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Hotel Charlie India
entering into a loop.
OPPOSITE
(clockwise from top
left): Airborne
Aviation also offers a
flight in formation
with another Tiger
Moth; The open
cockpit, where trainee
WWII fighter pilots
would have trembled;
A passenger’s
view – just don’t
touch anything.PETE THE AIRBORNE AVIATION pilot picks up
the end of the Tiger Moth plane and casually wheels it
around to a different spot on the tarmac. Since it’s the
same plane we are about to clamber into and head for
the skies in, I try (and fail) to be just as casual when I ask
about the total weight of the thing.
“Five-hundred kilos, or not much over that,” he
replies. “It’s all in the front end with the engine, so you
can easily move it by the back. These wings are canvas
on the outside, wooden spars on the inside, and just the
frame on the inside is metal.” He looks at me for a
moment and a hint of a smile comes up. “That’s all that’s
between you and the outside when you’re out flying.”
Well that, and an authentic-looking Red Baron-style
leather hat, a headset for communications and the
all-important safety-belt harness that I try to subtly
check a hundred times as we taxi away from the hangar
in this canvas and wooden beauty that only weighs about
the same as your average horse. Just like on a horse, the
guy in charge sits in the back while the passenger sits in
the front, and desperately tries to keep her feet still.
There are pedals down there that I’m gently remindedAVIATION
ADVENTURE
the Tiger Moth gains speed quickly – she’s light, after
all. We lift so easily from the ground that my tension
falls away with it and I find myself grinning.
Pete brings us in a wide loop and we head toward
Warragamba Dam, gaining altitude to about 4300 feet.
I’m snug in my jacket but I’m certainly feeling that it
can be 10 degrees cooler up here. I again think of those
wartime pilots flying at up to 30,000 feet, in colder
climes, with little heating and an open cockpit.
Then we begin. Pete describes each move before we
do it, then executes it with precision and a palpable
sense of happiness. He loves what he does – that’s clear.
And why not? We slide into a 60-degree turn, then two
rollercoaster-like wingovers, pitching up steeply before
swerving flatly into a turnover. Beneath us, houses,
fields, livestock and businesses all represent the real
world, while we challenge Mother Nature herself,
impossibly upside down. I spy a car pulling over to the
side of the road below, and realise that we are likely the
spectacle the driver wants to see, and I get that rock star
feeling until I realise I’m screaming – just a little bit – as
we move into a barrel roll. It is literally like sliding
around inside a barrel, all the way round.
A loop comes next and is less worrisome than I
imagined; the G-force means I am firmly pushed into
my seat even as I see the world turn above my head and
away to sit at my feet again. Don’t touch the pedals.
Don’t touch the pedals.
There’s no more time to think as we commit to
a sequence: another wingover, into a hammerhead,
into a barrel roll, into a loop, into a barrel roll, into a
hammerhead. The hammerhead tests my resolve to be
cool and calm, as we fly straight up vertically, with dark
sky dead ahead of our nose, then, as Pete puts it, “we wait
until we just about fall out of the sky”. That’s the point
when he puts the rudder back in, we go back around to
face the ground instead and reach four Gs as the Earth
looms larger... until we turn into another manoeuvre.
I can’t tell if it’s the plane or me that is being put
through their paces, but I hear screaming again – just a
little – as we spin. Is that me again? Once, twice, all the
way to five times around, losing 1200 feet in altitude.
The screams turn to big belly laughs and we take some
steep turns to get down to 2000 feet. Pete asks the
tower for clearance and we are permitted as far down as
a mere 800 feet above the ground, to follow the Nepean
river directly below us, mimicking its bends with our
own path in a returning joy ride that, to use a word of
suitable vintage, is delightful. Now I can really see the
people on the ground, stopped and watching us. My
teeth are cold and dry, my cheeks are sore from smiling
and I honestly feel light as air.not to absentmindedly tread on; I don’t ask any more
questions but resolve to Not. Touch. Anything.
It’s a rare experience to see and touch (or not touch)
a magnificent flying machine such as this bright-red,
handsome Tiger Moth, I think with a shy thrill – let
alone climb right in and ride together into the air, as
this antique has been doing for over 75 years. Her
name is Hotel Charlie India and she was built in 1940
in Bankstown, with a 130-horsepower engine built
by General Motors and cylinders just bigger than
those of a Holden car.
She has trained British, Canadian and Australian
soon-to-be-fighter pilots sitting in these very same
seats, probably subtly fingering these very same safety
harnesses and concentrating on not touching those very
same pedals, since this plane was used for their initial
training sessions. My stomach twists a little for them
with some small understanding.
It may not have the adrenaline-rush reputation of a
jet-fighter ride or a parachute jump, but the sheer age of
this plane, and the simplicity of an open cockpit, makes
an aerobatic flight such as the one we are embarking on,
a daring challenge and a taste of history all tied together.
We trundle along to the open part of Camden
Airport, an hour south of Sydney,
and dip off the tarmac onto the
grass. I see a green field, but pilot
Pete Fowler sees Runway 10, and
we kick up a fair bit of lawn asWEEKENDS | Do something different
PHOTOGRAPHY: JAC TAYLOR (DASHBOARD, PLANE INTERIOR)