Flightline Online

Jun 2003
Page 1
Contents
For the Birds
‘It Does Exactly What It Says...’
Palpitations
The Good Old Days
1
4
5
6
e
n
i
l
t
h
g
Fli
Online
For the birds
Stop Press!
We’ve just received notice that
Spamfield, planned for 20-22 June at
Sandown, has been moved back to
Bembridge, where it all started.
Don’t adjust your diaries - just the
GPS. And don’t miss it - this is the
major social event of the microlight
calendar!
Reprinted with permission from Hannelore Sudermann,
Staff Writer on the Spokane Review
by Hannelore Sudermann, Jan 2000
Before he flew with the birds, Scott Johnson thought he knew
everything about the sky. A long-time hang gliding aficionado,
the Asotin-based flight instructor had flown just about every
parasail, trike, plane and glider in every kind of setting.
But a call came last year that changed his sense of sky.
A French film team asked him to fly an ultralight for them as
they trained and filmed Canada and snow geese.
The company, Paris-based Galatee Films, had seen the movie
‘Fly Away Home’ and decided to produce its own piece on migratory birds around the world. The company, led by producer Jacques
Perrin, was a leader in films starring nature. The company produced the award-winning insect movie ‘Microcosmos’ in 1996.
Johnson jumped at the chance. Owner of U.S. Airborne, a
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Jun 2003
Flightline Online
flight instruction and equipment company, he had recently ended
a full season of training students to fly and demonstrating and
selling equipment. In previous years, he had flown for film crews
including ESPN 2 and the USA Network. With winter coming, he
and his wife Terri were ready for
a new adventure.
In January, the project landed
them in Monument Valley, Utah,
and southern Arizona where
Johnson would pilot an ultralight
used for training and filming the
birds.
Johnson said he would often
start on a highway that crossed
the desert floor. As he rolled
down the road - which had been
blocked off by the local police the geese would trot behind him.
When he lifted off, they would
follow, their heads bobbing and
wings flapping as they struggled
to break the bonds of gravity.
Once in the sky, they would settle into two long elegant strings
behind him.
‘Total peace would set in whenever I had the birds with me
flying,’ he said.
Since birth, the birds had been trained to follow the French
trainer now seated in the ultralight behind Johnson.
Thousands of feet in the air, the geese would surround them,
their wings grazing the glider, their tailfeathers sometimes touching
Johnson’s feet.
‘They were like a part of me and they moved right with me,’
said Johnson. ‘It really opened up my eyes to how smart these
birds are.’ He even had his favorite — a small Canada goose named
Nevada.
‘All the bigger birds would pick on him and pick at his little
feathers,’ he said. Despite Johnson’s efforts on the ground to
swat the other birds away from his little friend, Nevada always
sustained a few bald spots.
But when they took off, Nevada’s underdog rôle stayed on the
ground. ‘When it came time to fly, he was the lead goose,’ said
Johnson.
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‘He was just the coolest bird. He was smaller than the rest, but
he had the biggest heart.’ During his weeks leading the flocks in
Arizona and Utah, Johnson found himself thinking more and more
like a bird.
‘You could kind of understand them without talking to them,’
he said. ‘When I wanted to turn, they could feel it and turn right
with me.’ On occasion, he also felt like a mother bird, especially
when his six- to seven-month old charges would stray from the
group during training runs. Working with another ultralight,
Johnson would peal away from flock and hunt for lost geese.
‘It would always happen. Two or three would be going in the
other direction,’ he said. ‘I would swoop down next to them and
take them all back to the road where we started.’ Sometimes something as simple as a house would attract the geese. They would
forget the flock and land where dogs could get at them.
More than once, Johnson had to swoop down and capture the
birds’ attention before an eager group of dogs had them for lunch.
Not all his rescues were that simple, though.
One day, it got too windy to fly and Johnson’s flock broke up,
all heading for the ground and
landing in different places.
Johnson guided the few that
had stuck with him back to the
landing spot and then to the
surprise of the film crew, took
off on foot to help find the lost
ones.
‘We spent the afternoon hiking off into the desert and
honking these little horns and
hollering in French to them,’ he
said.
