Well against the odds and thanks to my engineering friends I now have a new permit to fly for my VPM16 Gyroplane.

The picture shows an engineer of the old school, Gordon Smith who has still got the skill to take a sheet of metal and with no more than simple hand tools create items as diverse as a kettle drum or a cowling for an antique aircraft. Fortunately he also understands gyroplanes and has acted as an inspector for many years before recently retiring to concentrate on model building.

For me Gordon has now been replaced by Tony Melody who has vast experience but also a 300mile round trip to service my machine. The CAA office tasked with surveying my aircraft for the issue of a permit is only 15 miles away and was able to provide a prompt service. The inspector arrived in smart suit and shiny shoes only to be faced with Somerset fields awash with weeks of torrential rain. The access to the flying field is a farm track much neglected by the farmers and now only passable with a 4×4 and some determination.

Fortunately my hangar, a converted removal lorry, is a perfectly dry oasis (that can’t be the right word) amongst all this damp and the machine was seen to be in good order. As is often the case with CAA there was just one thing that stopped permit issue then and there; I was unable to show the weight and balance document that was sent to CAA when the last permit was issued. ‘No problem’ says I, ‘nothing has changed and you have the document or you wouldn’t have issued a permit’. Ah, ‘well archives can’t find it and so we will need you to produce a copy’.

So a quick trip to see my engineer of the time and Gordon was able to satisfy their needs; paperwork in order, permit issued, aircraft flying!

With only a week or so before I head back to New Zealand I have decided to let a fellow instructor take the machine away and market it on my behalf. He has agreed to address some minor issues and ensure the aircraft is in perfect condition following a 200 mile trailer ride back to his base.

Although this will be a sad day for me I have been spoilt by flying modern factory made aircraft and have decided to move on and leave G-YFLY to receive the TLC she needs from an enthusiast. And so it was that today flew the aircraft out of my field and landed where it could be de-rigged and loaded onto a smart trailer for a long journey North and the Tardis stands empty awaiting a new arrival but who knows when! By co-incidence, today a similar container holding three new machines left Germany on route Tauranga, I will be there to welcome it eagerly as these are even better aircraft than the Eagles we know.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 1:42 am and is filed under Gyrate Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.