Hume, Griff and Bruce McKerron were coming along well. But then I was very annoyed when told I would be losing my best student, Dave Hume, to take on Officer Cadet Dave Becks whose instructor had engineered a direct swap of students.
Gwelo Gliding Club
OUR METEOROLOGIST, HARVEY QUAIL ALWAYS provided very accurate forecasts of weather conditions until his deep involvement with the Gwelo Gliding Club, which he founded, seemed to rob him of his forecasting talent.
In 1962 he persuaded me to join his club as its Chief Flying Instructor. I accepted the position on condition that all flying members were grounded until they had undergone full instruction in spin recoveries with a Bulawayo instructor who owned a Tiger Moth. This was because, in 1961, two learner pilots had inadvertently entered spins and died because they had not been taught how to avoid or recover from this flying hazard. I would have preferred to do the instruction myself but our trainer, a Slingsby T31, was not suited for the purpose.
Every flight I ever made in a glider gave me special pleasure, even the simple instructional ones. I particularly enjoyed flying high-performance, single-seater machines. So far as I was concerned, gliding could not be compared with powered flight. It possessed a magic all of its own and two particular flights stick in my mind.
Mrs Mungay (pronounced Mingay), a great enthusiast who was always on hand to make tea for anyone needing refreshment, asked me to take her up on a short jolly. We made a normal cable-winch launch in the Slingsby T31 tandem trainer for what was intended to be a simple circuit and landing. However, on this occasion we entered strong lift just before the normal cable-release point so I cut free and entered into a tight turn to hold the thermal.
The initial rate of climb was impressive and, amazingly, it kept increasing. The T31 was considered to be more like a streamlined brick than a performance glider but our thermal was so potent that we climbed with ease to 11,000 feet where it was bitterly cold.
Being in an open cockpit dressed in shorts and a light shirt did not concern me because I was concentrating on climbing as high as possible. However Mrs Mungay, using the old-fashioned voice tube shouted, “My fanny is frozen.' I laughed and ignored her problem until at 11,600 feet she was pleading with me to get her back on the ground. I rolled out of the turn to break from the thermal but the aircraft just carried on climbing. A little short of 12,000 feet I placed the glider in a full sideslip that did the trick and we descended down through ever-warmer air until finally we were back on the ground.
Since there had been no intention to do more than fly one circuit, the aircraft had not been fitted with a barometric recorder to prove the height achieved. So there was no point in complaining that I might have been denied the opportunity to claim a world height record for a Slingsby T31, simply because my passenger’s fanny was frozen.
My second memory is of a failed attempt to fly a Slingsby Swallow from Gwelo Gliding Club to the Salisbury Gliding Club. Progress was fine initially thanks to a starting height of 14,300 feet over Gwelo. But in the Redcliff area near Que Que I could find no thermals at all. In desperation I made for the Rhodesian Iron and Steel Company works to pick up lift around a smoke column rising from the factory. The acrid smoke made me cough and splutter and I experienced eye-watering burning of my eyes. As soon as I had sufficient height to make for Que Que I broke out into clean air. On two occasions I flew towards hawks soaring in weak thermal conditions but eventually I was forced to land in a farmer’s field and await collection. Any hope of becoming a proficient high- performance glider pilot was short lived. Club life was robbing me of time I needed to spend with my family and the cost of gliding was becoming too high.
16 PTC
IN JULY 1962 NO 16 PTC commenced their BFS and I was allocated Officer Cadets Graham Cronshaw, Prop Geldenhuys and Chris Dixon. All three progressed normally and I made it known that I did not wish to have any of these students taken from me to satisfy any other instructor’s will. This only worked for three and a half months before my favourite student, Prop Geldenhuys, was taken away. I was given Officer Cadet du Toit who had not been shaping up with his first instructor.
I had a very soft spot for Prop Geldenhuys for more reasons than his good nature; we had experienced two serious incidents together. The first of these was when I was demonstrating recovery from engine failure on a short-field take-off.
A short take-off required full power against brakes before rolling and forcing lift-off at around 65 knots with a steep climb out. No recovery from engine failure was possible below 200 feet, which made me wonder why this exercise that I had demonstrated many times was considered necessary. Anyway, at 200 feet I chopped the engine and pitched the nose down sharply. Talking to Prop all the time, the airspeed was increased to 85 knots before the first of two attitude changes was made to reduce the descent rate and glide angle preparatory to a normal round-out for landing.
When I made the first check the aircraft attitude changed but the descent rate and angle remained unaltered. Full throttle was applied, but the engine did not respond and even full flap failed to prevent the aircraft from slamming heavily into the ground. This fully compressed the main wheel oleos that then forced us to rebound back into the air. Immediately the motor roared to full power, lifting the aircraft precariously with insufficient runway remaining to put down again safely. The Provost was staggering along when I realised the wings were badly distorted. Aileron control was all but lost, necessitating the use of rudder to lift the port wing. To achieve the correct climbing speed, the nose had to be depressed well below its normal climbing attitude because the distorted wings were now set at a higher than normal angle to the airframe.
I was still sorting myself out when Prop blurted out, “Sir, this wing is coming off.' I looked down my side and could see that the wing root fairing had separated from the leading edge and that there were stress wrinkles on the mainplane. Obviously Prop’s side looked the same but sun reflections on the ripples, from his perspective, must have given him an impression of imminent structural failure.
Having assured Prop we would be okay, I waited until we were above a safe bail-out height before telling him to be prepared to jettison the canopy and abandon the aircraft without hesitation if I told him to do so. Very limited aileron movement was available at each end of full application because the control cables had become slack within the distorted wings. Elevator and rudder control responses were normal so I continued climbing to 10,000 feet with a view to establishing the stalling speed and to conduct low-speed handling checks preparatory to a landing that I felt sure would be possible.
Bob Woodward came up to inspect our Provost and reported that, apart from severely bent wings, the port tyre had burst and the tail wheel had disappeared into the fuselage. He formated on me as I reduced speed to check my damaged aircraft’s slow-speed handling characteristics. When it felt as if we were near to stalling, my airspeed indicator read 100 knots whereas Bob said his was reading 85 knots. We concluded this had something to do with changed geometry of the airframe.
The landing was fine, the wings did not come off but the burst wheel, even with a fair amount of right-
