrified of having less money than last year, why not accept it, be poor, and do something else? So my enthusiasm for negotiating the limitless forces of nature took me to Barbados where I bought a sort of house, close to the best wave sailing (windsurfing) beach in the Caribbean (deep Atlantic swell, wind at 90⁰, temperature of everything 28⁰C).
. . to Windsurfer . . .
Why are we now talking about windsurfing? I’d had my first hot, sandy and sweaty battle with the original reservoir dog* concept in about 1978 in the Seychelles - at the instigation of my older VC10 copilot (the black powder RAF retread). It had been an unrewarding experience, but after twenty years of getting older but slowly better at this sport I could now manage the Barbados Silver Sands reef, just, sometimes. It’s like many things in life: the better you get at it the more fun it can be, but you have to put the work in.
*[Early windsurfers (sailboards) were cumbersome stand-on boats (dogs). They usually sailed on reservoirs. The Reservoir Dogs film had not long been out. When the Californians who had moved to the Hawaiian Islands got hold of them the whole idea changed.]
The 1998 windsurfer with its small planing board was a very different affair, and the state-of-the-art sail really was a high performance, stable, stiff but variable twist device; a vertical wing to power the planing board along the top of the water at speed. When excess power threatened, the top (wingtip) twisted (washout), reducing lift coefficient, and moving the centre of pressure down (nearer the pilot/sailor). When confronted by a serous breaking wave and the correct pre-jump downward stab with feet and mast foot at maximum speed (against your better nature) had been applied at the right moment, you shot up the surface of the tumbling white waterfall as it rattled against the bottom of your board (feeling and sounding like a handful of pebbles), and you flew off the top. You were airborne, and essential interest was required to keep the speed, arranging the correct track to prepare for the landing, then arriving at the next daunting waterfall with adequate getting-on-the-top waterspeed. Simple!
In the air, the sail, suitably sheeted in, and rotated forward so your tucked-up weight stayed in the right place underneath, became a temporary wing, providing lift in the skywards direction. And the board, directed and angled by your feet, developed its own lift and should be lined up to land, slightly on its downwind edge, on the most efficient next track (a few degrees downwind of the takeoff direction).
Fabrice Ejects
What (difficult) fun! I got a lot better at it having retired and could choose my practice sessions. In early 1998 I met a holidaying Swiss family in Barbados (not Robinson, but Michel). Happi (Hans-Peter) had been a pro-windsurfer in the early days, and ran his own paragliding school in Switzerland. His father’s Ikarus, the first hangglider in Switzerland, hangs in the Lucerne transport museum (this is worth a visit). ‘I first flew it when I was twelve,’ says CFI Happi. ‘I broke my wrist. Why not come and give my paraglider beginner’s week a try; you’ll like it.’ So I did, and did.
. . to Paraglider . . .
It was more like gliding than the macho, are-you-up-for-it parachuting in Britain, and the neutral Swiss attitude to gender, age and social status when doing things rather appealed. There is no attitude; nothing to prove, no showing off. Anyone can do it, if they so wish, and are expected to take at least some responsibility for their actions. This is a very safe attitude towards flying, I thought, and the subtle complexity of the piloting demands of this simple but surprisingly capable device, and the up close and personal relationship with fabulous scenery and its micro weather rapidly persuaded me that this was the way to continue playing with flying toys.
It was during a ‘Stop and Stare’ level Barbados Sunday guided walk that I came across two people with paraglider bags in a clearing on the top of a ridge which faced east and the trade wind. I was surprised. Are they really going to fly here? This is not the Alps, in fact we may barely be 100 metres above sea level at this spot, but they were enthusiastic.
‘Bring your glider next time you come.’ ‘But I haven’t got a licence yet.’ ‘Doesn’t matter, we’ll look after you. I’m the President of the Barbados Paragliding Association.’ It turned out that there were very few other members, and I did take a wing there, and when the wind was not strong enough for windsurfing it was sometimes just right for this different sort of paragliding. Even when they started to build houses here, and make a road, the clearing could still be used for take offs and top landings, and the tropical forest trees remained on the lower part of the steep slope in front. But, to begin with, this clearing was reached by a barely passable track through the wild trees and bushes along the top. From the sugar fields below, Mount Pleasant and its skyline took one’s imagination to the pages of The Lost World (just a little). Some of the inhabitants certainly thought so.
. . to What Dogs Think . . .