‘I didn’t want any birds to
get lost on my watch,’ he said.
‘None did.’ First a flyer and
then a teacher, the idea of using the ultralight to help train
the flocks appealed to Johnson on several levels.
Not only was he learning to see the sky through the birds’
eyes, but with the trainer honking a horn and shaking a bag of
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Pilot Scott Johnson Explains:
‘I helped to train both Snow Geese and Canada Geese. They
flew with me and the trainers that imprinted them from the
time they hatched. I worked with Galatee films for one 1-2
months, flying with and training the kids (geese). I flew my
brains out in Monument Valley on the boarders of Arizona
and Utah and then down south of Tucson by Sanota and
Patagonia on the Mexican border. I would start my day at
sunset flying their Cosmos trike into the park from the
hangar.
‘My first job was to feel the texture of the air to see if it
was smooth enough for a morning filming session. There
were always two reservation cops sitting on the side of the
highway waiting to see if I wanted to land on the main highway. As I flew past them I waggled my wing to say ‘hi’ and
they turned on the red lights of their police 4X4 trucks. I
always went deep into the park and tested the air for filming. If the air was okay, on my return trip I would fly right
over the visitors’ center and line up on the highway to land.
The two cops would hit the red lights and block off the
highway so I could land on the paved road.
‘The film director was always waiting there for my
weather report. If it was good flying we called out the crew
to film the Snow Geese and Canada Geese. My job was to
have a trainer in my back seat with a bike horn and a yellow bag of grain and a yellow shirt on. Once the road was
blocked off, the crew put the birds, still in travel boxes, on
the road just behind me.
‘Then all at once they let them out of their boxes onto
the highway and I feathered on my power till I was airborne with my feathered buddies also taking flight with me
in the lead. Once airborne I would adjust my speed so they
would be all around me. The Trainer in back would be yelling in French, honking the horn and shaking the bag of grain.
If all went smooth we would head into Monument Park and
fly around all the towering Monuments.
‘This is where it gets a bit tricky. Our filming trike was
not really a trike because it had four wheels. The front two
wheels would fold back out of the way leaving the cameraman in a yellow jersey sitting way out in front for an incredible view while filming. Once the filming trike was airborne it would follow me into the park and we would do an
air-to-air exchange of the birds, shifting the birds from behind me, and the trainer to behind the filming trike. At that
point we would climb out a few thousand feet and become
spotters for stray geese separating from the flock.
‘Any birds that went astray from the flock, I would go
and take them back to the road were the film/bird crew was
with the big U—haul truck they travelled in.’
Page 3
grain in the seat behind him, he was teaching the geese to be
part of a flock.
All the geese had been hatched under human watch and encouraged to imprint on the French trainer in a yellow vest. During
the shoot, they were taken from location to location in a U-Haul
truck packed with straw. Little water-filled wading pools awaited
their return from filming and training each afternoon.
Johnson delighted in all of this.
‘After I would land they would all circle around my ultralight
and peck on it,’ he said. ‘We would feed them grain and water and
then take them home for the night.’ Johnson had the chance to
take a few of them home permanently, but he thought they might
be happier at the Arizona sanctuary where the Canada geese, including Nevada, retired. The snow geese, however returned with
the film crew to France.
Several hundred photographs, memories and a new perspective
are the only souvenirs Johnson kept from his adventure.
‘It changed my outlook totally on geese,’ he said. ‘Everyone
around here thinks they’re a pest. But now I’m like the goose
protector.’ Though Johnson keeps busy giving lessons at his family’s farm near Asotin and travelling around the country to sell
ultralights, hang gliders, and trikes, he looks forward to the next
project that will have him up in the air with the birds.
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‘I just loved being around them,’ he said. ‘I’d do it again in a
Jun 2003
Flightline Online
Page 4
‘ I T D O E S E X A C T LY W H AT
I T S AY S O N T H E T I N ’
Andy Tyler, CFI Cloudscape Microlights
…and Yes, Andy is an agent for Mainair…
I’ve always loved flying flexwings. I’ve flown quite a few things,
but nothing quite compares to that feeling and sense of freedom.
