My first student was a gentleman that was going to have a trial lesson. It was a buzz to teach someone something and then watch them carry out what you have just taught them. I realised at that point that I was going to enjoy being an instructor immensely.
Just a bit further down the road where I used to fly the RB group's Auster was another flying school on Northampton Sywell Aerodrome. They had a fleet of the new Polish Aero AT-3 aircraft.
Under exactly the same arrangement with regards to the money I earned from ground time and instructing for free, I started instructing here as well. There was more demand for it. This is where I took on my own students and I began to teach the full PPL syllabus.
I went on to make lots of friends here, flew lots of hours and had the best social life I've ever had. At the time it was an all grass airfield populated with light aircraft and hobby pilots. There was a hotel with bar and restaurant where we nearly always ended up. We all used to have lots of fun, go out bowling, go for meals and to the cinema etc.
Myself and my colleague often used to end up returning to the airfield together after having taught the lesson we were teaching our students. Depending on what level our students were at, we would sometimes pair up for around three minutes and return to the overhead as a two ship in loose formation. The students used to love it, and it was a good demonstration of one of the things they can do when they become experienced pilots.
I taught one guy right the way through his PPL course from start to finish. He was a balloon pilot, but wanted his aeroplane license. He became my full timer. During the summer months, he took me and a couple of mutual friends and fellow instructors for a flight in his balloon in the evenings.
The picture below is taken from the basket looking at Pitsford Reservoir just to the northwest of the airfield.
As well as the AT-3s, the school had purchased a fairly new Cessna 172SP. My full time student and I took it to Germany for his navigation exercises. We stayed with some friends of his that ran the airport. They looked after us and our plane very well. I had a go with the airport fire truck since I like these sorts of things. We also visited the salt baths, walked around downtown Swaebich Hall, and visited the Sinsheim museum. It was a fantastic trip and one that I will never forget.
Distance approximately 700 miles and 5 hours flying time.
I went on to have a fabulous summer, I had my own set of students and had some real good times to remember. As winter set in, I couldn't fly all the time due to the weather not being suitable. So what I used to do was take my trucking gear with me to the airfield. Since it got dark by half past four which was when the flying day had to end, I had time go into the Royal Mail and make an evening run.
One day, the phone rang in the flight school, and I picked it up in the office. It was the Aero AT-3 importer stuck out in Poland. He was there by himself with 3 AT-3s. It was a lonely distant voice with a blizzard in the background. His two ferry pilots had got fed up with the weather in Poland. They left him there and went back on a scheduled airliner. So he was asking if me and one other pilot would go out there to fly these AT-3s to England.
Distance approximately 950 miles and 9 hours flying time.
Next morning, I met the other pilot at East Midlands airport. He was a retired airline pilot and was on the team of instructors at Northampton. We caught the scheduled Ryanair flight to Wroclaw in Poland.
As we taxied in on the Ryanair 737, we could see the apron where the AT-3s were covered in snow, with one man standing next to them wrapped up in a big jacket. We got off the Ryanair 737 and stood out there in the cold having a chat. Then we inspected the aircraft and looked at the chart to see the route that had been planned. The flight plans were already filed for us before we got there. So then we just climbed in, started up and taxied out in a 3 ship formation to take off.
This was a lot of fun, and quite exciting for me. We got air born and flew in formation to Dresden in Germany where we landed about half an hour before dark. One of the other guys had his elevator trim stuck just after take off and had to hold the stick forward for the rest of the flight. That was a job we were going to have to fix the next morning. AT-3s aren't cleared to fly at night, so we night stopped there in Dresden and we were put up in a posh hotel. After a meal in the hotel bar, we relaxed and had a few light drinks until 1am. We had to stop at 1am as the minimum sobering time is 8 hours bottle to throttle and we were planning on being air born by 9am the following morning. That was a rigid take-off time and we all agreed.
So at 10am, we all met in the lobby and had a big hotel breakfast with cornflakes, german bread and jam, croissants and coffee followed by sausages, eggs, bacon, beans and orange juice. By 11, we took a cab out to the airport. We found 3 little AT-3 shaped piles of ice where we had left our planes. The temperature was -5, but at least we had clear skies and the sun had some heat in it's rays. We just kept turning the planes around till the ice melted on all surfaces, and then brushed them down with a broom. Meanwhile we took the fairing off the tail on the broken one to fix the elevator trim. We uplifted fuel, pre-flight inspected them and then I lost all feeling in my hands it was that cold.
We eventually got going at mid-day and I got warm enough in the cockpit with the sun shining through the canopy and the heater warming up as the engine got some heat in it. We took off together and flew in loose formation to Mönchengladbach for lunch. From there, we had enough fuel to get over to England and land at North Wield. The importer, and his aircraft, that was the final leg. The poor guy flying the one that previously had his trim tab lock was now suffering a cracked exhaust.
The two of us completed the final 40 minute leg to Northampton where our AT-3 trained engineers had them in the hangar to make the necessary modifications and fix the exhaust before they were then taken to the school that bought them in Sherburn.
The video below is a compilation of pictures taken on the ferry trip, from the point we picked them up in Wrowclaw, to when they went to Sherburn and painted in Sherburn livery
