If you know anything about me, being brief is not one of my
attributes. So, with that in mind I'll tell some stories about my
experiences in Scotland in parts, to give readers a little break. I
won't talk about solo in Byron first.
Part I, cloud flying:
To begin, I was sent by my company to Scotland in 1975 to support 4
small computer systems. Each weighed more than 500 lb and were
generally not that reliable. There was no one in Britain qualified to
work on them. They were sent there as software development tools for the
programmers on a smaller system built locally. At some point the
university of St Andrews(programmers) may come in to the story, their
graduates are formidable.
I found myself in Scotland, a qualified pilot and owner of a
C-150(N7203X). I went to a local airport and discovered that renting
airplanes was over the top expensive, but also found there was a gliding
club about 30 miles north of Edinburgh near loch Leven. That club was
and is the Scottish Gliding Union, its near a small village Portmoak.
This club could be transported to Byron and you would not notice a
significant difference. The club had a single employee, and she managed
the airport/farm during the week and was the cook on weekends. Otherwise
it was an "all hands on deck" operation, if you flew you needed to help.
So, on to cloud flying. I had been a member of this club for a
couple of months. I may or may not have gone solo at that point, its not
relevant to this story. I was at the club one weekend when a young
pilot went off in a single seat Pirat(SDZ), he was probably 20 and I was
old, maybe 30. This glider actually had some electrical stuff on board.
None of the other gilders had radios, or other electrical
paraphernalia. The Pirat had an electric turn and bank gyro powered by
a pair of dry cells. This gyro was invented by the Sperry company about
1920 plus-minus a couple of years and was the first to be used in
airplanes. Prior to that flying in clouds was a death wish.
On that day there were layers of clouds around about 2000-3000 agl,
maybe 50% cover. Anyway, the young man went off in the Pirat and later
found himself well above the cloud level. Eventually he needed to
return to the airport, but a cloud deck had moved in below him. He
descended through the clouds and landed normally. On landing he seemed
quite wound up and animated. He had figured out that he had connected
the battery backward, so when the gyro said left, the gilder was going
right. He said he really needed to concentrate when descending through
the cloud to not misinterpret the gyro. Well, imagine the little fly
wheel in the gyro spinning backwards due to reversing the polarity of
the battery, and the gyro is giving you bogus info, and imagine knowing
that to fly trough clouds.
Afterward I was left with doubts, what about flying through the clouds,
what about that? Generally I didn't sense any interest in this. I made
some discrete inquires about this. I was told that cloud flying in
Scotland was ok, as long as it was outside airways. Remember I'm an
alien in Scotland. So I asked what about midair's? I was told, not from
the young man, we use "natural separation". Natural separation was
described as the low probability of two aircraft in the same cloud.
More parts to follow on request.
B.W.
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