Roger Wilco

Last Christmas, Ellie surprised me with a gift voucher from 'Into the Blue' to take an hour's flying lesson. I put it away in the drawer for a few months, waiting for the weather to warm up and to stand a reasonable chance of a good day. Finally I booked a session with the Solent School of Aviation in Bournemouth. I have to admit I wasn't expecting too much - but it turned out to be a fabulous experience. Seated in a twin-seater Robin 200 next to my pilot, I was initially surprised to see that the controls looked more like those found on an old Morris Minor than a sleek aircraft. There was even something that looked like a choke, but turned out to be the throttle. I kept my feet well away from the rudder pedals - just in case - as we took off at hardly any speed at all, but soon found ourselves cruising at 1800 feet. Looking down, it was easy to make out the coastline as we flew over Sandbanks and Brownsea Island near Poole, then headed west to Portland Bill. I then took control of the joystick and started flying. The original request was to simply keep it flying in a straight line, whilst maintaining constant altitude. That was pretty easy, so I then started executing a few turns- a few degrees at first, and then more and more. The 'trim' was obviously set so that I wasn't going to crash the thing, although I did wonder what would happen if I just pulled back and aimed for the sky. Obviously getting bored, my instructor asked if I'd fancy flying through the clouds, so he climbed to 3600 feet and skirted around a few fluffy bits. After a few minutes of that, he started looking for a nice dark cloud that we could fly into and 'get lost'. He wanted to demonstrate how disorientating it is to fly inside a heavy cloud. He's right! Anyway, after playing a bit more in the clouds, I flew us back to Hengistbury Head. There's apparently a nudist beach there, but we just flew low over the bay to buzz the windsurfers. Then the instructor took us back to Bournemouth, where I was warned there'd be a bumpy landing due to high crosswinds. Unfortunately, he executed a perfect landing, dropping one wing slightly so that the wheel on that side touched a moment earlier than the other to compensate for the drift (crab) caused by the wind. Wish I could have tried that! As we manoeuvred from the runway to park up, we saw a Thompson holiday jet landing behind us, bouncing onto the runway with nowhere near the same control. So did I enjoy it - you bet! Would I take more lessons? - Not really. As a hobby, it's very expensive and hundreds of hours have to be put in to qualify. But given the money I wouldn't dismiss it. And just to have had the experience was great. Activity vouchers as I had can be obtained through http://www.intotheblue.co.uk/. There's a choice of flying schools around the country, but I haven't looked too closely at the web site - I dread to think what Ellie paid!