Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  ‘Right, I’m now going to select more power and the fuel cooling system should kick in,’ announced Terry.

  ‘OK.’

  About thirty seconds later I noticed both HP rpm gauges starting to wind down, rapidly followed by the LP rpms. After they had dropped by about 10 per cent I asked Terry to switch the radar power off. As soon as he did so the engines recovered. My adrenalin level also returned to normal. Having both motors suddenly start winding down is not conducive to the relaxed calm that one always preferred to display during flight tests! There was obviously a problem with the fuel pressure drop caused by the fuel being sent to the cooler; it would have to be investigated further.

  So we now set off towards RAF Honington in Suffolk. When we were handed over to the Honington Approach Controller he immediately asked me to confirm that we were a Buccaneer.

  ‘Affirmative,’ I replied. ‘There’ll be a lot of folk out to watch you,’ the controller said.

  ‘Well tell them that we’re not allowed to come below 1,000ft. Sorry but that’s from way on high!’ I told him, with intentional sarcasm.

  The approach went boringly well and as I flew down the runway at that 1,000ft I could see a host of upturned faces outside the hangars and offices on my right. I thought that they would probably be thinking that it was all a bit sissy. I hoped that it gave them a boost to know that at least one of their favourite aeroplanes was back in the air!

  The fuel-cooling problem was fixed, the newer A2 model of the radar started working better and by June we had tracked quite a few targets. Around this time the Marconi trials management decided to have a bit of a ‘launch’ day. The day before this grand event Pete Batty and I went out in 897 to the ground test area to make sure that all was well. It was and Pete told the team that everything should be fine for the following day. I organised one of our Canberras to be a target and we briefed for the flight. This would include a return to base in formation with the Canberra leading and a flypast over the squadron. Hopefully we would have some good results to show the assembly of the great and the good from MOD and Marconi.

  The big day dawned fine and the sortie would take place after a no doubt splendid lunch for our ‘audience’. I had my usual sandwich in the crew room! Pete and I climbed aboard on time and the Canberra crew manned their aircraft to await our call to go. As usual we taxied out to test the radar on the ground. After a minute or so Pete told me that he was starting the scanner. Then he told me that it was transmitting.

  ‘Pete,’ I said, ‘I can’t feel the aircraft moving. Are you sure it’s scanning?’

  ‘Yes. But I must admit I’m getting a rather odd picture,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, there’s definitely not the usual swaying motion,’ I said.

  ‘OK, we’d better go back in and find out what’s going on.’

  I told ATC and the Canberra crew to sit tight as we had a problem. When we arrived back in our parking spot, still being watched by the gathered dignitaries, the Marconi Field Trials Manager (FTM) came over in a bit of a panic. I shut down the engines and asked for ground power so that we could keep the kit going. Ladders were affixed to their normal fasteners on the starboard side of the cockpit. A long conversation between Pete and the FTM ensued. Then the nose was opened and the radar antenna exposed. Apparently when Pete selected ‘scan’ (with the transmitter off) instead of coming out of its parked position and scanning left to right it scanned up and down!

  It was decided that nothing could be done. But the FTM, having arranged the event, was desperate to save face. He climbed up my ladder and leaned into the cockpit. He asked in all seriousness, ‘Can you fly behind the target on your side so that the antenna then looks as if it is scanning horizontally?’

  I disabused him of such an outrageous and impractical course of action. In the end we decided that it would be more expeditious to get the radar fixed than waste time in the air pretending that all was well. Welcome to the world of R&D!

  It turned out that after our checks of the previous day someone (FTM perhaps?) had decided to demount the radar unit from the nose and ‘tweak’ it some more. It was replaced and some bit or other had gone wrong. When will people ever learn that if it’s not broke – don’t fiddle with it?!

