BMPA Newsletters

Newsletters  >  Spring 2001

From the Secretary

Your Association now has it's own web site. Try www.bmpa.org.uk. Be warned, If you use a search engine instead of the address box, you will come up with the British Promotional Goods Association. I don't find their news and information particularly riveting but you might.

Shenington is on at the moment of writing and likely to remain so. Balloons will not be there because they can't control where they land sufficiently accurately. Go Carts will be there on the Sunday morning for any member or guest who wishes to use them. Hovercraft are invited but unfortunately our dates clash with their first national races since foot and mouth began. It looks as if most will be racing not with us. However there are one or two purely touring models which may appear. I personally have never met one on the M1 but look forward to the encounter. I know that one member and one guest are independently planning to bring their twins (aircraft engines not progeny) from Jersey. The president and president elect with their spouses and in the case of the former, grandchildren will grace the proceedings.

Andrew Clymo

From the President

When I heard that our Annual meeting at Shenington was on, a blot on the landscape was removed and the family and I could look forward to the event once again. I will be there with my newly acquired Socata Morane Saulnier Rallye 235E, with Elizabeth Ann and assorted grandchildren as usual. I think most members who attend this meeting appreciate the informality and freedom of the venue. It is certainly an ideal location with plenty to interest all ages. I do recommend as many members, together with family and friends to attend even if it's only for a few hours on one of the days.

I have only done one long journey in the Rallye since acquiring it last September and that was when I was missing from Henlow. I flew to Prestwick to attend the Scottish AMEs meeting at Troon. I heard what a good meeting I missed and regret I was not with you.

In five days time Elizabeth Ann and I will be flying to Nimes (Garons) to participate in the French meeting from 24th to 27th May for our first 'grand tour in the Rallye but should have recovered sufficiently for our Summer meeting

John Busby

Spring Meeting, RAF Henlow, March 2001

The Spring meeting was indeed Spring like with snowdrops, croc(i)uses and even daffodils in bloom. No one managed an arrival by air, partly because of foot and mouth disease restrictions. (although I noticed large flocks of large birds with large webbed feet are given free rein to take off and land wherever they like.)

We forgathered on Friday mid morning at the RAF Centre for Aviation Medicine on Henlow airfield and were welcomed to coffee in the crew room by Wing Commander Alec Hurley. Group Captain Tony Batchelor opened the formal proceedings by giving us an introduction to the Centre and it's origins - amalgamation of the Institute of Aviation Medicine from Farnborough with the practical facility at North Luffenham, RAF CAM flying being done by two Hawks from Boscombe Down.

We had an excellent lunch in the Officers Mess, a building steeped in tradition and redolent of aviation, especially in the 1930s.

The party then split into two groups to visit specialist departments; in no particular order:

Disorientation demonstrators; The modern equivalent of the spinning office chair with computerised sophistication to allow slow spin up whilst blind and a variety of subsequent inputs whilst flying a screen presentation. The results were impressive and those who were subjects were duly confused. Rely on those instruments!

Aircrew Integration Equipment Group; The modern fast jet pilot meets a variety of unusual (to the rest of us) situations, particularly involving G, temperature extremes, the need to carry visual aids and possible ejection. Clothing (armour?) is the rather unglamorous but fundamental answer to these conditions. We were shown the various layers that are now required and are going to be required for the Eurofighter and given an insight into their design and function. A sub section dealt similarly with helmets and their appurtenances.

Night Vision Goggle Terrain Training Room; Here we all had the opportunity to try night 'goggles', actually more like helmet mounted opera glasses and experience their usefulness and some of their drawbacks - in the latter category poor perspective, distance judgement and weight.

Nuclear Biological and Chemical Collective Protection Training Facility; This was the nuclear, germ and chemical warfare field survival section affording training in the use of positively pressurised tents with integral cooking facilities, changing and decontamination lobbies and following Gulf experience a rip out panel for rapid exit in the event of fire.

Accident investigation Department; The RAF department charged with investigating aeromedical aspects of their accidents focusing particularly on escape systems and other aircrew equipment to see if improvements can be made. There is close liaison with Farnborough's AAIB and some shared investigations. They also have similar collections of bent aluminium, fire blackened bits and personal effects.

