Phil Perry

I really Like this video,. . . Veteran Captain Raps ( bit of a 'Character' ) commands his Last ever flight from SF to Frankfurt. . . .:Love the Harley Davidson bit, and some interesting 'Control Laws' info too. . . I have seen another vid with him landing at Frankfurt and taxying through a 'Carwash' from the fire crews on arrival at Frankfurt, but I can't find the link. ( If old Adolf H. could see this he'd be well chuffed. . . )

It is the 7th May 1945 and on this spring morning in the Bavarian mountains, a few days after the death of Hitler, the soldiers of the 44th infantry division that are manning a checkpoint have no idea that the young man in civilian clothes cycling towards them is going involve them in one of the most significant events in the as yet unimagined US space programme. The young man is Magnus von Braun, brother of Wernher, and he was sent as an emissary from a large group of V2 developers keeping their heads down in a nearby Ski resort called Oberjoch. Magnus has been chosen because he has the best English and, well because brutally he is the most expendable – ah the Germans! The story of the group’s departure from Peenemunde and subsequent travel to the States would make a good spy novel – including using a spelling mistake in their orders to allow them to pretend to be on an imaginary special mission and the hiding of 14 tons of documents in a mine in the Bavarian alps. The Russians even broadcast public pleas to the engineers to join them from the Russian controlled sector of Germany with promises of good treatment and housing. All of the major war powers knew that the German advances in rocketry were ahead of the rest of the World, and whilst the British and French were more interested in seeing who needed to be imprisoned for war crimes (both being on the receiving end of the V2) the Russians and Americans were desperate to grab equipment, rocket parts, documents and engineers. At the start of the twentieth century there were significant developments in rocketry in each of Russia, America and Germany; by Tsiolkovsky (he of the rocket equation) in Russia, Goddard (he of the space centre) in America and Oberth (he of the effect) in Austria – all three started looking at liquid fuelled rockets. Black powder solid rockets had been in military use for hundreds of years (aside: the star spangled banner includes the line “the red rockets glare” which was a reference to the British Navy rocket bombardment of Fort McHenry in the war of 1812), but as Artillery had developed to allow massive shells to be delivered over very long ranges almost all countries had abandoned black powder rocket research. So these individuals largely worked alone and often unfunded. But it was the Germans that really pushed the world on. There were two significant factors that pushed Germany to the forefront of research and that made it the leading nation in rocketry. The first of these was popular enthusiasm for space travel a spark ignited by a young Herman Oberth. Oberth wrote a doctoral thesis on space travel in 1922 but the University of Heidelberg rejected it as being too fanciful – so he published it as a pamphlet “Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen” (“By Rocket into Planetary Space”) initially 90 pages then reworked and made more accessible, it was a seminal work that fired the imagination of many. Max Valier was one of those inspired and he and others founded the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (space travel society) in a pub in Breslau in 1927. This society was was more than just a talking shop it actually wanted to build rockets and it managed to recruit more than 500 members. Valier himself died whilst experimenting with an early liquid fuelled engine on a test stand – it blew him up as he tried to light it in 1930. Oberth joined the VfR in 1929 and the group acquired the rights to use an old ammunition dump in Berlin as a base to build and test rockets. The famous film director Fritz Lang read Oberth’s book and commissioned him to be a consultant for the film Frau im Mond (Woman in the moon) to make it as technically accurate as he could, in a strange way this piece of fiction rendered a subsequent reality. The film company asked Oberth and the VfR to build a liquid fuel rocket as publicity stunt; they failed to do this in time but it gave them a start and another member (Rudolf Nebel) secured funding from the Reichsinstitute for chemistry and technology to do further development. Oberth recruited a teenage Wernher Von Braun, an avid astronomer from a wealthy family, to work on rocket building. The society’s first two rockets The Mirak and the Repulsor had several hundred launches but were tiny things little bigger than a large firework weighing only around 20Kg. Reidel holding a Mirak with a young von Braun standing just behind him to the right of the photo and Oberth standing just to the left of Reidel in the dark coat This tiny rocket that used a long stick for stability just like the ones you light of firework night – was just the first of eleven generations of von Braun rockets the final one being the 363 foot tall Saturn V that took man to the moon. The group had both practical and theoretical minds and that allowed significant development (when they weren’t landing a rocket on and setting fire to a local police building – oops), but money was also short especially given it was Germany in the early 1930s, they knew what they’d like to experiment with but didn’t have the funds to build it. The second factor that pushed Germany to the front of the rocketry world was the Treaty of Versailles – a treaty which had strict conditions on German artillery but didn’t mention rockets. Thus the German army had a unique interest in rocketry – so it was that in 1932 Captain Dornberger of the German Army turned up at the VfR to have a look what they