AEROPLANE JULY 2018 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com 79ABOVE:
The addition of
the British civil
air ensign to the
tail was one of
the alterations
Tim made to the
Spitfire’s colour
scheme.
RICHARD T. RIDING“I went to a cocktail party in the
main hotel that evening. A chap came
up and we got chatting about how
he’d watched the air display from the
hotel. It was slightly on a hill, and I
remember having to slightly lift up
over it. I asked him, ‘So, are you over
here with one of the aeroplanes?’ ‘Oh
yes’, he said. ‘I’m with the Ministry
of Aviation — I’m the chairman’. I
thought, ‘that’s it, I’ve lost my licence
now’. But rather like a Guardsman
going sick on parade, nobody
noticed...”
He took part in many other events,
including several at RAF stations.
While Tim describes the regulations
in those days as “virtually nil”, he
built in his own safety margins. “The
only thing I’d never, ever do was a
loop off the ground. So many people
I know, and lots of others, have been
killed doing that. You’ll get away
with it 100, maybe 200, times, but in
the end it’ll get you when something
just goes a little bit awry — not quite
enough speed, for example. There’s
no need. The other great killer is
rolls near the ground. I didn’t mind
doing a climbing roll, with the whole
momentum going uphill. Then you
can do it as badly as you like.”In parallel with owning the Spitfire,
aviation gradually became Tim’s
career. “I did weekend flying for Dan-
Air on the Airspeed Ambassador for
two summers from ’65. It was a very
interesting aeroplane. It was fine,
but it did have one deadly sin. On
take-off, if you rotated too early, the
speed would not increase. You could
be locked on the ground and just go
straight off the end. You had to put
the nose down again, watch the speed
build and hopefully get off by the
end of the runway. We went as far
as Palma, which was real long-range
stuff, four hours’ worth.
“After two years with Dan-Air as
a first officer I got a similar deal with
Mortons, who made me a captain on
the Heron. That was a very enjoyable
summer, flying Saturdays and Sundays
from Gatwick to the Channel Islands
— Alderney, Guernsey, Jersey, repeat.
The ‘long-range’ route was Gatwick-
Swansea, and we went directly over
my home when we flew from Swansea
to Exeter to refuel.”
But all good things must finish
sometime. “In ’67 I got married,
and I thought that was the end for
my commercial flying. I took the
opportunity of selling ’JV. Having
bought it for £2,000, I sold it for
£9,000”. The purchaser was Gp Capt‘Hamish’ Mahaddie, then building up
the Battle of Britain film fleet. “John
Fairey had suggested it, and asked
if I’d come in with a half-share in
G-AIDN”. At the start of 1968, Tim
did just that.
Thanks to the ongoing association
with Simpson’s, he had also
been flying other Spitfires. From
September 1967, he helped Tony
Samuelson convert to his IXT,
MJ772/G-AVAV, which had been
returned to flight by the Elstree-
based company. More soon followed.
“When they were getting ready for
the film, ‘Tubby’ Simpson was their
lead engineer.
He had Spitfires
coming in from
all sorts of places
to do a C of A or
whatever had to
be done. I used to
go up to Henlow
and do a roar-
round”. On 29
November 1967,
Tim flew three
Spitfires in one
day, then a probable peacetime record
for a civilian pilot. After a trip in
’JV, he carried out check flights from
Henlow in MkIXs MK297/G-ASSD
and MH415/G-AVDJ.
More experiences arose from Tim’s
long association with G-AIDN.
“Thanks to John Fairey we had quite
a special relationship with the Empire
Test Pilots’ School at Boscombe
Down. I think John suggested to the
commandant that the pilots on his
course should fly a real aeroplane,
and the commandant thought this
was a very good idea. He said we
could fly anything they’d got. Well,that sounded a lot better. We did
that for two years. I put a US Navy
commander who was on the course
in the front seat of ’DN, and he was
very good — didn’t frighten me at all.
Then he took me up in a Lightning.
“I climbed into this thing and the
ignitors wouldn’t work, so I had to
come back again two weeks later. The
deal was that John and I could fly the
aeroplane and they were just there
to stop any expensive damage. The
commander asked me what I’d like
to do. I told him, ‘a reheat take-off
and a climb to 35,000ft’. He’d only
flown it once, but he said the danger
with this was that
the undercarriage
retraction button
was just in front
of the throttles,
and if my finger
was to miss it as
we rotated, by
the time I got my
finger on it again
we’d have ripped
the undercarriage
doors off because
we’d be through the limiting speed.
Fair enough.
“We took off normally, got
the undercarriage up and put the
reheat in. The result was absolutely
spectacular. All I can remember him
saying was, ‘Pull up, pull up — 0.95,
0.98...’ Of course he was terrified of
going above Mach 1 over land. We
levelled off at 35,000ft, and it had
taken 90 seconds from the runway.
It was a lovely aeroplane to fly,
and I did it a second time with the
commandant the next year.”
G-AIDN was sold in 1976 to
Maurice Bayliss. With it went(^) I got the canopy
back, opened the door,
unhitched myself, put
my feet up on the seat
and crouched, ready to
roll out of it
74-80_AM_AeroMeets_July18_cc C.indd 79 04/06/2018 12:29