The thing I’ve always disliked though is that they are sooo
slow. The four-stroke revolution didn’t really do much to change
that – it just meant we could now go slow more reliably and economically. Worse still was that, with the coming of GPS, we now
found out that our ASI’s had been over-reading for years and we
were actually going slower than ever!
I was sceptical when I first flew a Quik, imagining yet another
false dawn. 90 miles per hour, yes mate, I believe you… Hmmm, it
feels fast though, you just have to put your arm out into the slipstream and it nearly gets torn from its socket. Then you start catching up with the Cessna 150 on the downwind leg and you find
yourself having to slow down to maintain separation. Bloody hell,
it is fast!
I bought one!
Three days after its maiden flight and with 12 hours’ worth of
trial flights and instruction under its belt, I finally got to have
some fun in G-FLEX.
Me and my wife Sue had the idea of flying to Alderney for our
anniversary but first I wanted to do a couple of longish trips to
check the aircraft out. We had Sunday and Monday off and a strong
southwesterly was forecast for both days, so we picked a destination in the southwest – headwind there, tailwind home. We chose
Old Sarum, about 150 NM away.
Wow! Indicating 85mph at 3800rpm, we’d negotiated all the
London airspace and were at Plaistows within 1hr 15min, despite
having had a mega thrashing by the midday thermals on the way,
as well as the odd shower. Jay made us very welcome, G-FLEX attracting quite a crowd.
‘What’s the short field performance like?’ Jay asked, himself thinking about acquiring one for his school. I’d just lumped it in in a
15kt crosswind, landing downhill in about 200 metres and was
feeling quite pleased with myself. Flying from a 750m strip spoils
you a little bit.
‘Er, let’s just say I’m glad it’s got good brakes.’ The point was
taken I think.
We blasted off again, heading for Old Sarum and, after another
soaking, we joined overhead 75min after leaving Jay’s strip. Once
again, we soon had quite a crowd around the aircraft as we pushed
it into the hangar for the night.
We walked into Salisbury, found a hotel and began a harrowing
pub crawl…
At 11:00 the next morning, we were still sitting in the café at
the airfield, waiting for the rain to stop. A horrible cold front was
hovering over the south coast and it was hammering it down. Mark
McClelland, the microlight CFI at Old Sarum kept us entertained,
again interested in what I thought of the Quik as a training machine. He also very kindly offered to lend Sue a spare flying suit as
hers had been blown out of the back seat and shredded by the
912S as I’d taxied to the pumps for fuel earlier in the morning
(yes, yes, I know, I should have known better).
The Sea Rey Amphibian Beached on Pender Island
The undercarriage rotates upwards on the water
Jun 2003
Flightline Online
A break in the weather eventually allowed us to leave, although
some huge showers were in evidence. Half an hour’s flying to the
west was Glastonbury, a place very close to our hearts. Sue and I
always spent every New Year and summer solstice there and so we
decided on an aerial visit for a change.
The weather was appalling and we spent most of the flight dodg-
Page 5
the Tor then off towards Sywell, our lunch and fuel stop. On the
way, we took in Avebury stone circle and numerous Wiltshire chalk
figures, Silverstone race circuit and Towcester racecourse. With
the screaming southwesterly, we were grounding at 110mph and
we joined overhead at Sywell 1hr 38min after leaving Old Sarum,
beating the thunderstorm that had bubbled up behind us by about
five minutes.
As we sat in the restaurant, it began chucking it down. A 20kt
westerly manifested itself. The instructors at Flylight put their aircraft away and shut the hangar doors. Then, as if by magic, a large
blue patch appeared and we made the most of it. G-FLEX was away
again!
Just under an hour later, with a healthy toe up the bum from
the wind, we touched down at Beccles – home again. It had been
the best trip I’d had for years. Sue and I are still sitting here at
21:00, Bacardi and Coke in hand, with silly grins on our faces.
Flexwings have arrived at last!
ing showers. An ominous Cb materialised on our right en
route and my bottle began to go. Then, F-L-A-S-H! I instantly closed the throttle and headed for the ground, convinced we’d had it. Sue wondered what was going on.
