Flying in the old country.

[TimHicks]

I had to go to the UK for work about a week ago. Robert Lees found out that I was going and invited me to meet him and visit their airport. It was a wonderful experience. First I saw Robert's BC-12 restoration of G-BREY. Many of you have seen it in pictures both before and during the restoration. Very nice

Then we went to Leicester (pronounced "Lester") airfield where Rob keeps G-BRPX, a flying BC-12. There we met Andy Duke who keeps G-BRIH, a BC-12 with 85 Hp, there also. I was surprised to see how active the field was. There were dozens of people there puttering around their airplanes. Most of them with the intention of flying that day.

Then we went flying. I got a chance to ride in the right seat of both G-BRPX and G-BRIH. I got some fair air-to-air pictures. We landed on two different grass strips. Loads of fun

I put some pictures in the Taylorcraft gallery. I'll try to create a link to the site below.

http://gallery.taylorcraft.org/main....g2_itemId=3510

Many thanks to Robert and Andy for making this such a nice experience.

Tim

[alwaysoar]

Re: Flying in the old country.

Lucky guy!

[Robert Lees]

Re: Flying in the old country.

A great pleasure to meet you too, Tim, and thank you for your kind words. Any time you are back over here, you are very welcome to come fly again. And the left seat next time!

Some nice photos you took there...hope we didn't scare you too much with the formation stuff!

P.s. Those books of Louisiana were great...thank you!

[TimHicks]

Re: Flying in the old country.

Rob mentioned the formation flying. You should see these fellows. They obviously have lots of time flying formation. They are very comfortable flying very close to each other. I thought that I was an experienced formation flyer until I flew with Rob and Andy.

It was impressive and it made for some nice pictures. In some of the pictures you can see the trailing edge of the camera platform ship in addition to the subject ship. It gives a sense of the proximity of the two airplanes. Excellent flying skills!

[Mark Julicher]

Re: Flying in the old country.

Nice pics Tim. Thanks for posting them.
I need an excuse to go to to UK!
Tricky business doing close formation on limited horsepower - impressive.

[AndyDuke]

Re: Flying in the old country.

I'm almost embarrased Tim, but thanks that's very flattering. Mark, formation in limited powered aircraft is not a problem so long as the air is smooth. Of course it helps if the aircraft have similar performance.

Andy

[Richard Stanley]

Re: Flying in the old country.

Aha Tim, I found you. You simply cannot hide in those Louisiana backwoods.

Fiona and I thoroughly enjoyed your brief visit to our airstrip. Clearly an ordinary day was lifted into a memorable one as a result of the internet contact with the Leicester contingent. Andy Duke flew in here today with an attractive woman.

You are welcome again on your next visit to the UK. Let it not be too long.

Richard

[TimHicks]

Re: Flying in the old country.

Richard Stanley !!!!
That's extraordinary that you had the wherewithall to find this site and me.

For everyone else, Richard is the "eccentric" Englishman who treated Robert Lees, Andy Duke and me to a fairy tale of a flying experience. Fiona is his wife and a major contributor the the experience.

Richard, as much as I would love to go back and visit (and I plan to), I wish even more that other members of this site might get to experience what I did by flying into your beautiful airstrip.

Richard, I hope that you have visited the gallery to see the pictures that I posted there. I have a few addition pictures from our stop at your place. I also have a crude movie that I shot while in your kitchen. It's probably won't be very interesting to you. I was trying to capture the accents and the speech mannerisms of the 4 Englishfolk talking. You're welcome to these if you would like to see them. Let me know and I'll email them to you.

[Robert Lees]

Re: Flying in the old country.

Just on the subject of close formation flying, I had the pleasure of doing some formation work with an RV6 a few days ago...some of the photos on my BRPX web page here.

The photos were taken by the RV6 owner, Nigel Hitchman, who regularly gets published in several UK aviation magazines, and is a member of the US Mid-West AAA and a regular at the vintage fly-ins at Brodhead, Wisconsin.

Still have to persuade him to buy a Taylorcraft, however!