were doing, they showed him a Mirak and launched it, but he was not as impressed with the VfR as an organisation as he was with von Braun as an Engineer. So he offered von Braun a position working on rockets with a budget for development – von Braun took a number of VfR members with him to the German Army development team and immediately set to work on what was deemed the Aggregat-1 or A1. The motor underwent a first test only a few months after von Braun joined, but it wasn’t a success – on the 21st December – it exploded on ignition (in an error just like Valier – the small gap between opening the valves and igniting the mixture allowed a build up of propellant). At 1.4 meters in length and weighing in at just over 100Kg with 3000N of thrust, this was a substantially bigger and more sophisticated vehicle than the tiny Mirak. It had regenerative cooling (pumping the cold propellant in pipes around the outside of the combustion chamber and nozzle to stop them from melting) and it had a single axis flywheel gyroscope to try and stabilise it. Artillery shells are stabilised by rotating the whole thing, this isn’t possible in a liquid fuelled rocket as the propellant is pushed to the side-walls of the tanks. The A1 was a failure but a fairly modest redesign produced the A2 which was nearly identical externally, but which moved the gyro to the middle of the rocket rather than the tip (along with some other changes) two were constructed and fired at the end of 1934 getting to a height of between 2 and 2.5Km. While the A2 was being built and tested, the A3 was being designed, it was significantly bigger and had a much improved engine and aerodynamics – importantly it had a three axis gyro controlling active guidance (jet rudders/thrust vectoring) – it was also designed to be supersonic. In the video below you can see the same sort of thrust vectoring system is being tested in the A5 prototype at about 50 seconds. Building an active inertial guidance system in the 1930s was extremely advanced – it always seems quite a stretch to believe inertial guidance systems can work at all – and indeed the version in the A3 had catastrophic problems. The A4 (the rocket that we now call the V-2) was on the drawing board by this stage and so a redesign of the smaller A3 with a new guidance system was labelled the A5 even though it ended up flying before the A4. The A5 rockets were flown from 1938 onward and reached altitudes of 12Km. The A5 brought together the technology needed to get into space from engine design through to aerodynamics – even though it was funded by an evil regime, it was a remarkable piece of engineering development only 6 years and five generations of rocket after the tiny Mirak. Once the A5 had flown, the A4 (V-2) design was then modified to encompass the lessons from the smaller A5 and was first flown in 1942. After the war both the Americans and Russians flew V2s and manufactured both parts and whole rockets. A number of variants were built and the first ever primate to reach space was on the top of a modified V-2 in 1948. The rhesus monkey Alfred II achieved 134Km altitude, unfortunately the parachutes failed so he didn’t have long to “enjoy” the accolade – Alfred I sadly suffocated on the launch pad. von Braun and his team were initially sidelined once they got to America as other military teams vied to build rockets, but when it was realised after a few years that things weren’t going very well von Braun was made head of the Army guided missile team – and there developed the Redstone rocket – which was widely recognised as a direct successor to the V-2, it first flew in 1953, it was a relatively short range nuclear missile; About a third as big again as a V-2 but with a lot of similarities including the same alcohol/LOx fuel mixture and a similar thrust vectoring system. After one failure to launch an early Redstone (it sat on the pad but had disconnected itself) – Chris Kraft (a senior Nasa figure) asked on the radio loop “what has gone wrong” several replies came over the radio – they were all in German. In the mid 1950s von Braun and several others from the V2 programme were asked to explain more about space travel to the American public. Aside from a series of magazine articles – they appeared in a number of Disney specials for ABC where von Braun was introduced to 40million watching Americans by Walt Disney himself. For von Bran and his team, there followed various iterations of the Redstone design – firstly Jupiter/Juno variants which put the first American satellite into space four months after Sputnik – this itself was an amazing feat as it was a design literally completed in weeks after the US Navy’s Vanguard had endless delays (what was the Navy doing building rockets anyhow?) , and then a further evolution to the Mercury Redstones that made the first US manned space flight with Alan Shepard. The finally there were the Saturn boosters, the Saturn 1 that was an evolution of the Juno and then finally the crowning glory the Saturn V. In one working lifetime and over around 11 generations this evolutionary sequence of rockets went from something that looked like a toy and had a ceiling of around 250m to a behemoth that took man to the moon. Footnote: I have concentrated on the development of rockets and not on the moral or human costs of that work or even on the question of how culpable von Braun and his colleagues were for the misery they produced. The group were probably not hard bitten Nazi’s; von Braun was even imprisoned for a while by the Gestapo. Many of them they were driven by a desire to get into space rather than establish a Third Reich. The rockets they designed were, nonetheless, used as a last gasp attempt to preserve Hitler’s terrible regime and the building of them at Mittelwerk produced more deaths and horrors for the slave labour force than even their intended targets.