‘Effing lightning!’ I gibbered, ‘I’m outta here…’ Sue cackled hysterically. ‘That’s the camera flash! I was just taking a
picture of the castle there. Lovely, isn’t it?’ We made it, but
got absolutely soaked and thrashed black and blue in the
process. Click, click, a few photos and couple of orbits of
i
Pa pitat ons
l
By Anthony Preston
The Medical turns up more frequently these days. Must be something to do with age.
12th October 2001, there was no reason to think it would be
different from previous tests, apart from a new AME. It was, after
all, just routine. His name was Doctor Nightingale. Fitness fanatics
like me go through the routine of the Medical expecting the AME
to remark at some point that here was the fittest candidate he’d
ever examined. I could tell the moment was arriving. Then came
the ECG. Chest hair shaved off at salient points and pads attached.
I made every effort to reduce pulse rate. Relax! I’d always had an
arrhythmic beat, and suggested it best be ignored.
A beat of the heart that occurs where it shouldn’t is referred to
as an ectopic beat – the wrong place, as in ectopic pregnancy. I’d
come to accept mine as an irregularity, but of my own heart’s volition. Why should it want to do itself harm? Is it surprising the
heart accelerates and the blood pressure zooms as the ECG takes
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its readings? Can you be anything but stressed at this time?
Doctor Nightingale looked at the printout. His benign expression changed: ‘Mister Preston, you have AF.’ AF, he explained, is an
abbreviation for atrial fibrillation. It’s not uncommon. My grandmother had it, was rather proud of it, called it: palpitations. Young
ladies, all a-flutter in Jane Austen novels, were prone to palpitations. They are generally thought of as short-term, caused by increased and irregular heartbeat as a result of proximity to a man
like Darcy. AF, probably a product of similar stimulus – no one
seems to know exactly why the heart dithers – is a more chronic
condition.
The pulse you feel at the wrist is blood passing through the
artery, pumped by the biggest chamber of the heart, the ventricle.
It gets its cue to contract from the atrium. If the latter can’t decide when to pump, the ventricle seeks the biggest contraction
from it and is triggered by it. The normal heart beats rhythmically
as a result of steady surges from the atria. There are two atria and
two ventricles in the heart, one for blood regeneration through the
lungs, the other for blood supply to the body. Oxygen-rich blood
flows from the heart through the arteries and back through the
veins (not, as one young biology student insisted, down one leg
and up the other). The motor section of the brain, the cerebellum,
and the pacemaker, the sinoatrial node, control increased pumping
rate, needed for exertion. They accelerate the regular beat of the
heart without affecting the rhythm.
In AF there is no distinct, peak pulse from the atria, presenting
an arbitrary choice for the ventricles, making an irregular beat
inevitable. It’s quite possible, as I did, to accept the condition as
normal – an extension of lifelong arrhythmia. How fortunate to
have the condition diagnosed through the pilot’s regular checkup. AF can be dangerous. It might be assumed that a dithering
heart threatens the health on account of possible mechanical failure, but it’s not that simple, nor so scary.
Blood in the dithering atria, lacking a solid pulse to purge it of
Flightline Online
Jun 2003
all its contents, can stagnate. Areas develop
where there’s a risk of coagulation. Migration within the atrium may then present this
congealing blood – call it a clot – for delivery to the ventricle. The ventricle, in all
innocence, projects the clot into circulation. Bad news.
The Civil Aviation Authority regards the
stroke as undesirable, particularly if the
victim is flying an aircraft at the time. So
the pilot’s licence is revoked.
My initial reaction was one of disbelief.
I was unaware of any serious deterioration
in physical performance. Sure, I puffed more
when jogging, couldn’t do as many pressups in the morning, occasionally felt lightheaded if standing up too suddenly, but put
it all down to age. 23rd October, having
become reconciled to AF, I was fitted at my
GP’s surgery with a 24-hour ECG monitor,
blood samples were taken and I was referred
to an Ipswich cardiologist. Given the urgency – my job hung on it – we agreed to
sort it out as quickly as possible, at most
four months. It sounded like a lifetime, but,
as my GP pointed out, there were others in
the queue whose very lives depended upon
swift action. I should have realised what
that meant.