  We flew much more regularly during the rest of 1980 and started to work with multiple targets as well as against the ECM Canberras of No. 360 Squadron. Results were variable, as is par for the course. By August I knew that I was moving on at the end of the year and that we would soon need a Buccaneer-qualified pilot to take over the project. As it happened ex-Buccaneer squadron pilot Flt Lt Trevor Brown had arrived as a test pilot on Aero Flight. So, after management had agreed, I flew with him in 897 to refamiliarise him with the Banana Bomber and this rather odd one in particular. He then did a session in the simulator at Honington and some flights in one of the Farnborough Buccaneers.

  My last flight in 897 was on 1 November 1980 with Pete Batty. Earlier in the year one of our sorties had included a session of air-to-air photography and on leaving the squadron I was presented with a framed copy. Nimrod pilot Flt Lt John Trout had also procured (I know not whence) a pair of Buccaneer throttles and had them mounted on a wooden plinth. The words ‘The RRS Throttle Benders Trophy’ were inscribed on a brass plate; probably a reference to the occasional low, fast pass I had made over the squadron in XX 897.

  Subsequent development of the Foxhunter radar followed in the stuttering footsteps of 1979 and 1980. Lots of technical problems arose and the Tornado ADV production line and entry to RAF service got way ahead of its radar. The first ADVs had to fly with weights in the nose and pretend to be interceptor fighters. As usual it wasn’t my remit to have an official opinion on it all, but I could not help wondering why the procurement system had given the project leadership to a company that had never produced a radar before. Perhaps Ferranti, who had made Britain’s previous Air Interceptor radar for the Lightning, should have been the lead company, not just to produce the heart of the system, but to have driven the development of the rest. However, ours not to reason why!

  26 WHIRLYBIRDS ARE GO!

  When I had taken over RRS I realised that there were three items on the squadron’s fleet about which I knew very little – the helicopters. Not long after I had arrived one of the two professional Rotary Wing pilots and the Puma helicopter were taken off the RRS strength. I now had just one specialist ‘rotarian’ – Flt Lt Andy Digby – but two helicopters: a Sea King and a Wessex. I discovered that there was no plan to send me a second helicopter pilot. This would mean that the trials involving those two aircraft were going to be subject to more delays due to Andy’s leave, sickness and any requirement for both aircraft to fly at the same time. Like Baldrick in the TV series Blackadder I came up with a cunning plan, which I put back up the line to HQ. I suggested that if I learnt to fly helicopters and then took over as prime pilot for the Wessex trials we would keep a whole host of boffins happy. Within a few days I received the news that at the end of April 1979 I would go to RAF Shawbury, in Shropshire, to complete a special one-month, high intensity course on the Westland Whirlwind HAR27 Mk 10.

  So on the last Sunday of April I drove from home to Shawbury and took up residence in the Officers’ Mess. At 8 a.m. the following morning I reported to the helicopter training squadron and met up with my instructor, a genial young man called Ham Elliott. After joining him in a cup of ambition he took me to the Ground School where I met the redoubtable Flt Lt Lawrence who would give me a rapid, personalised course answering the mystery of how a helicopter got airborne and stayed aloft. My American buddy from the ETPS course, Tom Morgenfeld, had always maintained that helicopters flew only because they were so ugly that the earth rejected them – it wasn’t entirely true; although a pretty helicopter is a rare sight!

  I rapidly learnt in Ground School that they got up and stayed up because of a big green arrow, always labelled LIFT, which appeared above the helicopter. At least in all the diagrams it did. And that was the easy
bit. Then all sorts of complications came into play. The first being that the natural inclination of the fuselage underneath the whirling blades was to try to rotate in the opposite direction to the blades. This was most undesirable as the poor chap trying to drive would rapidly become dizzy and fall out of his seat! To stop this happening a small rotor was placed at the end of the long tail boom at the back and spun around to produce a small, horizontal green arrow to keep the tail where it belonged.

