Each week, our entertainments reporter tries out a new activity. See the latest How to.. This page last updated: Thursday, March 23, 2006 .
How to: learn to fly
Microlight instructor Ian MacAdam (front) takes reporter Duncan Hall to the skies. (5CW0802041) Picture: Hannah Redshaw
NORMALLY, I am quite happy to have both my feet planted firmly and squarely on the ground.
I think it is only a natural state to be in, and is proven by the fact I have never been able to jump very high off the ground, have generally lived at or below sea-level for most of my life, and have never particularly liked being up in high buildings or on mountains.
But after my first flight in a microlight I think that way of life may have to change.
That wasn’t what entered my head on the morning the feature was suggested to me by the lovely Gemma, who works in our promotions department.
Part of me thinks she didn’t believe I would agree to it, but then us How To reporters are made of strong stuff.
And are generally quite stupid.
Just how stupid was becoming plainly obvious when our car pulled up at Chatteris Airfield, just off the A141 between Chatteris and March.
The craft I saw before me looked awfully small, especially with what looked like a kite wing on top of it.
The cabin of the flexwing microlight was open to the elements, with enough room for two people to sit one behind the other. At the back was a propeller which, as well as creating a heck of a lot of noise, also provided the craft with the thrust to allow it to take off.
Despite it being a very warm day, instructor Ian MacAdam insisted on my putting on a flight suit, which made me look like a distant cousin of the Michelin Man.
We both donned crash helmets and microphone and headphone sets to make ourselves heard as we flew.
By the time I had lowered myself into the passenger seat, with no little loss of dignity, I was beginning to get the butterflies going in my stomach.
The craft seemed to vary between the extremely complex and the worringly simple. Controlling the thrust required a whole range of dials and switches.
But, deciding on the direction to go simply took two hands on the flexwing, which was like a hang-glider wing attached to the cockpit. You pulled left to go left, right to go right, up to rise and down to plummet landwards.
I swear you could hear my heart beating over the intercom, as we taxied up to the grass runway.
But it seemed to take next to no time before the craft had hit 40mph and we were suddenly up in the air, climbing at a fast rate. The ground turned into a patchwork cloth, the temperature suddenly dropped, and you could see for miles around.
The closer we were to the ground the more turbulence we encountered, making anything I had experienced on a jumbo jet seem like chickenfeed.
But aside from the odd jolt, and the amazingly loud prop behind my head, it felt just like we were floating.
Looking down at the speedometer I could see we were actually cruising at 60mph, but it felt like we were standing still, especially when Ian took us up to 3,500ft at cloud level.
It was here I got my first experience of steering the craft, which was much easier than I thought. Dropping the wing made the nose drop, and increased the speed as we began to go into a dive, while raising the wing slowed us down and took us higher.
Our speed varied between 30mph, when it felt almost like we were going in reverse, and 80mph, mainly when we were headed in a downward direction.
The craft was amazingly manouevrable too, as Ian demonstrated when he asked me with a glint in his eye, whether or not I liked roller-coasters.
It was an amazingly exhilarating feeling to be up there, though, seeing the world stretched out below us, with little more than some moulded fibreglass between us and certain destruction.
I almost didn’t want to come back down again, but, when we did, it was amazingly smooth – smoother in fact than some commercial flights I had been on!
When Hannah, our photographer, took a flight, I could see how high up we had been – or rather I couldn’t, as the craft seemed to just turn into a speck in the sky, with only the noise of the prop letting you know it was there.
The craft itself has a 300-mile range, with a maximum height of 16,000ft, and was easily transportable in a trailer with the wing going into a cigar-shaped holder.
Ian, who is a fully-qualified Civil Aviation Authority approved instructor, used to pilot microlight flights around the Victoria Falls in Africa, before coming back to Britain to work as an instructor.
His company, Learn To Fly, aims to give students a National Private Pilot’s Licence which requires a minimum of 25 hours in the air, including 10 hours of solo flying and 15 hours of dual flights with an instructor.