Come fly with me!
by Graham Smith

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Blacking out? Apparently when they do one particular manoeuvre, which involves hurtling two aircraft towards each other so you couldn’t put a pencil between them, they pull a G force sufficient to make an ordinary person black out. Watching them do it tends to make you gulp and check your denture adhesive so goodness knows what it’s like in the cockpit.

That’s another thing, the cockpit. It is not designed for comfort. It tends to unnerve you to discover that the perspex cover is lined with Semtex.

This is not to stop you smoking in flight, but is an emergency measure in case you mess up big style and have to use the ejector seat which I should imagine is an experience in itself.

You see they don’t have a cushion. Sorry I was explaining the Semtex. If you have to do the James Bond bit and push the eject button it would be injurious to your health if your head hit the canopy above it at 100mph so the Semtex explosive is geared to blow it up and allow you clear passage as you sail out through the window singing: “Nearer my God to thee” and hanging on to your differentials in case they tangle in the seat belt.

It’s dangerous. That is why there is no cushion. If you had one, as my friend with the titanium spine explained, grinning, it would make haemorrhoids a throat complaint. They’re very graphic these RAF types.

The day I spent with the Arrows was the first day they had put together the total display which will be delighting thousands at this year’s venues. It did not delight one pilot who had a problem with his air brake and had to land part way through the rehearsal.

Nothing much you might think but an air brake is quite useful when you are hurtling towards the plane in front at umpteen hundred miles an hour and would like to slow down a bit. No brake and you can’t.

It’s a bit like going down the M6 in your family saloon at 100mph, which of course none of us do, and discovering that the Morris Minor in front is going too slow. You brake, can’t, the overtaking lane is full, and there is no time to call a very nice man. Quick thinking is all that saves you and in a Hawk jet you think extremely quickly.

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