  Then I was introduced to such terms as translational lift, retreating blade stall and lateral cg limits. Finally we moved onto the interesting bits about how the pilot controlled all this whirling machinery above and behind him. The stick was now called the cyclic control and the other lever that was near the pilot’s left hand was called the collective. There were also rudder pedals on which to rest one’s feet. For a fixed-wing aeroplane driver the stick and rudder pedal bits were reasonably familiar, but the collective was something new. However, the fact that it moved up and down gave a strong clue as to its purpose. It controlled the vertical flight of the helicopter. Next question. Where’s the throttle? Well, I was told, there isn’t one. The engine automatically adjusts its power output to cope with the pilot’s demands. But there was an exception. There always is! If that automatic system broke down there was a twist grip, like a motorbike throttle, on the end of the collective with which the pilot could govern the engine power.

  I was given copious notes to read and sent back to the squadron hungry and exhausted. There I found refreshment and Ham Elliott waiting for me. ‘Now that you know how it all works, get your flying kit on, we’re going aviating in a couple of hours time. I suggest we brief now and then you can spend some time learning your checks on one of the aircraft in the hangar,’ he announced. So much for lunch. Grabbing my Whirlwind checklist I headed for the flying clothing room to change and go try on a cockpit for size.

  The Westland Whirlwind was a UK-licensed and -built version of an American design from the Sikorsky stable, famous for its helicopters. This model was known as the S-55 Chickasaw (all Sikorsky helicopters being named after Native American tribes) and was originally powered by a fairly large, round Pratt & Whitney piston engine. The Whirlwind was primarily procured for the Royal Navy but then adopted by the RAF for Air Sea Rescue duties. In February 1959 the piston engine was replaced by a de Havilland Gnome free-turbine jet engine, rated at just over 1,000 shaft horsepower (SHP). The rotor diameter was 53ft and the fuselage was just over 44ft long. Like a lot of helicopters of the time it was relatively tall, standing nearly 16ft to the top of the rotor shaft. The really odd thing was that it had four wheels, two large soft main wheels on struts sticking out from under the copious cabin and two small nose wheels mounted under the fuselage immediately below the pilots’ cockpit. They were free to castor and looked like something that should have been attached to a large piece of furniture!

  It was a bit of a climb up the steps on the side of the nose up to the cockpit where I found myself sitting quite upright with an excellent view of the outside world, except to the left where my instructor was going to be seated. With the checklist on my knee I sat there and worked my way round the cockpit instrument panels, switches and levers and hoped that some of it would sink in.

  Eventually Ham came looking for me with the news that our mount was ready and waiting and that I should go and do the checks for real. I had actually been allowed to have a go at flying a helicopter on about five previous occasions, but only the easy bits. Ham now sat patiently while I worked my way through the checks until the engine in the nose was whirring away satisfactorily. Then it was time to engage the rotor and get the blades whirling at a speed sufficient to get us airborne. This was when Ham reminded me that once the blades were rotating then effectively the helicopter was ‘flying’ so the cyclic stick would need to be restrained in a central position and I was not to move the rudder bar or the collective until we had every intention of getting airborne.

  At this point Ham took over and there followed lots of demonstration and ‘Follow me through’ from he who must now be obeyed. I had a go at flying around and that was no problem. Speed and height were controlled by a combination of the two controls, the engine did its own thing and I just had to keep the tail following the nose with the rudder pedals. As an ex-light aircraft instructor that was second nature.

  It was when we came back to the airfield that Ham said, ‘Right, let’s see if you can hover it,’ in a more challenging way than I would have liked. He first put the aircraft into a hover at about 10ft off the ground and talked rapidly about what he was doing, with me following him through by resting my hands and feet lightly on the appropriate controls. I could feel lots of constant tiny movements; it reminded me of the control inputs that happen during formation flying.

  ‘OK, I’m going to give you control of the collective. You just keep us at this height,’ he said. That proved to be not too hard.

  ‘Now you have control of the rudder pedals as well, just keep us pointed in this direction.’

  The response to any small movement was quite rapid but I tried very hard to be smooth. But now the height had wandered a bit and every time I moved the collective lever up or down the wretched machine turned around its vertical axis so I had to readjust the pedals.

  ‘OK, so far not too bad,’ he said, with little praise in his voice. ‘You have control of everything.’

  He was lying of course. As soon as he let go of the stick everything went to pot. He had been hovering over a point, within seconds I was using a very large, and expanding cube of sky. It was like spinning plates on sticks. Just when you thought you’d got one thing sorted something else went bad!

