BMPA Members

Members > January 2004

Welcome

Welcome to the first BMPA Newsletter of 2004. May we wish you a Happy New Year. We [the executive committee] hope that this year you will be able to come along to some of the BMPA events we have planned and will take the opportunity to renew old friendships and / or make new ones.

Our first meeting is the clinical meeting at the end of February in London. The excellent programme, compiled by Jeremy Radcliffe and his team, looks at age related problems in the aviation environment. The full programme is enclosed. Please look at it to-day as there are some changes to our usual booking system, namely that you book your accommodation directly with the hotel, and the preferential rates some have agreed for members are only available for a short period. Also there is a reduction for early booking for the clinical meeting if you book before the 13th Feb.

We hope this new system of booking will allow more flexibility as there is a price range of hotels which Jeremy has highlighted. Also, if you find at the last minute that you can come after all, it is still possible. The only area where numbers are limited is the dinner on Saturday night, which, as many of you are aware from previous events, is well worth attending. So book early to avoid disappointment.

A reminder of the dates of events planned for later in the year is at the end of this newsletter.

As you can see the format of the newsletter has changed and we hope to have more people contributing to it. If you have any interesting flying adventures, be they places flown, epic flights, things experience has taught you, etc, which you feel would interest other members please do send them to the secretary. We hope to be able to include colour photographs to illustrate articles where appropriate. Please contribute and make this newsletter an interesting read for everyone. We have persuaded Andrew Sayers to start us of with his visit to Kitty Hawk.

Treasurer's Tales

Firstly, I offer my grateful thanks to my predecessor, Gordon Taylor, for handing over the books to me in September in such good order. It has taken me some time to go through everything and to work out the current situation and its historical background. As most of you will know, Gordon has looked after the Association's finances for a number of years, a job he has done with great skill.

Thanks to Gordon and the other officers, the BMPA had accumulated sufficient resources to allow some of our meetings to be subsidised from our healthy reserves and we have had some extremely enjoyable meetings as a result. Those of you who were able to attend the Brighton meeting, so expertly organised by Sheila Davidson, will testify to this. This policy of subsidising meetings has been so successful that that our reserves, although adequate, are no longer embarrassingly large.

Unfortunately, this means that the officers of the Association have had to come to the decision that, at least for the time being, meetings will have to be self-financing. Those who have been enjoying liqueurs after BMPA Dinners, courtesy of the Association, will be disappointed! Sorry about that!

There have been two other factors that have reinforced this decision. One is that our previous Secretary, Andrew Clymo, has been persuaded to submit his expenses claim for the last few years. As the accounts for previous years have been agreed by earlier AGMs and presumably closed, I feel that I ought to seek the approval of the next AGM before making the relevant payments. I hasten to add that the expenses are fully justified, but I believe this formality to be necessary.

The other factor is that four years ago, the Association moved its account from one branch of NatWest Bank to another. This made no significant difference as member's standing orders still found their way into our account - until 2003. Then, many of you received messages to say that our account had been closed and the payment was not made. When this was discovered, those members affected received a letter of apology from NatWest to say that this was due to 'an unannounced change in [their] accounting system' and was 'not of the Association's making'. Unfortunately, we lost a large number of subscriptions and involved Andrew Clymo in a lot of extra work to send out several reminders to many members in order to persuade them to complete new standing orders. This has involved the BMPA in considerable expense, the loss of a number of 2003 subscriptions and the loss of some members. One of my first tasks has been to open a dialogue with the bank to achieve some recompense for their error. My first attempts were not successful but I am pleased to say that that I think we have now achieved a satisfactory compromise.

Finally, a few members pay their subscriptions by standing order from accounts that do not bear their name. This means that I have no means of identifying those members and they may receive reminders to complete new standing orders when they already have them in force. I apologise for that. I think I have now worked out who most of you are but perhaps those members operating as 'AVM Healthcare Ltd' and 'Empingham Medical Centre' could identify themselves?

David Hillam

Secretarial Jottings

I have taken over as secretary of the BMPA with a degree of fear and trepidation. It will be a challenge. I am very aware I have a lot to learn about the association and hope you will bear with me as I find my feet.

Andrew Clymo, has done an excellent job as a very efficient secretary of the association for many years and has a wealth of knowledge which he has been kind enough to share with me. He has devoted a lot of time and effort to the association, not least in the last year, with the extra work involved in resolving our problems with the standing orders which David has already detailed. I would like to thank him for continuing this by sending out a last letter regarding the standing orders after the AGM, before handing over to me, hence decreasing my initial work load. His help with this was much appreciated.

I am pleased to say we now have an updated membership list, which David and I have worked on and hopefully you will hear no more about standing orders for some time. If you do change your address I would be grateful if you could let me know your new contact details to keep the list up to date and so you do not miss out on vital information from the BMPA. If there are any errors in the spelling of your name or address please do let me know so I can rectify them.

It is several years since David Reader first persuaded me to join the BMPA and since that time I feel I have gained a lot from it, visiting interesting places, meeting interesting people and it has advanced my knowledge of aviation. But the most striking gain has been in fun I have had and the friends I have made from throughout the United Kingdom. Therefore, although more than a little daunted by the task of being secretary, I am pleased to have the opportunity to give something back to the Association.

