Learning to fly the Tiger Moth

Just because we had PPLs and flew tail draggers, didn't mean we could fly a Tiger Moth, let alone our own precious, newly restored one!

We read all the books we could get our hands on and visited Woburn for the Moth Meet every year so that we could learn from others.

All that suggested we should get some proper training in another Tiger Moth before flying ours. We combined this with a holiday and visited the Royal Newcastle Flying Club at Maitland near Sydney, Australia.  This meant we could also visit Luskintyre where a large number of Tiger Moths are flying and in various states of repair. The Aussies were very friendly and the training thorough.  The kangaroos bounding across the runway as we taxied out were a little alarming. We did, however, learn that all Tiger Moths fly a little differently and we would have to discover how ours worked best!

Then the big day came.  Our Engineer flew the test flight with Shaunne, my wife, to take notes.  Sadly I was too heavy to fly on that first flight with the engineer!  I then flew the Ferry flight from Perranporth to Bodmin so that the C of A could be finalised.  A very few circuits and bumps later and we planned to fly from Perranporth to Woburn but the weather intervened with coast to coast rainstorms across Bodmin moor.  After 5 hours maximum flying around the airfield, we decided to get some real experience under our belt and flew the Tiger Moth from Perranporth to Orbigny in France.  It took six sectors and just over 8 hours flight time over two days!  We went via Dunkeswell, Chichester-Goodwood, Headcorn-Lashenden (where we stayed overnight and G-AOBO snuggled up next to the oldest Tiger Moth still flying G-ACDC), Abbeville and Chartres.  This was quite an adventure and a real test of the rebuild!

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