One of my ( Brilliant ) Aussie instructors forced me to make all landings at the base airfield by pulling the engine back to idle just before entering the circuit, so that EVERY approach, from the training area was a NON powered practice forced landing. . .( He Slapped my wrist once on downwind, for forgetting carby heat ! ) but leaving the engine available if I made a BooBoo. . . so that every landing was a glide approach. I found this training and practice VERY valuable in later life. . . . Eg,. engine spluttered and died on late downwind at Blackpool Airport ( UK ) in a C-210, I had already lowered the gear ( thank you God. . . No 105 pumps of the emergency manual gear handle needed whilst trying to fly it at the same time ) I made a PAN call,. . ( Mayday was not really appropriate here, in the circuit at a large airfield which I could hardly miss. . ) I was able to land and use the inertia to turn off the huge runway so that I didn't hold up the RPTs. . . (737 / 757s ) ( *EDIT - I was given Mild Bollocking by ATC for NOT using the 'Mayday' call. ) Thank you again Alan Baskett. ( Berwick Vic. 1974 ) I Love you Sir.

Personally, I would give you a medal if I could mate. . . . .well done.

These delightful Lady SFOs are becoming endemic ( ! ) Lufthansa Cargo MD 11 landing at Quito. . .Spectacular urban scenery, almost at the Max aerodynamic capability of this aircraft due to the highest airport elevation on Earth. . . *Notice Flap setting in Degrees, rather than the Airbus ethos, of flaps 1, 2, 3 and Full. . . . I like the way the FO cheekily says "Have Fun" to the skipper just before the final landing approach. . .

One more A-330 clip With Thomas and Jenny. . . . Some really childish and stupid comments below the video on the actual PilotsEye site,. . .mainly about the way Jenny 'Jumped' when the TCAS Conflict alert sounded on the approach to Miami. Bloody uneducated trolls !

Apologies to Astroguy for drifting your thread Sir.

Beaucoup de compliments sur votre palier exceptionnel Monsieur St. Exupery!

We have a runway worse than that around these 'ere parts,. . .it's called Abbotts Bromley. and the dips ( 2 of them ) are Soooo deep, that an Antonov AN-2 which is based there actually disappears below ground level on take off, or landing. . . .Interesting Fairground ride. . .

Concord Pilot John Hutchinson - the REAL reasons that this aircraft crashed. . .

Yes, those Pilots Eye videos are superbly made. . .I've watched loads of them. Very informative too with all of the radio comms, and all with subtitles. like the way that this particular crew keep swopping from Swiss / German to English even when They're not talking to ATC. . . the external and Slo Mo shots are good too. . .

All my failures were flying Ultralights. All using 2 stroke engines. 3 were mechanical / electrical failures, the first was broken crankshaft at 2,500 feet, 2 miles from base. No drama, returned to the airfield with 800 feet remaining. Second one was an ignition coil fail in the cruise, 2,000 feet, landed in a field alongside the dairy cows.( Gemini Flash 2 Trike / R503 ) No 3 was caused by the exhaust stack falling off the aircraft,and the engine lost power ( Rans S6 / R503 ) while I was right seat passenger. The owner asked if I would take over ( ! ) made a turn from 1300 ft, and landed comfortably off runway, on the grass beside a cross runway ( we had just departed on runway heading ) YES, I KNOW you're not supposed to turn back ! The alternative was not good, and I decided that we had more than sufficient height and a favourable wind. (I asked the owner why he'd handed over control, He said "My Brain went into dialling tone mode" He had only recently qualified. This messed him up I'm afraid, and he gave up flying. Shame really.) Last one was losing a cylinder in an X'Air Mk1 / R582 Blue top, on the downwind leg at the local airfield. Not difficult, no drama, apart from having to push the aircraft 800 metres to the hangar. . NOW, ask me if I prefer FOUR stroke engines ?

