Once he had taken it on, he built it up into a place where myself and many others frequent. There are a small number of aircraft owners and aero-modellers some of which I also used to know from the early days. They have become almost like extended family.
For the rest of summer 2009, I spent my weekends there. I was quite happy to just relax and soak up the atmosphere.
Every year, Stoke Golding has an annual fly-in event known as the Stoke Golding Stake-Out. We have somewhere in the region of 100 visiting aircraft over the weekend. My role is to provide air to ground air traffic service. Two of my old fire crew members would come over and provide us with some cover.
I look forward to this event all year round. There's no other fly-in / comedy show quite like it.
As well as Stoke Golding, there is still the farm strip in the next village where it all began for me. It is still operational, though it isn't as much of a happening place as it used to be in the 1990s. Although up until 2014 when Ken sadly passed away, it still used to come back to life for one day every 3-4 years for another Wings and Wheels event.
Whenever he held an event like that, I made sure I was back to fill my post.
There is a third strip in the vicinity that belongs to a family of contract farmers. The only aircraft based there is a Cessna belonging to one of them. They realized that the aircraft was a very useful tool and could be used to survey various sites around the country that they were working on. I had known him for a number of years, and he asked me if I would take on the role of flying the Cessna. I would take one of the brothers with me who would survey the points of interest.
The Cessna could cover a lot of ground in a short space of time. We could get round 5 or 6 sites and fly a round trip of 130 miles in one hour. I started to do this on a weekly bases. I also took on the up keep of the strip. There was an old tractor there with a topper, so I was quite happy being left to it.
The deal was, I could use the plane for myself whenever I wanted it. I was largely left to get on with it, so it almost felt like I had an airstrip and a plane of my own.
So that was how I spent the rest of summer 2009 when I knew that I wasn't going to fly vintage bi-planes before the end of it. By that time, I had come up with a plan of how I was going to be able to. As the UK summer ended, the Australian summer began. If I could get out there, it meant I could do it in the warm climates without having to wait yet again till the following season in England. You can read about it in the next chapter.