Hypobaric Chamber Hall. Here were the depressurization chambers from North Luffenham, refurbished, computerised and good as new. We sat in them and were given a graphic description of structure and function but no longer are practical experience trips allowed to visitors - however many indemnities they care to sign.

Tea and conversation were in the crew room again and we were then privileged to join the officers' families in their mess for their weekly happy hour.

The Association dinner followed in the Carriage House Hotel at one corner of the airfield where attending members were staying. The gathering was up to our usual standard of, in the words of the grace, "good food, good wine and good fellowship"

Saturday mornings lectures began with Air Commodore A. Cullen, the RAF's internationally renowned pathologist appropriately placed in the speakers graveyard slot at 09.30. It is a tribute to his presentation that no one nodded off. He drew on his lifetimes experience to tell us, with examples, his reasons for doing autopsies on flight crew - CVS state, evidence of CO, alcohol, other drugs licit or illicit, circumstantial evidence of epilepsy or suicide and to determine who was at the controls. The reasons for doing autopsies on cabin crew are all of those plus looking at seat belt injuries to give an idea whether the accident was anticipated and to improve seating and restraint design. For passengers, additional reasons are identification, evaluation of accident forces prior to impact, evaluation of survivability and safety equipment, medico - legal considerations both civil (who, when and how dead, trauma vs. disease, negligence, possible simultaneous deaths [estates]) and criminal (illegal passengers, skyjacking, and sabotage.) He left us with the thought that aviation pathology is a specialized branch of preventive medicine.

Mr Darran Humpheson talked of aviation noise and vibration. He reminded us that exposure to noise may produce a temporary threshold shift but that if that shift becomes permanent there is noise induced hearing loss. Subjectively noise produces irritability, headache, nausea, fatigue, impaired speech intelligibility (consonants esp. s f t p & k) and impaired performance. The Health and Safety Executive have two levels of intervention, advisory and mandatory. The MOD make the advisory one mandatory and make efforts to reduce exposure times and noise levels for ground and air crew. They are also becoming more conscious of the wider issue of environmental noise. He went on to show us the latest developments in intra aural head sets, like deaf aids with background noise equilibration.

Group Captain Batchelor gave a masterly overview of the risk factors for coronary heart disease and hypertension adding that they multiplied each other geometrically, two factors twice the risk, three factors four times the risk. The secretary tried to remember his words of wisdom that evening and failed - but he doesn't want to fly fast jets for the RAF. There were diversions into quantifying the risks especially obesity and hypertension itself and a punch line that although life style modification advice may not be popular, the medical branch are actually trying to keep pilots in the air contrary to popular supposition.

Lunch was again in the officers mess whose staff had come in especially to cater for us, a gesture that was much appreciated. The preprandial group photograph may appear on our website shortly. [See the photo album for this photo.]

Aviation Psychology was the cover title for Miss Kath Sixsmith's presentation of her field work with the local population following the move of the majority of helicopter training to RAF Shawbury. She highlighted three conclusions from analysis of questionnaires and structured interviews. Firstly, noise was far from the biggest annoyance it merely drew attention to the presence of an aircraft. Secondly, the impact of jet noise on children's learning in school showed very varied and marginal effects, the general view being that they were noisier than the aircraft and that their motivation to learn triumphed over any external distraction. Thirdly, there were background anxieties about noise induced hearing loss, chronic stress and heart disease. An important question arising from the study (good research produces more questions than it answers) was whether there are groups of especially susceptible people, either to the presence of aircraft in general or their noise in particular.

Colonel Lex Brown USAF, ex fighter pilot, ex family physician now re-enlisted and seconded to the RAF CAM Aviation Medicine Flight based at Boscombe Down, described the Flights role under three headings; firstly giving operational support to the RAF testing new and modified equipment; secondly other work arising from the Eurofighter 2000 programme; thirdly clinical support to CAM. He talked in particular of two areas, the first being motion sickness desensitisation, highly successful, similar to phobia desensitisation and the second in flight medical assessments eg to judge G tolerance after starting medication for hypertension or to evaluate and treat specific phobias.

All our speakers fielded many questions and the CAM were thanked most warmly for their efforts on our behalf at the end of an interesting and highly informative meeting.

Some members went on to finish their weekend elsewhere, a hard core amused themselves locally and met again for another convivial dinner at the Carriage House before going their various ways the following morning.

Andrew Clymo