I have to confess that each time we hear a strange airborne engine noise, we all decant en masse and at high speed, out onto the lawn to see what’s coming.
Ah, the joys of being aviation freaks….
Category Archives: Aviation
High Flight, with FAA Supplement…
In the light of my post of a few days ago, you might like this humorous annotated version of the poem ‘High Flight‘, after the national regulatory authority bureaucrats have got hold of it (For information, the FAA is the US equivalent of the UK’s CAA)
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth(1),
And danced(2) the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed(3) and joined the tumbling mirth(4)
Of sun-split clouds(5) and done a hundred things(6)
You have not dreamed of — Wheeled and soared and swung(7)
High in the sunlit silence(8). Hov’ring there(9)
I’ve chased the shouting wind(10) along and flung(11)
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious(12), burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights(13) with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle(14) flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space(15),
Put out my hand(16), and touched the face of God.
NOTE:
1. Pilots must insure that all surly bonds have been slipped entirely before aircraft taxi or flight is attempted.
2. During periods of severe sky dancing, crew and passengers must keep seatbelts fastened. Crew should wear shoulderbelts as provided.
3. Sunward climbs must not exceed the maximum permitted aircraft ceiling.
4. Passenger aircraft are prohibited from joining the tumbling mirth.
5. Pilots flying through sun-split clouds under VFR conditions must comply with all applicable minimum clearances.
6. Do not perform these hundred things in front of Federal Aviation Administration inspectors.
7. Wheeling, soaring, and swinging will not be attempted except in aircraft rated for such activities and within utility class weight limits.
8. Be advised that sunlit silence will occur only when a major engine malfunction has occurred.
9. “Hov’ring there” will constitute a highly reliable signal that a flight emergency is imminent.
10. Forecasts of shouting winds are available from the local FSS. Encounters with unexpected shouting winds should be reported by pilots.
11. Pilots flinging eager craft through footless halls of air are reminded that they alone are responsible for maintaining separation from other eager craft.
12. Should any crewmember or passenger experience delirium while in the burning blue, submit an irregularity report upon flight termination.
13. Windswept heights will be topped by a minimum of 1,000 feet to maintain VFR minimum separations.
14. Aircraft engine ingestion of, or impact with, larks or eagles should be reported to the FAA and the appropriate aircraft maintenance facility.
15. Aircraft operating in the high untresspassed sanctity of space must remain in IFR flight regardless of meteorological conditions and visibility.
16. Pilots and passengers are reminded that opening doors or windows in order to touch the face of God may result in loss of cabin pressure.
– From Great Aviation Quotes
Cloud Dancing over Cornwall, 25th June 2015
After posting the ‘High Flight‘ blog entry for 25th June, I went up and did some High Flight for real. Flinging my ‘eager craft through footless halls of air’, I ‘wheeled and soared and swung, high in the sunlit silence’.
It was quite a memorable flight. Typical British pilot’s understatement, that. Throwing the aeroplane around the sky, using clouds as ‘anchor points’, so flying under, over, around the towers of piled cloud, swooping and soaring, rolling, banking, diving, climbing and turning. This is what I call ‘Cloud Dancing’. I can only do that sort of thing when I have no passengers on board, because I would not want to subject them to that kind of g-forces – pulling a maximum of perhaps 2.5 to 3g is not for the unacclimatised….
So here’s a few photos and videos to let you share in some small measure what happened that day.
Firstly, here’s my start position at 4,000 feet over Colliford Lake, Cornwall, UK:
As you can see, the clouds are perfectly positioned for dancing around, just a couple of hundred feet below me. The idea is to use that bit of altitude to build up speed on the run-in to the cloud dancing.
Here’s my first video of the cloud dancing. It might not look like much through the camera, but the feeling is indescribable!
And then another, shorter video with some emphasis on the lovely colour of Colliford Lake. A free airshow for the folks parked in the carpark there, although at 2,500ft above their heads they wouldn’t have seen all that much.
A note for any pilots viewing these videos: nose drop in the turns was intentional!
And finally, on my way home, I always pass the magnificent old warrior, the lovely English Electric/BAC Lightning F6 XS936 at Castle Air, Liskeard. This time I decided, as was only fitting, to stop and pay homage to this dignified old lady. Here she is, complete with dummy Firestreak air-to-air missiles.