I came across another Pilots Eye video last night,.featuring Herr Capitan Frick and Jenny, this time departing Zurich in an A-340, from pushback.

Most interesting explanation of the development of training in Australia, and a definite Uptick for the word 'Landamatics' Nev. . . I have also wondered, no doubt along with many others; why it was that spinning was deleted from the syllabus in the UK long ago also, considering the amount of stall spin fatalities there have been since. . .seems completely counter-intuitive. I doubt if governmental EX- PILOTS readily agreed with that idea. Another one of my pet dislikes is the tiny amount of Instrument Flying experience included in G.A. PPL training, three hours in the whole course in the UK. Not sufficient in my view.

All of my own real forced landings have been over territory in Englands's green and pleasant land.'. . . I have always been able to find something 'reasonable' on which to land. . . The field full of Prize Dairy cows, during the last UK Foot and mouth disease outbreak was a bit of a bugger, though. . .but, luckily I managed ( By Pure unadulterated panic ) to navigate a path between the cows and not hit any of them. . . .HOWEVER. . if the friendly farmer had known that my departure airfield was right next door to a farm with severe Foot and Mouth disease, and that the Min of Ag mdae us all drive into the Airfield over a bed of straw impregnated with various chemicals. . .he would have had a sense of humour failure and set fire to our plane. . . . Reason for FL ?. . Blown ignition coil. . .2 plugs / points - single ignition. . .

The ability to impart your store of aviation knowledge TO OTHERS is, as has been mentioned by others no this thread, a VITAL part of being a flight instructor.. some people that I have known, very good, knowledgeable pilots with many hundreds of hours flight time, do not necessarily have the TEACHING ability It's OK to do an Instructor course, and understand all of the theory of what you need to pass on,. . .but I've found that some people seem to have difficulty doing this when a student doesn't grasp the script that has been prepared. OK, so you have to try another tack, ie, attempt to explain and physically demonstrate the concept in a different way, but finally culminating in the same result. Not all students are equal in the thought processes required to get the info burned into their brain. . . some require repeated sessions to reinforce some of the lesson schedule. Eg. Friend of mine, professional HGV operator. . .just Couldn't get the LAST PART of the landings right.. . it took him 54 hours of dual training before the instructor trusted him to fly solo. I have since flown as a passenger with him, and would happily trust him to fly any of my family members. Was he as thick as a brick ?. . .I don't believe that. The Instructor should HAVE GOT HIM TO FLY with another mentor in the same aircraft ( His own plane by the way ) Just my own opinion. . . ( Dangerous ground again here,. . I am NOT a QFI ) I was taught to fly initially by n Ex-RAF Hurricane pilot who had himself been a instructor ,. .. the an RAF pilot volunteer Gliding instructor, and Finally by the Greatly admired ( By ME ) Alan Baskett at Casey Airfield, Berwick Vic.( 1972/3 ) There were around five different instructors at that school, and I flew with four of them. Their instruction techniques were vastly different, whilst trying to teach the same subject. . . .1) Alan B took me for my evaluation / trial instructional flight in a PA28 140. (VH-CHR ) I liked the 'solid' feel of the Cherokee, but hated the high top instrument panel which blocked the view forward in the climbing phase. He said that my flying was OK, and that next lesson, we'd switch to the C-150. ( no doubt to stop me Pommie bastard whingeing about the panel in the Cherokee ) Next lesson came around,. . Alan was off sick, and I went up in a C-150 ( VH-KQM ) with a bloke called Kevin.. . .can't recall his surname, but he made it clear that he didn't like Pommies and he was very Military and 'By the numbers' in his patter.. . (made a mental note to avoid the bastard in future ) I DID have to employ him lter on in my training when, once again, Alan B wasn't on duty that day. .. and he tried to teach me Forced Landings. . .he said "You need to be three paddock widths away from the field you've chosen. .. and turn base two paddock widths from the estimated landing point. . ." to this day, I still don't know what a standard bloody Victorian Paddock Width is. . . .but I digress. . . .He was probably a good instructor in other ways. . .perhaps. . . ( If you weren't a Pommie maybe ) The next few lessons were with Alan B. where I learned Many things,including how not to die on the final turn by crossing the controls the wrong way, ie kicking in loads of rudder to intercept the runway centreline,. .. overshooting it and then using top aileron to correct the rapid increase in secondary effect bank. . .. . .he took me up to 6500 feet to show me what would happen if I did. . . I NEVER FORGOT THAT PARTICULAR LESSON !. .we did two to the left, and one to the right, but had to call it a day as this big girl was going to ejaculate my breakfast all over the panel if we spun it again. . . he had already sent me solo at six and a half hours. . .I couldn't believe it when he got out,. . I thought he was going for a piddle. . .) My solo mount was a ice little blue and silver 150 named VH-RXV Next lesson: Alan had a severe toothache and wasn't there when I arrived,. .. so another nice instructor took me up,. .. I forget his name, but he was a really nice chap, who told me he was only instructing to build some hours for airline flying and where was I with my training ?. . .I said we were doing circuit entries to Moorrabbin and Essendon last lesson,. . .he said, well, there's an American Aircraft Carrier moored up in Westernport bay,. . D'you wanna go and have a look at that ?. . Of Course I did. . .there were lots of light Aircraft circling and doing touch and goes on it's deck. . . and he couldn't get permission,. . jeeze, that was a BIG ship. . . and it would have been nice to do a T+G. . .but it wasn't to be. . . My Fourth Mentor was a straggly looking bloke named David Squirrell. . . a Terrific bloke. . .funny as a a bag full of monkeys,. .. always joking. . but a severely Good Cropduster pilot and flying Instructor. . . .he taught me loads of 'Cheats' and odd things that you really should'nt do in polite society. . . .he-checked me out on VH-TIG, the only DH82A on the field and all the memories came flooding back. He let me solo it in under two hours,. . .since most of my UK experience had been in that type. . . He checked me out on the C-210, and the Cherokee Six 300, [lus C-172 / 182 / 177 RG / C-180./ Aeronca Champ. . . .amongst other types, over four and a half years at that site, I flew the Aerosubaru Fuji FA200/180 including Aeros, the Victa 115 and the Auster 6. . . Plus some twin time in an old Apache. . . Actually Alan B and Dave shared all this checking out stuff,. .. but it was a wonderful time to be alive and to sample the various techniques that different instructors used to get the point across. . . .THEY ALL HAD VASTLY DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT THIS,. . .That was fairly obvious. ! But it seemed to work as I've never crashed or even scratched a airframe,. ( Four Forced landings included here ) . and I'm still here and able to post all this crap. . . Here endeth another of Phil's life story rants. . . . . ( If you just ignore me,. .. I'll go away. . .)