I look forward to all we have planned for 2004, and hope you will enjoy the various events.

Norena McAdam

BMPA Events

Some members have kindly shared their thoughts about events at recent meetings.

2003 Summer Meeting - Music in the Air

2003 Middle Wallop

2003 Autumn Meeting - Brighton

2003 Brighton

Members' Exploits

Wright Brothers' Centennial

Members 2004For me the centenary of the Wright brother's first flight began badly and unexpectedly as I was returning to Perth after an uneventful hour in my Long Ez with Alan Houghton the club 'hangar manager' in the back seat. The Ez slid down final on rails, a positive flair putting the main gear down on the numbers. Alan began to make a comment about the gentle arrival as I pitched down to put the nose wheel onto the runway before the canard stalled in which case it would drop with a bump. My trip to Kitty Hawk began just then. As the nose wheel contacted the runway, a red light appeared in front of me, the horn sounded a tocsin alongside my head and the aircrafts nose lowered onto the runway as the front gear folded.

It is normal to look at the world from an Ez with the nose down, but only while stationary. 55kts down the runway causes various scraping noises and a stream of sparks as the metal fittings convert into much smaller ones.

The damage was less than I feared. Burt Rutan designed the Ez with this partly in mind so the only problem was sourcing the replacement parts and repairing the bottom of the nose - about a square foot in all. Research amongst the Scottish Ez Clan led to the discovery of the Wilhelmson electric nose lift - a motor for raising and lowering the gear in flight instead of hand cranking. It had an extra attraction, on the ground the pilot climbs in and then selects gear down. Likewise after flight you retract the gear and it lowers the aircraft into the parking position. Now how can I send cash to Charleston South Carolina for one to be posted over?

I had planned to take Norena for a holiday in the St Lucia in 2000. Due to the exigencies of staff tickets and flight cancellations we lost our seats and finished up in the Blue Ridge Mountains looking for 'Lonesome Pines'. We were not dressed for the part but it was a great adventure. I wonder if she would like our next foreign holiday to be collecting the nose lift from Jack Wilhemson? And while fetching aircraft 'bits' Kitty Hawk is just a tad further north, and it is going to be the Centenary.

Feb 03 our flight arrived at Raleigh the capital of North Carolina. Pre booked hire car and a two hour drive towards Kitty Hawk. Norena tries to limit me to stopping at only one airport a day but careful planning ensured that we spent the night at one. There was a Long Ez, an omen. It was fun comparing notes in the motel with a Cessna Caravan pilot whole flew parcels around the state for FedEx. The next day we called in at Elizabeth City, a large coast guard airfield flying maritime C130s. The field also has a small club flying C152's and PA28's. This was the cheapest we found and only 30/40 minutes flight from Kitty Hawk. It was raining so we drove on. I hadn't appreciated how swampy the Carolina's are. There are several large nature reserves where we saw red necked turtles and various raptors including bald eagles. The 'gators kept a low profile.

Have I mentioned the snow? Winter in the Carolina's is just like Scotland. Crossing over to the Outer Banks the pack ice had drifted up to resemble a scene from the Arctic. It was not the time to talk of St Lucia. Another motel but this time in Kitty Hawk itself. Not endless windswept sandbanks but an overdeveloped holiday resort. Fortunately the site of the test flights has been preserved. Most people have seen pictures of the monument perched on top of its hill. To go there and to walk along the track of the first flights was very special. Next to the site is a single runway - 'First Flight'. On the sea front is a converted rescue station. This is where the Wilbur walked to send the telegram to their father to announce the success of their venture. The building is now a good restaurant called the Black Pelican with lots of mementoes of the Wright's.

The next task was to find an aircraft. Dare County Airport provided a C172. As time was limited I opted out of the check flight and negotiated a local instructor to act as P1 and translate the radio for me. Norena and I enjoyed the flight into 'First Flight'. As I hadn't flown a 'heavy metal' aircraft for some time I was very careful with the approach. At three hundred feet I discovered that the instructor also owned an Ez, albeit the smaller Varie Ez variety. My concentration went, coinciding with strong sink from the trees. A good dose of power was required to drag it into the strip, not a good performance a little unsettling for the car passing on the road just short of the runway! If our roles were reversed I may well have taken control but the instructor was good enough to let me bring it in. 99 years 3 months since the first powered heavier than air flight! Close enough to the Centenary for country folk.

The rest of the trip was fun. We discovered Mitchell Field near Hatteras where Billy Mitchell flew in the '20's to show that aircraft really could sink battleships. Wilmington produced the battleship North Carolina and the CSS Hunley, the 1864 Confederate submarine that sank the USS Housatanic. Lots of F16's, C17's and a great many airports including one run by an ex Air Force 1 pilot.

Charleston delivered the USS Yorktown a retired WW11/Vietnam carrier as part of a truly enormous naval museum as well as Fort Sumter the scene of the start of the American Civil War and a nose lift for my Long Ez. My log book now has Kitty Hawk in it. We still don't have sun tans but the Long Ez is fixed. I share a fellow feeling with Orville and Wilber who spent a lot of time fixing bent aeroplanes.

Andrew Sayers

Membership Matters

New Members

Since the AGM in August we have had three new members joint the association:-

Deaths

Sadly, I have been informed of the death of one of our members, Dr Derek Keys on the 3rd November 03.