Gorgeous. What a fabulous day out!
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
– John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
During the desperate days of the Battle of Britain, hundreds of Americans crossed the border into Canada to enlist with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Knowingly breaking the law, but with the tacit approval of the then still officially neutral United States Government, they volunteered to fight the Nazis.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was one such American. Born in Shanghai, China, in 1922 to an English mother and a Scottish-Irish-American father, Magee was 18 years old when he entered flight training. Within the year, he was sent to England and posted to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF, which was activated at Digby, England, on 30 June 1941. He was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.
Flying fighter sweeps over France and air defense over England against the German Luftwaffe, he rose to the rank of Pilot Officer.
On 3 September 1941, Magee flew a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a newer model of the Spitfire V. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem — “To touch the face of God.”
Once back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents. In it he commented, “I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed.” On the back of the letter, he jotted down his poem, ‘High Flight.’
Just three months later, on 11 December 1941 (and only three days after the US entered the war), Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. The Spitfire V he was flying, VZ-H, collided with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield. The mid-air happened over the village of Roxholm which lies between RAF Cranwell and RAF Digby, in the county of Lincolnshire at about 400 feet AGL at 11:30. John was descending in the clouds. At the enquiry a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggle to push back the canopy. The pilot, he said, finally stood up to jump from the plane. John, however, was too close to the ground for his parachute to open and he was killed instantly. He was 19 years old.
– Quoted from ‘Great Aviation Quotes‘
This poem has been the inspiration for countless pilots in the just over 100 years that powered flight has been in existence. Its verses beautifully capture the limitless joy of dancing your aeroplane among the clouds; indeed, I personally have ‘done a hundred things You have not dreamed of ‘ up there in the sky. I know what this feels like; that poem could have been written from my own heart (except that I don’t ‘do’ poetry!)
Which leads me to another great paragraph that sums up flying and a pilot’s responsibility:
The ultimate responsibility of the pilot is to fulfill the dreams of
the countless millions of earthbound ancestors who could only stare skyward
and wish.
-Anon
Anyway, I’m going flying right now. See ya!
‘Up, up the long, delirious burning blue…’ (Photo taken at 6,000 feet over Cornwall, 26th August 2013 by my daughter, with myself as Pilot in Command)
Epilogue: Pictures and videos from today’s flight
‘Ex-batt Christians’
My family has a flock of rescued chickens. At present, there’s four birds in the flock, and most of them are ‘retired’ caged chickens.
Caged chickens are what used to be referred to as ‘battery hens’; hens that right from the day they were hatched have never known freedom. From before the time they begin laying, until they are about a year old, they spend all their time in a cage. Then they are either sent off for slaughter or they are rehomed as ‘ex-battery’ hens, or ‘ex-batt’ for short. Three of our girls are ex-batt hens; the fourth was a stray whom we adopted.
Now, about six weeks ago, our two newest hens arrived. Apart from being all bedraggled and nearly bald (we thought they actually looked ‘oven-ready!’), they simply didn’t know what to do with their new freedom. They spent the first couple of days huddled together in the (open) chicken cage, while the hens we already had were roaming about their large pen, pecking at this and that like chickens do. Then, after a couple of days, they dared to come out of the cage a couple of feet; after that, they came right out but hid in the bushes for most of the day. All the time, they felt they had to be near the ‘safety’ of their cage, so they could bolt back to their place of security. Only after about four weeks with us did they realise that they had choices, they had freedom, and it was up to them how they spent their day. Stay in the chicken coop? No problem. Sit in the shade? Mmmhmm, and have a dust-bath while you’re there. Want to wander round the chicken pen and explore? Go right ahead, it’s perfectly safe. And occasionally they even get let out of the pen and into the whole garden, on what we call ‘rampage’. And they love the freedom!
I’m sure you can see the analogy. I feel that there are many Christians who are still in the chicken coop. They have been set free from the kingdom of darkness, but they are not enjoying the ‘glorious freedom of the Children of God’ (Romans 8:21)
Much of the time, they find it hard to emerge from the ‘safety’ of the coop. Sure, it’s safe in there, but it’s not freedom. Even once they emerge, they are ready at a moment’s notice to bolt back in there.