26th October, wrote to Aeromedical Section, CAA, advising them of the situation,
and received a reply, 12th November, revoking my licence.
20th November, echocardiogram and ECG
Exercise Stress Test carried out.
21st November, wrote to GP advising that
cardiologist had recommended treatment for
AF and that he saw no reason not to endorse the pink microlight medical form.
(There’s nothing on the form that prevents
The Chief Technical Officer
sent in the photo on the right
with the caption ‘Bloody dangerous, it’ll never catch on’,
and seems to think it came
from the 1970’s. Since he
wasn’t alive then, the editor
felt he needed to know what
hang gliding was REALLY like
in the 1970’s…
Note the retro-fitted
kingpost, and the flapping
sail. If it went quiet, you knew
you had stalled!
a pilot with AF from flying microlights, even
though he is precluded from flying Group
A). Fortunately 90% of my flying, as chief
test pilot for CFM Aircraft, was in
microlights, so the temporary loss of the
Group A licence was not of immediate concern. The anti-arrhythmic drug, Amiodarone,
and Warfarin, to thin the blood, were prescribed. Warfarin is a poison used to kill
rats by causing internal bleeding. In humans it’s quite important to ensure a happy
balance between haemophilia and the tendency to clots. To this end, tablets are prescribed in quantities calculated to maintain a target INR. Blood samples are regularly taken and sent for analysis, the prescription invariably arriving the day following the blood test.
2nd January 2002, wrote to the cardiologist to ask if the results of the
echocardiogram (20th November) were
available. I wanted to be assured there was
no cause for alarm. He replied 24th January (Two months!) 8th January, ECG revealed
AF still present.
25th February, at a meeting with the
cardiologist, it was decided to try DC
cardioversion. 28th March, attended Ipswich
Hospital for cardioversion. It sounded pretty
drastic. The idea is to stun the heart and
shock the system back to sinus rhythm. Two
electrodes are placed on either side of the
chest, and, in the same way the de-fibrillator
is used to get a stopped heart ticking again,
a serious electrical current (3,000v) is discharged from one to the other. As I went
blissfully under the anaesthetic, the befuddled mind pondered the advice that burn
marks could appear on the chest. With a
rapidly diminishing sense of Dr.
The Good Old Days
Page 6
Frankenstein hovering over my bed, I found
comfort from realising burns would be immaterial if the heart stopped, then abandoned myself to unconsciousness.
Cardioversion restored sinus rhythm all too
briefly.
However, three or four days later the
heart appeared to be responding, the pulse
back to its normal 52 b.p.m. and regular.
On top of which I began to feel fitter. It
dawned on me, I had been ill. By mid-April
I was certain. An ECG was arranged. It took
place on 1st May and revealed normal sinus
rhythm.
28/29th May, carried a 24-hour ECG
monitor around the waist again. A letter
arrived, 17th June, confirming an entirely
normal rhythm. 19th June, wrote to CAA,
formally requesting reinstatement. At the
same time dropping Warfarin, reverting to
Aspirin, and reducing from two Amiodarone
pills to one.
It may be unreasonable to expect alacrity in the general medical profession, given
the pressure it’s under and the obvious priority extended to terminal cases. But the
CAA, in most departments fast and efficient,
has no reason to delay medical issues that
are so vital to the client. Telephone calls,
e-mails and a letter, 10th July, failed to
elicit a response until a telephone call from
Aeromedical on or about 17th July. This call,
and the confirming letter dated 19th July,
was sympathetic, informative and wholly
charming. I forgot all the aggravations of
the past – just wished it hadn’t taken so
long, and wished I wasn’t obliged, as the
rules dictate, to fly with a safety pilot for a
year. One further niggle was the (costly)
requirement to attend 6-monthly ophthalmic investigations at Gatwick (if I could
find my way there) to determine if
Amiodarone had made me blind. They seem
to think it may – an assumption hotly contested by my cardiologist who argues that
the rare occurrence of deposits in the cornea does not affect the sight and anyway
disappear as soon as the medication is discontinued. Medicine, as a doctor friend of
mine once observed, is an inexact science.
He might also have added that it moves at
a very slow pace.