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The sky is the limit
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We've heard of an attitude problem, but what's an altitude problem? Our traveller explores the skies over New Zealand in a WWII biplane.
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Airliners are comfortable, cushioned and buffered transporters. They take you across continents in comfort, with reclining seats, fine wines and loads of in-flight entertainment at the touch of a button. You might experience some mild bumps due to turbulence and the tell-tale popping of ears, but that's about all the discomfort you'll ever encounter.
But for an in-your-face, seat-of-the-pants flying experience, you need to go up in a flying machine, like I did in Wanaka, New Zealand. When Capt. Peter Hendriks handed me a heavy leather jacket like the ones I have seen in Commando War Comic books, I wondered how old it must be - I got an answer when he opened his hangar door and wheeled out the plane that goes with the jacket - a 1941 Tiger Moth, largely comprising of fabric and wood. Flying up front in that Tiger Moth dressed in authentic flying garb from an era long gone was fulfilment of a childhood wish. This was pure, undiluted flying. The cold wind in your face, the purposeful shuddering of the plane, the roar of its four- cylinder, 130 horsepower piston engine turning the fixed-pitch, two blade wooden propeller...
Soon, in front of me, the altimeter was spinning like a clock on steroids and I couldn't stop grinning. This was a plane straight out of the innumerable Second World War books sitting on my bookshelf, and the Tiger Moth is what Spitfire pilots trained in during the Second World War. I was so caught up in the experience that I ended up looking out for a Hun in the sun. As I went crazy with my camera taking in the landscape from my vantage point above, light movements on the joystick told me that Peter was constantly controlling the plane from somewhere behind me. Inside these old biplanes, you really can't look straight ahead because the instrument panel blocks your vision. You need to keep popping out your face from the sides to take a peek ahead. I realised the utility of heavy flying garb, because up there in the clouds, it was cold enough to freeze an Eskimo.
The antique metal and coiled wire headphones over my ears crackled with Peter's conversations with the airport tower, and whenever I wanted to talk to him, I had to toggle a switch on the instrument panel that would switch on the intercom. After a 40-minute spin in the air which also included Peter demonstrating his acrobatic skills by doing a loop, we headed back towards Wanaka airfield and touched down on the grass strip.
I've flown in huge Airbuses and gigantic jumbo jets, but this 40-minute how-do-you-do with the blue over Wanaka remains my most intense flying experience ever.
To experience this for yourself when you're there, write to Peter Hendriks at classicflights@hotmail.com
RISHAD SAAM MEHTA
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