Jesus was castigated by the religious authorities of His day, for associating with ‘sinners’. He was admonished most severely for partying and having a great time with His friends. Mark 2:18 – “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” These people – even John the Baptist’s disciples, who were effectively part of a ‘new’ movement – felt that religious observance meant being dull, dry, and having a straight face all the time. No fun is allowed, folks, and certainly no laughing!
But Jesus was having none of that. When the Bridegroom (Jesus) is with us, we don’t need to ‘do’ all these religious rules and observances. We just need to live our lives in the glorious freedom of the Children of God. We can live lavishly, we can live in extravagant, outrageous freedom – freedom that will appear to the ‘religious’ (and those who think they know how ‘religious’ people should behave) to be outrageous. “What? These people believe in God and they’re happy??”
Like when I fly, my home base airfield is near a huge reservoir lake with a dam at one end. So, of course, we do low-level ‘Dambuster’ runs over it. A shallow dive, picking up speed, race across the water at high speed only 200 feet up….and then call ‘bombs away’ and a sharp, high-‘g‘ pull-up into the climb away. Tremendous fun, perfectly legal and perfectly safe. But people hear the stories of that sort of thing and they say, ‘You do, like, what??‘ And to be perfectly honest, it takes a good few days for the grin to disappear from my face after a Dambuster run…. but you see the thing is that we enjoy it. Really enjoy it. It’s part of our freedom. ‘Pilots shouldn’t do things like that’ is only said by those who have not experienced the freedom of flight – and who have not spent all those years of hard training; British pilot training is the most thorough in the world of civilian aviation and we produce the safest private pilots in the world. And yet still we do Dambuster runs, because it’s perfectly safe – because we have trained for it. It’s what we are equipped and free to do.
And so it is with the things of faith, the things of God. Those who live in freedom appear to those on the outside to be completely irreligious. They laugh and joke. They appear to be filled with an inexpressible joy. They party (in whatever way suits them), they dance, they’re free. They associate with all different types of people, including those who society sees as outcasts. They do kind things. They do daft things. And those outside – both believer and non-believer alike – look in and say, ‘No way they’re Christians. They aren’t behaving at all like a Christian should behave’. ‘How can you call yourself a Christian and still do that?’ Y’see, they just don’t ‘get’ it. The thing is that most of these unwritten expectations of behaviour are completely founded in others’ opinions and not in Scripture. Even if they were founded in Scripture, it’s not there to restrict us; rather to set us free.
People of faith who discover this new-found freedom also sometimes feel insecure in that freedom. They are emerging from the chrysalis of rules and regulations, of unwritten behavioural ‘standards’, and are exploring the pen near the cage. They’ re ready to scuttle back into the cage if they feel too unsafe. But you know, God made us for freedom, and ‘it is for freedom that Christ has set us free’ (Gal 5:1). It’s what we were made for! But don’t worry if at first you feel insecure. You no longer have the ‘rules’ as a backstop. But you don’t need rules anymore. Heb 10:16 – “I will write My laws upon their hearts”. Holy Spirit is your backstop and He will not let you fall. In any event, your salvation is secure even if/when you do make mistakes. This is the freedom we possess! Once saved, always saved. Click here for my blog posting on that truth.
So, can you see then that these ‘ex-batt Christians’ really need to come out of their cage and enjoy the freedom of the pen. That’s what they were rescued for! That’s what they were adopted for!
Life in all its fulness! Come on out of the cage and into the pen – or better yet, out into the garden. The freedom out here is wonderful!
Flying in the Rockies with Harrison Ford
Gorgeous flying video with legendary actor Harrison Ford, flying in the stupendous scenery of the Rockies. This video captures some of the breathtaking splendour of flight and it is presented here for your enjoyment!
The Forced Landing
As part of good airmanship, a good pilot will practise his safety drills regularly. One such drill is called the Practice Forced Landing, or ‘PFL’ for short. You pretend that your engine has failed, by simply closing the throttle (it’s very much like when you are sitting at a traffic light with your engine just ticking over) and it’s then just a question of ‘simply’ gliding the aircraft down into a suitable field – or nearly so; when you think you would have made the safe landing, you put the power back on and climb away. Job done.
