LOSING CONFIDENCE - BULLDOG FLYING TRAINING

In the dim and distant past of my flying career I formally began my flying training in the Royal Navy on the Bulldog T Mk 1, a light piston-engine fixed wing aircraft of limited commercial success.??Although we had previously experienced the fire hose training and evaluation of flying grading (more of that in a different article) Elementary Flying Training was a back to basics affair which would be familiar, even today,??to anyone who has undertaken civilian flying training for a private pilot’s licence.??What was different, of course is that we were Naval trainees and that, even at this early stage the Royal Navy were looking to decide who had the right stuff to fly fast jets (Sea Harriers) and the rest of us.??During the course I had 3 experiences where my confidence was knocked and probably in only one of them do I think the level of support was right.

It didn’t start particularly well for me since on our familiarisation sortie the instructors decided it would be good for a few aircraft to meet up and do a tail chase (mock air combat in other words).??Us students were ‘along for the fun/ride’ and had to sit there bracing against the G when required and looking out for the other aircraft.??Needless to say I have never found being a passenger during such manoeuvrers particularly enjoyable and since we had not been fully prepared for the event, no sick bags were provided or available in the aircraft.??As a result toward the end of the series of steadily more violent and uncomfortable flying manouevres I dutifully had to use my cape leather glove for a purpose it was not intended to deliver.??Whilst I did manage to prevent the cockpit of the aircraft being unnecessarily soiled I arrived back at RAF Topcliffe not the happiest of students and, of course, the butt of much humour from amongst the other students.

Of course no one had asked me before we went flying whether I had any issues with motion sickness or was a sick bag required.??I knew myself that with particularly large amounts of motion that I was vulnerable, but I had never done anything like this before so it was difficult to judge.??Better mental preparation might have helped, we weren’t expecting the tail chase, but in the end only experience can tell you where you own limit is and when to tell the instructor or other pilot to stop (its worth noting its never happened again, but I have had to say stop a couple of times).??Needless to say confidence took a hit and this was followed by a trip to the Flight Surgeon/Medical Officer where I was prescribed some motion sickness tablets and told I needed a 5 hour desensitisation course.

The desensitisation course involves a lot of aerobatics and high G (for a light fixed wing) manoeuvres over a short period (nominally a week) taking the motion sickness tablets pre flight.??The aim, as I understood it, was to get the inner ear used to the accelerations involved in such activities thus providing a better level of tolerance when flying.??In my case it worked (it doesn’t always), and after the five hours I have not felt much in the way of nausea and was ready to continue the course.

Your first solo of your flying career always sticks in the mind and mine on the Bulldog was no exception, but maybe for the wrong reason.??Having slugged through initial circuit training the moment of truth, as ever I feel, came a little unexpectedly, as my instructor told me to taxi to the tower so he could get out and monitor me from there.??Once he had tied up the straps and closed the canopy I was ready to go with the instruction to conduct one circuit and then to taxy back to dispersal as usual and park in one of the nominated parking bays.??The circuit itself was uneventful if a little inaccurate (whose first circuit isn’t ) and I was able to pull off a reasonable landing before I started on the rather long taxy route back to the parking area.??Topcliffe EFT was always reasonably busy with normally around 10 aircraft on the line at any one time with lines marked out to guide you to the right spot where often one of the civilian engineers would be waiting.??I therefore did what I had been doing over the past few sorties and followed the lines dutifully.

The problem was the refuelling lorry (bowser) for one of the aircraft was parked such that he was infringing the manoeuvring area so following the lines was not actually the right thing to do.??I was confident though, I was doing exactly as I thought I was meant to do so I took little notice, determined to make it back to my parking space without deviation.??And then it happened, THUD…, the left wing tip hit the bowser slowing the aircraft and causing it to yaw left slightly.??Unsurprisingly I slammed on the brakes, stopped the aircraft and shut down the engine, a little shocked that everything had not gone according to plan.

In the aftermath I was quickly moved away from the sight of the incident and asked to go and sit in the Flight Commander’s office whilst the staff considered the next move.??It became rapidly clear that the aim was to try and remove blame away from me ,since I was only doing as instructed, and actually the bowser should have been parked on the other side of the parked aircraft.??Shortly afterwards I was called to the Commanding Officer’s office where it was made clear that he would deal with the issue and I should focus on the next sortie (which also included a solo element) rather than dwell on the problem.??Later in the course, I was given the remains of the port wingtip navigation light as a memento, which I always carried when I was flying for a few years afterwards – my confidence had only been dented temporarily.

The final event occurred during my mid course check, I’m not exactly sure why it was done but it was always stated to be an important proficiency benchmark for students and, inevitably became something to be feared.??The check was normally undertaken by a more experienced instructor or part of the management team and for some reason I was allocated the RAF Chief Flying Instructor from Linton On Ouse rather than one of the Squadron staff I was normally acquainted with.??We collectively knew little about him apart from his nickname of ‘big hands’.

It all started uneventfully, and we taxied out to the runway for our standard flight training profile sortie – depart to the west, climbs to about 8000 feet, a spin, stalls, steep turns, aerobatics and circuits.??The departure was normal and there was little in the way of other traffic or weather conditions to make life difficult, and we climbed to 8000 feet to do the upright spin.??We did the required pre spin checks which had the common mnemonic HASELL (Height, Area, Security, Engine, Location, Lookout) which included a check of the flap configuration.??To my surprise they were in the ? flap position even though I had definitely completed the after-take-off checks.??So I selected them UP and we carried on, but I was now ruffled because I knew I had made a mistake, but didn’t quite know how.

All then continued go reasonably well until we got back to the airfield to do the circuits – normal, flapless, short field and a downwind PFL.???Almost every time I got downwind in the circuit to do my pre-landing checks the position of the flaps was not as expected even though I knew I had raised them during the post take-off checks.??As a result, my circuit flying was not particularly accurate as the aircraft configuration and what should have been standard power settings were all over the place.??By this time my confidence was completely shot, and the CFI had said almost nothing to me apart from to tell me which manoeuvre he wanted to see next.

After we had completed the sortie we went for a debrief with my normal instructor and flight commander in tow, it wasn’t going to be pretty, I could tell.??The CFI then proceeded to debrief the sortie saying that on the first set of After Take Off checks he wasn’t happy that I had physically moved my head enough to check the flap position visually even though I had moved the switch and also checked the cockpit repeater gauge for flap movement.??He had therefore decided to use his ‘Big Hands’ to cycle the flaps back to the previous setting on each occasion where I had done a set of checks which included flap position.??There was therefore no chance I was ever going to work out what was going on apart from the fact that I may have interpreted it as a flap selector or microswitch problem – at my stage of flying training I just thought I had missed the check.??He therefore failed me on the trip and I was required to do one remedial training sortie before re-flying the check ride – which I passed but not particularly well.??This was no surprise because actually ,there was nothing wrong with my flying, just that I wasn’t, to his satisfaction, doing a proper visual check of flap position.??My confidence was shot.

So here we are 34 years on and I did make it as a pilot, but these are just a few examples of where the approach taken with a student makes all the difference.??This is also not my only rough run in with a CFI but maybe I’ll talk more of that some other time.