Up, up and away…
It’s taken 18 months for my visits to the English Lake District to coincide with the sort of fine weather that has now enabled me to ‘cash-in’ a birthday present from 18 months ago.
You can read here about the earlier gift of an ‘introductory flight’ in an autogyro (gyrocopter), and this week it took off.
The booking arrangements via the ‘mature’ flight instructor were rather chaotic and didn’t inspire much confidence, but once in the cockpit, his 46 years as a pilot took over and the flight, in difficult downdrafts, was a dream.
There was too much low-flying RAF traffic for us to traverse the Lake District completely, but we flew down Ullswater to view the Helvellyn range then crossed to the Eden valley and Pennines beyond before returning to the airstrip a grassy field.
It would cost about £6k to qualify as a gyrocopter pilot and would, I think, be money well spent if my colour vision was up to scratch. Unfortunately, as a mild deutan, I’d certainly fail the required medical. The Ishihara test for colour blindness and I have a long and incongruous history!
Fortunately, I can always be a passenger!
Here’s the limerick:
There was an auld bloke that once copped a
Flight in a red gyrocopter
An ambulatory
Autogyratory
Trip with a fly-boy ‘spin doctor’!
