Highway to the Danger Zone

04/05/06

TODAY is of course Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you) and I have celebrated in suitable fashion, with my feet well off the ground. No, this was not another of the 40 or so airliner flights I make in a typical year of car launches, though I was in a plane, and at a sort of car launch. You see I can now add to the list of “Things Wot I’ve Done” flying a plane, in fact even attempting some aerobatics in a plane. Did I enjoy it? Only when I had absolutely nothing to do with controlling the thing…

The occasion was the brainchild of one of the car industry’s most deranged press officers, Graeme Fudge of Mazda Cars. Think I’m being harsh? To fun is running marathons across deserts, which I think is a cast-iron case for the prosecution, don’t you? Anyway one of Graeme’s major passions is flying, and it’s a passion he felt many more people should enjoy. So we all arrived this morning at Kemble Airfield, near Bath and the former home of the Red Arrows, for the ‘Ultimate Mazda Zoom Zoom Event’ involving driving the new and swift MPS on Castle Combe Circuit (clear the way, I’m first in line) and going up in some tiny aerobatic planes during which we would indulge in aerobatics, pretending to shoot at each other and controlling the plane ourselves (Oh – my – god…).

Those that know me will know too that a race track is my natural environment – get me on it and you’ll need a shoehorn to get me off again. Sadly as I write this that bit is still to come in the morning. Today we had the flying…

I should have known what to expect, and should have been ready for it, because the very same Graeme Fudge was responsible a year or two ago for sticking me in a Pitts Special biplane and subjecting me to aerobatics over Thruxton race track in Hampshire. On that occasion I really didn’t have time to think about it and afterwards thought it the most invigorating thing I’d done that year (especially the stall turns – looking vertically downwards at a farmhouse from several thousand feet focuses the mind…). But then the pilot never let me near the controls, whereas I was expected to do some work today, and I didn’t wait around for an hour or two thinking about it, which I did today, oh and I didn’t have to wear a parachute, which I did today…

So what’s it like flying a plane? Truthfully, the bit where ‘Nitro’ the pilot said “You have control” was the only section of the flight I didn’t enjoy – in fact I stopped him saying that too often… (I by the way chose Hollywood for my callsign, well I like movies…). The plane in question is a single winged effort called an Extra300, which I’ve previously seen at airshows being tossed about like a discarded sandwich wrapper. No surprise because the controls are so sensitive! The slightest pressure on the stick and this thing changes direction (left, right, up, down…), but it’s really hard to get a feel for it coz the stick seems to flop about for a few vital degrees before anything happens.

When Nitro was in charge everything was great fun, particularly as we flew in very close proximity to another Extra, at one point chasing him across the sky in a mock dogfight, and yes, I really began to enjoy myself, even beginning to stop reminding myself that a vital bag was located in the zip-up pocket of my flying suit should I need it.

The final flourish was as we approached the airfield at the end of the sortie (as we flying types say) when Nitro announced we were going to do a final loop over the runway. It was one vicious loop, and at the top, as my head tried so hard to squash my backside, I found myself again looking vertically downwards, except this time it was at a decommissioned Jumbo Jet on the Kemble tarmac. And then Nitro hit the very sudden roll, which he hadn’t told me about, and my lunch almost, thankfully only almost, succeeded in making a reappearance…