You keep at it Astroguy. . . .you could well be a GREAT instructor and Mentor. . .just make sure you get some decent avaition experience in the meantime mate. . .all the best to you. Kind regads,. . .Phil.

In the UK anyhow,. .. a single bloke with ONE aeroplane needs a minimum of 475 hours a Year to even break even. . .which, in the current financial climate, means that only HUGE corporations can operate flying schools. . .they Miss out on the really GOOD instructors in this way it seems. . . .SAD. . .

Hey mate,. . .No offence Intendned. . . . Bin there. . .Dun that. . . .

That's easy. . .If they understand your coarse Mode. . . . .

Noooo. . . Due to my Amateur Radio prowess, I was able to send and recieve at approx 30 WPM morse,. . but ATC were not as good at it on that day( Apparently ) ( Shocked I was . . .)

My daft mate George,. . .was flying his Foxbat across the English Channel to LeTouquet and he missed 'SEEING' the airfield ( It is huge ) and said to the French ATC,. . ."I'll see you on the way back. . . "

Probably Right OK,. . .I made the classic mistake of forgettig to wind the aerial back in when landing landing at Archerfield. . .as you do. . . .

OMG. . .I've bin CAUTIONED . . . .Listen Phil. . . .If you Don't like my Post, then SAY SO.. . . .Lets have a sensible argument. OK ?. . .My OPINION is just that. . . . .doesn't make it right does it ?. . . throwing yellow paint over it doesn't make sense really mate. . .If you disagree with me, then let's hear the reasoning in your argument lad. . . ..otherwise you're simply chucking shyte up the wall of my house for no reason. . . .

I once 'ferried' a C-180 from Darwin to Brisbane i the 1970s. . .it had an HF rig radio and a morse key protruding from the panel on the RHS.with a plastic base to hold your wrist ! I tried ( for a larf )to send a position report using CW to Darwin FSU, but they called back and asked for it to be sent on 'Phone. . . so I had to wind out the longwire antenna 105 turns on the handle and talk to them on shortwave . . . .bloody amateurs. . .!