50 More Tales of Flight: An Aviation Adventure by Owen Zupp

Author:Owen Zupp [Zupp, Owen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: There and Back
Published: 2014-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

24

You, Me and a Tiger Makes Three

They say that every journey begins with a single step. Well this journey began with a great degree of doubt and conflicting information. The weather forecast told a tale of woe and wild wet winds, but as I looked out my kitchen window to the south, the sky was clear and the stars were twinkling. Hmmm, what was one to do?

My wife, Kirrily, and I had planned to fly our antique Tiger Moth biplane from our home to an air show across the border in Queensland. It was not the simplest of day-trips as it called for us to cover over 500 miles in an aeroplane that travelled at around 80 miles an hour. Six hours in an open cockpit armed with goggles and a leather helmet is a blink for the pioneering aviators of yesteryear, but it is still a fair hop in the 21st century on a cold winter’s day.

As we compared the lines of the encoded weather forecast to charts and satellite photos, we agreed that the weather was coming, but it wasn’t here yet. Furthermore, the front was moving at about 30 miles an hour, so if we took off ahead of it, we should be able to stay that way. With a plan formulated, we made our way to the airfield, loaded our limited luggage into the small locker behind the rear cockpit and readied to depart as the dawn’s light was peering through the mist.

As Kirrily sat at the ready, I flicked the switches and grasped the brass edge of my old wooden propeller. Feeling a slight resistance, I pulled downward and flicked the engine into life. The pop-pop pop-pop of the four cylinders defied the cold of the morning and soon the propeller formed a walnut disc in the new sunlight. I pulled the wheel chocks away from the tyres and stowed them before lumbering up onto the wing and into the cockpit. Our attire was bulky as Kirrily and I both knew how cool a flight in the Tiger Moth could be. Layers of thermal underwear, long johns, jeans, shirt, polar fleece vest, flying suit, scarf and leather jacket cocooned us, while the four straps of the harness lashed us tightly into the cockpit.

As I increased the power and started to taxi, the slipstream from the spinning blades cast back additional airflow that still managed to creep down beyond our scarves. We were chilled after only two minutes and bid haste to the sun and the warmth it would bring. Like us, the engine was slow to rise in temperature so we sat waiting at the runway’s edge with one eye to the south looking for the predicted weather to emerge.

The time had come and I lined up on the runway, swinging the small tailwheel around behind me. Without further ado I advanced the throttle and the old 1930s instruments vibrated into life. As the airspeed increased I raised the tail from the runway, offering a little better forward vision from the rear cockpit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.