This story happened about fourteen years ago, when I was still flying the Piper Warrior four-seater. Here’s the actual aeroplane in the story:
On this occasion, I had in the aircraft (names changed for embarrassment reasons) my friend Andy and his two sons Mike (16) and Ian (14). We were flying out from Plymouth to the Newquay area and back, and we’d briefed very thoroughly about the flight and talked about what to do in an emergency. I’d mentioned that at some point on the way back from Newquay, I would do a PFL, setting it up as a practice engine failure and practising the whole thing including a practice Mayday call.
Guys, watch what I do and be impressed; the whole thing is a bag of fun.
So off we trot with Andy in the front and the two boys in the back; we managed to find Newquay and then turned back towards Plymouth. About half-way back, I let everyone know what was happening. ‘OK guys, remember the practice engine failure drill? I’m commencing now; watch and learn!”
Carb heat to ‘hot’, throttle closed. Everything goes quiet, just the sound of the windrush on the aircraft to be heard. On with the drill. Trim for the glide. Pick a field. Plan the circuit and set the aircraft up for it. Restart drills – fuel, mixture, throttle, magnetos, fuel pump; no joy (of course not, I’m practising a complete engine failure, innit), committed to land. Practice Mayday call (say the Mayday call out loud but don’t press the transmit button or the Press will think there’s about to be another of their favourite ‘plane crash’ incidents). Height: 1,000 feet; field one mile away. It’s looking good: plenty of height so preliminary flap selection; ten degrees of flap. Mike leans over my shoulder, “Which field did you say we’re going in to?” (Oh that’s good, he’s showing an interest in what’s going on!)
“That big field there, with the farmhouse next to it”.
“Oh, ok”.
600 feet. Final flap selection. Committed checks: mime the actions – Fuel off, magnetos off, master switch off, straps tight, doors open.
“Which field was it again?”
“That one right there, with the track across the middle”
“Oh, ok”.
500 feet. Ok, if that had been a real emergency, we’d have lived for sure. Good. Practice emergency completed: carb heat ‘cold’, select full power (everything gets noisy again), prevent the strong nose-up pitch tendency, re-trim for climb power, positive rate of climb, flaps up, engine temperature and oil pressure in the green. Climbing to cruise altitude, establish track back to Plymouth.
Mike leans over again. “I thought you said the engine had failed?”
Suddenly it all made sense. The poor kid had forgotten that this was a drill; everybody else knew that there was no engine failure, it was just a practice. But for him, this was his first real in-flight emergency. He seriously thought that we were going to be in a field with sheep for company until the emergency services arrived. If we were lucky.
“Didn’t you remember? I told you before we set off that I was going to do a practice emergency; that was it!” Mike sat back in his seat, very relieved and (to his credit) with clean underwear too.
There’s an epilogue too, which is pretty important considering what had happened. About ten miles out from Plymouth, I was setting up the aircraft for circuit rejoin and landing when all of a sudden a fight broke out in the back seat. Andy turned round immediately and stopped Mike laying into his brother Ian. “Idiots! Fighting in a plane! You’re going to get us all killed!!” Things calmed down pretty sharpish…..
Then I learned after we’d landed that the reason why Mike had started hitting Ian was that, as soon as I had ‘failed’ the engine, Ian had leaned across and muttered to his older brother, “The engine has failed; we’re going to crash!” Ian, of course, knew exactly what was going on and was just winding him up.
So, for poor Mike, this was, to all intents and purposes, his first real brush with death in an aviation sense. And the lessons I learned? Only do a PFL if the passengers are a) veteran light aircraft passengers, and b) thoroughly briefed on what is going on. Yes, I’d briefed them, but they were obviously too excited to take it all in.
Well, we live and learn!
The Equation of Flight and Faith
On the back of my ‘Thankfulness as a Weapon‘ post, which largely concerns attitudes of mind and spirit, I thought I’d add this post too.
As my readers will know, I’m a light-aircraft pilot.
One of our ‘equations of flight’, if you like, is that ‘attitude plus power equals performance’.
Performance = power + attitude.
So, where does the faith bit come in to it? Well, for believers it’s like this; it’s a parable if you like: Because we feel we have God’s power sustaining us, and our attitude is positive, we get performance – the ability and strength to live day to day despite or circumstances.