  ‘Fine, that’s enough, sir,’ Ham said. Then by way of encouragement, ‘Don’t worry, sir, you’ll soon pick it up.’

  I retired early that night with my Whirlwind Pilot’s Notes and checklists and tried to get my head round it all. There followed a month’s intensive flying with a variety of instructors including the American and French exchange instructors. They were all very helpful but drove me on to make sure that I was soon fit to go off on my own. A memorable bit was the first time I finally nailed the hovering and then was asked to move to another part of the airfield for another exercise. I sat there for a few seconds totally unable to remember what to do next. If I push the stick forward we’ll spear into the ground, I thought, and if I pull the collective up I’ll climb! My fixed-wing instincts had kicked in and what I really wanted to do was hold the attitude and push the throttle forward. But there wasn’t one. All this happened in at most ten seconds, but the pause was long enough to prompt my man to ask what the problem was. This coincided with me remembering that I had to move the stick forward and stop us going down with a small upwards movement of the collective lever. I did that and sure enough off we went.

  ‘Stop’ came the response from the left seat. What now?

  ‘You forgot to turn on the spot to look out all around you,’ came the admonition. Oh, yes.

  Over that very busy month I learnt how to land on sloping ground, which can be tricky and if you get it wrong you can end up with the helicopter and all who sail in her being hurled sideways onto the ground. One day we went to Snowdonia in North Wales to learn about flying in mountains, where dangerous, curling down-currents of air present very specific threats and how flying in valleys and bowls with no horizon can trick you into false and dangerous flight attitudes. But the best bit was making approaches and landings on a very narrow ridge with steep, vertiginous drops on either side. On top of all this I had to navigate us successfully to and from RAF Valley where we had stopped to refuel. That sounds easy but it was a long time since I had flown at 90kt and, being much more used to four or five times that speed, I was constantly getting ahead of myself!

  Then there were landings in clearings. There were a few holes carved into the Shropshire woodland that the training school used for imparting this skill. They culminated in one that was only just big enough fo
r the Whirlwind’s rotor disc to go into and also had the tallest trees. However, once the right procedures had been learnt and applied it turned out to be fun, albeit challenging fun, and a bit tense as the trees came up around you. But, without doubt the most challenging exercises, that never seemed to get easier with practice, were engine-off landings. These were the helicopter pilot’s version of glide approaches in single-engined aeroplanes. However, in a fixed-wing aircraft the engine was just throttled back and so was always available should the practice go horribly wrong. But the steely-eyed rotarians did not have that fallback position. Once the descent to land had been started and the helicopter was in what is known as autorotative flight, the engine is pulled back to idle and declutched from the rotors. Thus there was no longer any possibility of re-engaging the power to the rotor blades until the landing had been made and the helicopter was stationary on the ground. That really puts you on your mettle!

  I only did one instrument flying trip and no night flying but by the end of May I felt sufficiently well trained to be able to go back and start converting to the Wessex. I had many enduring memories of this new form of flying. But one that abides happened on a solo flight when I was briefed to land in one of the many field sites that Shawbury used by arrangement with the local agricultural community. I navigated my way there successfully and then carried out the approved procedures to establish a safe approach to land. The ground looked firm and I set down. During a pause to take in the fact that I had just intentionally landed in a farmer’s field I looked around. Close by and completely undisturbed by this strange machine that had arrived from the sky was a herd of black and white cows, contentedly grazing the lush green grass. Ahead of me was a row of tall poplar trees and, with the wind coming from that direction, I had to take-off over them. There is a specific technique for this eventuality, called a towering take-off, so I applied the power and lifted vertically until I could see over the trees and accelerate forwards into the clear air beyond. There is a lot of truth in the saying that it makes much more sense to stop first and then land rather than using acres of concrete to do it the other way round! Based on my experience at Shawbury helicopter flying was going to be stimulating and enjoyable. I was looking forward to expanding my horizons in this very specific and special from of aviation.