It wasn't difficult to find Tony once I got there and he was very friendly, helpful and chatty. He also introduced me to Viv Freke who was equally friendly and interesting to chat with. Both Viv and Tony were obviously very familiar with all aspects of gyros, and the more I chatted with them, the more impressed I was with their obvious depth of knowledge.
Viv was working on a rather nice looking black RAF 2000 GTX-SE when I arrived, but apparently, it wasn't quite ready for flight. His other machine though, was flight-ready and as I was obviously very keen, Viv kindly offered to take me up for a brief gyro experience flight. It seems that some people find flight in a gyro a bit disturbing, especially the landing which usually involves a fairly steep descent. I didn't think I'd be fazed by that so jumped at the chance.
After pulling Viv's other machine out of the hangar, he checked it over thoroughly and gave me a comprehensive safety briefing. While it's obvious to keep clear of the propeller for instance, it's less obvious at first glance that the gyro's main rotor can easily descend below head height and is surprisingly hard and dangerous, even when rotating quite slowly. In due course, we were strapped in to the tiny cockpit of Viv's other RAF 2000, and ready to taxi out to the runway.
Looking back on just the preliminaries to the take-off, I learnt a great deal from Viv: all sorts of subtleties from mechanical sympathy for the gyro, to basic radio procedures. Soon enough we were at the end of the runway, facing into wind, with the main rotor pre-rotated up to 150 rpm. Putting the Subaru engine up to full power, Viv released the brakes and we accelerated briskly up the gentle slope of the runway. After a very few seconds we were airborne and climbing rapidly towards the low cloudbase. Levelling out at about 1,000 feet I had difficulty believing that just over a minute before, we'd been on the ground, and now the airfield looked remarkably small.
After a circuit or two of the airfield, we headed off north, in due course reaching the Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh where we did a sharp turn to head back to Little Rissington. It's quite interesting doing a sharp turn in an RAF 2000: one moment you're flying gently along at 70 mph (though you wouldn't know it apart from the airspeed indicator) with a nice level horizon all round, and then all of a sudden, your view out of the large transparent door on your right is filled with ground and it feels as though you could just fall out. Of course I couldn't fall out (even if I hadn't been securely strapped in) because Viv's expert piloting ensured that the G forces were all just right to hold me in my seat with no sideways force at all.
On the way back, it soon became apparent that navigating at 1,000 feet or more is a very different prospect to navigating at ground level. Gone are all the helpful road signs and familiar landmarks. One village or small town looks very like any other. Main roads are busier than minor roads, but they don't have big numbers on them proclaiming their identification, so one 'A' road looks very much like any other 'A' road. The same with rivers and railway lines. None of this of course disturbed Viv as he unerringly found his way back to the airfield, which I had difficulty even spotting until we were almost above it. I hadn't seen the light plane crossing our path at the same altitude either, though Viv obviously had, but it didn't merit any avoidance manoeuvre, even though we could have waved to the other pilot.
All too soon it seemed, we were diving towards the ground in a very controlled but steep descent. I was totally relaxed about it, having been pre-warned by Viv about the steep approach which was necessary to keep the rotor speed up. What I hadn't expected was that we wouldn't land back on the runway we took off from, because of course we didn't need the braking distance that most aircraft do. Instead, we landed on the end of a different runway, coming in sideways to it, and, so far as I could tell, landed vertically with no forward motion at all, and very gently. It was all a bit surprising how quickly our fast forward/downward motion had been converted to completely stationary.
We taxied back to the hangar and put the lovely little craft away. At some point in the ensuing conversation I gathered that the other RAF 2000 Viv was working on was being readied for its first test flight for some time, as it had been involved in a minor, but costly, rollover accident on landing some years ago, and Viv had being doing the finishing touches to get it fully airworthy again, with a view to selling it.
Viv replied that the aircraft needed to be test flown (by himself and Tony) prior to getting its certificate of airworthiness, and then he'd be advertising it for the asking price, and wouldn't be open to offers as he'd spent a fair amount of money on new parts, as well as the hours of work.
I started calculating whether I could afford it if I sold the shares I'd bought in my old company while I was working. I reckoned I could.
But could I even fly it? What if I was a complete idiot when it came to controlling a sensitive, and potentially dangerous machine like this? How different is it doing 70 mph at 1,000 feet with few things to hit compared to doing 70 mph on the ground on a motorbike where there are lots of things to hit, and hit you? I was starting to convince myself that G-BYJA was a part of my future!
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