ALOUETTE'S 5Oth - MEMORIES FROM DOWN UNDER

Read this interesting and amusing account of one member's time at Alouette. Many thanks to Tony Rees for submitting this. The picture is of Tony with his Mooney at Northam, Western Australia.

"Dear all at Alouette,

May I offer my heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of Alouette’s 50th anniversary. I would love to be with you to celebrate in true Alouette fashion, but it’s a bloody long way to go from Down Under, sport, and I was only told about it a week ago by my long-time mate, Mike Warner.

For the vast majority of you who have never heard of me, I’m an Australian who stumbled on Alouette when I was working in London in the late 1960s. I used to take my E-Type Jaguar to be serviced by Joe Varga, a mechanical wizard, wartime Hungarian Air Force pilot and Alouette member who invited me to go flying in the club’s Chipmunk, G-AOZV. I had always wanted to learn to fly and Joe’s reluctant aerobatics after his cholesterol-packed Sunday lunch (the poor bugger died of a heart attack) captivated me. I was hooked.

The incomparable and totally (well almost – see below) admirable D.C. Perch, then the club’s CFI, took me on as a student and I fell entirely under his spell. I cannot envisage, after 40 years of flying, a more professional instructor than Don. He was a legend even then, a former RAF Central Flying School instructor who worked in an office at the Pru during the week, then devoted much of his time on weekends, without payment, to the craft of teaching Alouette neophytes to fly.

Those of us with long memories recall trying to get to the clubhouse first on a Sunday morning so we could be number one on Don’s line-up. The old clubhouse was bloody freezing most of the time, and the students would try to get various heaters going while Audrey Hills, a mother who decided to take up flying after raising her kids, made the coffee. I can remember chipping ice from under the Surrey & Kent hangar doors to get the Chippie out, and flying off a snow-covered runway 29/11. Audrey, by the way, would not fly without her handbag – an interesting proposition in the Chipmunk.

Don was an exceptional airman, admired and universally respected. If you were the last student on his Sunday rota, your final exercise was a couple of steep turns over his home at Addington to let his late wife, Pat, know that he would be home in half an hour. Don’s only failing was an incipient tendency to kleptomania. If you left a map or a ruler lying around, it would miraculously appear in Don’s briefcase. I still have a protractor on which is writ large: “NOT the property of D.C. Perch.”

Our other instructors during my time were Mike Townsend, Frank Lawson and Jim Fleming, all of whom gave their services gratis. As an Australian, the only Yorkshireman I had encountered before Frank was Test bowler “Fiery” Freddie Trueman. I didn’t realise they were all like that. Frank was (sadly, he died some years ago) an upfront, no-nonsense, impatient fellow and a really good aerobatic pilot. I shall never forget pulling up into a loop in the Chipmunk and seeing the silver belly of a jet growing rapidly larger above us. Frank had chosen the extended centreline of Gatwick for this lesson.

Jim was a bit of an enigma who regaled students with tales of derring-do in days gone by in a single-seat Druine Turbulent. He would turn up at the old clubhouse in his blue MGB, often with a female companion several decades his junior. A dark horse, but you learned a lot by listening and he was imperturbable in flight. Nobody seems to know what became of Jim. Perhaps he just rode that Turbi into the sunset . . .

Mike Townsend’s bellows of rage still ring in my ears. He used to fill in for Don on Sunday mornings when the master was away and liked to sleep in, particularly on cold winter mornings. If he hadn’t turned up by 8.30 I used to ring him – thus the screams of anguish. At the height of our drive for hours, we would get the next student ready while Mike was in the circuit. As soon as he landed someone would strap the new student in while another member gave Mike a cuppa and a biscuit. The poor bugger was a virtual prisoner! A lovely man and an impeccable instructor.

Alouette used to stagger from crisis to crisis – and probably still does. The worst during my time on the committee was when the then Air Registration Board decided Chipmunks had a major fatigue problem in the wing root something-or-others and that Zulu Victor was grounded forthwith. We would have had to spend something like £2000 to get it fixed, and the aircraft at the time was worth about £1500 (I think we were charging about £6 an hour then, just to put things in perspective).

Well, the sky was about to fall in. We had a crisis meeting and decided to approach Glos Air, a company based at Staverton, which was leasing New Zealand-made Airtourers at a fairly attractive price. The only problem was, we would have to guarantee 480 hours a year at the agreed rate or face a punitive surcharge. In our previous year I think we had flown about 250 hours in the Chippie, which was eventually sold to an American (apparently fatigue isn’t so bad in the States).

The option was fairly simple: bite the bullet or go down the gurgler. We decided to do the impossible and took on our first Airtourer 115, G-AWRT (which David Brown immortalised by calling “Romeo Tangle, turning finals” every time he was in the circuit). By cajoling and bullying and making sure a bum was on the seat for as many hours as the days were long we managed to do more than 600 hours in our first year. It was an outstanding effort and, thanks to the magnificent response of our members, Alouette climbed out of that particular hole. Some of those who scrambled to fight for the cause were Peter Wain (our then chairman), George Little and Charles Ravenhill (now, sadly, permanently in the sky), Ron Bye, Andy Appleby, Vic Beattie, John Wolley, Malcolm Doling, Geoff Newnes, Chris Redfern, Chris Nott, Alan Carter . . . my profound apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten to name. You know how it is!

In 1972 we upgraded to G-AZHI, a constant-speed 150 horsepower version of the Airtourer. It was a fantastic machine – brilliant for aeros – and hours continued to mount, helped by a lot of mid-week flying to the Continent (getting the tax rebate on fuel was a big incentive).

I returned to Australia in 1973 and have flown to many parts of this enormous continent, and over the ditch to New Zealand. I now half-own a Mooney M20J and am about to participate in the Outback Air Race, which will take 22 aircraft and 59 crew across the Top End of Australia to such exotic outposts of empire as Broome, Emma Gorge, Katherine, Tennant Creek, Sweers Island, Cooktown, Undara and Airlie Beach, near the Great Barrier Reef. (See our website, www.outbackairrace.com.au). Our quest is to raise funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, an amazing air ambulance operation that has saved countless lives since the Rev. John Flynn started it in 1928 using a de Havilland DH.50.

Through all these years and all that flying I have always maintained a great affection for Alouette. My time there was, without doubt, one of the most enjoyable periods of my life and I am delighted that the club is now charging through its 50th birthday. We all worked bloody hard to perpetuate the tradition of doing something for no monetary gain that inspired Don Perch and Frank Lawson to found Alouette in 1959. It is a tribute to today’s membership that the spirit lives on.

I have, over the years, made sporadic visits to Alouette and Biggin. My last was in 2006, when Mike Warner and I flew around the air museums of southern England. I loved the (new to me) clubhouse, and Mike – who would detect a draught in a vacuum – was pretty keen on the heating system. As I said, I’d love to be there for the 50th, but in lieu of that I’ll raise a glass to you all.

Good luck, and tailwinds wherever you fly (except on landing!).

Tony Rees
Life Member"