At the bottom of the slope was a farm worker’s little house, complete with a motley collection of dogs. These were not aggressive by nature, and mooched about around the environs when they were not relaxin’, as you might expect tropical dogs to do. If you landed in the fallow sugar field in front they took some interest, barked a bit and jogged up (at a safe distance) as you approached the ground, but as soon as your feet touched down they lost interest immediately and were sauntering housewards even before the floppy wing had subsided into a bag of washing. It’s another man with a big bag of washing - the same old thing. But the takeoff, far above on the skyline, and therefore further away, encouraged a completely different order of dog reaction. They went totally bananas, and barked hysterically - until the glider had stopped taking off and was cruising along the top of the cliff. Was it looking for dogs? Not today, apparently. If they wondered at all it was another bird (or a flying bag of washing). There aren’t any seriously predatory birds in Barbados that I can remember - just the usual suspects, including the odd frigate bird cruising past.
It was of a sudden that the possible truth dawned. Ridiculous and hilarious at the same time, but it made sense. The everyday paraglider has a wingspan of 12 metres and the wing area of a Spitfire. This kind of hill-soaring takeoff does not involve desperate running down the hill. The wing is pulled up in a wind that, ideally, is similar to minimum flying speed (20 kph). It changes from the bag of washing lying on the grass into a crinkling, inflating and rustling thing, rising as it unfolds its wings to their full span until it sits, majestic, fully wing shaped above the pilot who waits as he looks around, feels its lifting force and assesses its brake feel (internal wing pressure, and brake position to match the current airspeed and trim situation) before taking a couple of steps forward and into the air. What else of that size does that on the jungly crest of a rocky ridge? The dogs had no doubt: it’s definitely a big flappy dangerous thing that lives up there.
. . . to Pterosaur
All large pterosaurs died out 66 million years ago, along with ¾ of living creatures including all ground-based dinosaurs. It was the Mexican Yucatan asteroid impact that did it. Estimates of size vary widely and a 30 mile diameter is a middling guess. The bang was equivalent to 100 million times the energy of the largest H-bomb ever exploded (Russian), and the resulting climate change was life-changing; white clay dust in the atmosphere, cold, not enough to eat. Could it happen again? Put money on it - you only have to wait. The big creatures went first, the ones that had dominated life for at least 210 million years before that. There had been a great many flying ones, ranging from sparrow sized to Pteranondon - paraglider wingspan and standing as high as a giraffe. Since the first useful discoveries and research in the 1860s, more discoveries and the academic research that followed seems to have blossomed. What a fascinating branch of Palaeontology for a flying enthusiast.
Barbados rose from the sea a mere 700,000 years ago. There was never a Pterosaur there, and what about these dogs? They might have descended from Elizabethan ancestors but probably not. We humans share much structural design with dogs and Pterosaurs (not to mention the popular dinosaur category) to name but two. What else do we share with the 64,500 vertebrates?
The pterosaur walks on its knuckles with its little finger folded back. To fly, this little finger, with three bones - same as us - cantilevers out to provide the leading edge and outer bracing of the wing surface. Extended, the finger doubles the shoulder to hand distance, so this provides a double arm length wing (each side). Current research seems uncertain as to how good a flyer it was, but the trend seems to indicate better than previously thought. Warm blooded in order to provide the energy for long sustained flapping flight? May be.
I read today that specific animal parental stress response can be passed down through 14 generations. The Bible says 3, so why stop at 14? The Mount Pleasant dogs thought they were seeing and hearing a Pterosaur. How do they know what one looks like? They just know, take it from me.
. . . and Hot Air Balloon
I went in one of these once. It was after the annual Concorde cricket match at Aldworth in Berkshire, and a Concorde flight engineer, Tony Brown, was a keen and very good ballooner. That’s what I thought anyway. Our flight was successful, and any observations about tactical difficulties surmounted can wait, but I was interested in the behaviour of creatures beneath when flying low. Some of them ran about a bit (maybe chickens), but others, rabbits and dogs I think, tended to make themselves invisible by just flattening themselves on the ground. Of course we could see them crystal clear - this doesn’t work, unless you are a cat family creature whose vision responds to movement. What did they think this big round thing was? Tony told me about an enquiry he had been involved in (the south of England is a very proprietorial place). He had been drifting with the wind, looking for a place to land (as one does), and the owner of a large house with grounds had complained that his balloon had terrified the lion that lived in her tennis court (now a lion’s den). It had run around, head butting the tennis court surround, and she wanted recompense for new chicken wire. What would a fierce and proud lion be afraid of? She said it was the propane burner. Tony was supported by CAA inquiry man Barry Tempest who said “If I was going to land in the lion’s enclosure I would want four afterburning Olympus engines to get me out of there.” So our circle of connections is complete.
Anyone For Tennis?