Just sayin’
Why ‘Flying in the Spirit’?
I’ve called my blog ‘Flying in the Spirit’ because the parallels between the Christian faith and flying are quite remarkable. You see, I’m a man of faith and I’m also a Pilot. I have a deep faith in Jesus Christ, and I also fly light aircraft for a hobby.
Flying is one of the most amazing things that we can do as humans. Flying in light aircraft is worlds apart from flying in big commercial jets – and I have done both. The sense of freedom in light aircraft is awesome; you can feel every bump and you can see everything that’s going on around you. It’s fun, it’s thrilling, it’s awe-inspiring and it’s simply breathtaking. And sometimes you’re on the ground, looking up at another aeroplane in the sky wishing you were ‘up there’….
Walking with God is like that too. Excitement, fun, thrills, the unexpected, the breathless joy and awe and wonder….and it’s breathtaking! What an adventure is the adventure of faith! And Jesus came to set us free from the restrictive confines of religion, to set us free to be who God intended us to be, to be led and formed by Holy Spirit in the ‘glorious freedom of the Children of God’. This is why the life of the believer is supposed to be flying – in the Spirit!
Flying – and walking with God – each take you out of your natural element, and enable you to see things from a totally different perspective. Your understanding, and your worldview, change immeasurably for the better. You develop a sense of wonder like no other. You develop a fascination and an immersion in things that you simply never dreamed possible. Exploration of the things of God, and exploration of the possibilities of flight, are pastimes that you will simply never exhaust. And the passion…..the passion for God and for flying…..they exist in parallel “…and running through [his life] like two beautiful, singing silver wires, his twin loves – [flying] and Jesus” (from The Final Boundary by Adrian Plass, paraphrased*) – and there’s nothing at all wrong with having a passion for something that God has given you the passion for. I use my flying to bless people who would not otherwise get the chance to see the world from above…..
And there’s also the training, the discipline, the courage, the discovery, exploration and danger of a life where you’re letting go and trusting in a force that you can’t see, to hold you up. There are so many more parallels but these will do to be going on with.
Look, we were made to be excited and to enjoy things, and to enjoy God. He’s not all stuffy as so many of his ‘people’ make him out to be. He’s living, vibrant, simply buzzing with life. Some of my posts will reflect this ‘life is for living’ approach – because it is. Jesus came to bring ‘Life in all its fulness’. Life in the Spirit. Flying in the Spirit.
* In ‘The Final Boundary’, the character in the story loves Cricket – and Jesus. Hee hee.
The Three-Legged Stool
In flying light aircraft, there are three foundational principles that make for safe flying.
First and foremost is your training. The things you have learned from books and from instructors; the how and the why. Something is written down somewhere about why aeroplanes fly and how we put this into practice.
Second, there’s your own experience, both as a Student Pilot and then as a qualified Pilot. Things happen, and you say to yourself, ‘Crumbs that was close; I’m not doing that again!’ or similar. You learn how things are done in the crucible of actual flight in real conditions.
Thirdly, there’s the experiences of everyone else. Nobody lives long enough to make all the mistakes that are possible; so the idea is that you learn from other Pilots’ mistakes too – near-misses; accident reports, anecdotes and so on. ‘There was that time that I nearly……’ well, you get the picture.
I liken this to a picture God gave me about twenty years ago, of a believer’s faith being like a three-legged stool. All three legs are essential for the stool to remain standing, and those legs are as follows.
Firstly, the Bible. The stuff that’s set down and accepted as established practice.
Secondly, my own experiences. Things that have happened to me that I have put down entirely to God’s intervention. Some may claim it’s just statistics and coincidences, but to me these occurrences happen far too often to be just that. My own changed life is uppermost in my mind as I write this.
And thirdly, the experiences of others. I think of people I know whose lives have been completely turned around from being completely wrecked, to being redeemed and restored. Relationships healed, minds made whole, addictions broken, emotions and self-worth restored to their proper state. I need these people around me to remind me of what God has done for them and is doing for me. Because, despite what I have said above about my own experiences, sometimes it’s easier to see God’s hand at work in others’ lives than it is in your own life.
This forms the three-legged stool. And a three-legged stool has great stability and security.
I like that kind of stool 😉