Flying Podcast

I was contacted by some folks from Wakatipu Aero Club, down there in New Zealand, saying that they’d like to appear on the Podcast. One of their instructors is a chap called Alex Turnbull. He is originally from Morpeth in the North East of the UK and has travelled all the way to the other side of the world to pursue his dream of flying GA in a really interesting and challenging environment.

Today I’m visiting my old stomping ground of Barton Aerodrome to talk to one of the guys in the control tower. The chap that’s featuring on the podcast is Mark Knowles and if you've ever landed or taken off from Barton chances are you will have spoken to Mark at some point. Mark is a Flight Information Service Officer at the airport and I was interested to hear what the role of a FISO was in particular at a busy licensed aerodrome like Barton.

A Typhoon pilot and engineer give me a close up description of the aircraft. Flying Officer Gregor Ogston was kind enough to spend half an hour or so, explaining what all of the knobs, buttons and dials do inside the cockpit. Gregor also explains what the ejection sequence is, which is fascinating to listen to. Following the look inside the aircraft Liam Whelan, the display engineer manager, and Gregor took me round the outside of the aircraft.

An interview with Scott Beaver who plans to fly around the world. We talk about his flying experiences to date and what's involved in planning for his global adventure.

As promised, here’s the interview with Syd Marshall. Syd is a volunteer guide at the Battle of Britain memorial Flight museum, and what a great interview it turned out to be. I wasn’t expecting to meet a WW2 Lancaster crew member so it was not only a pleasant surprise, for me, but Syd had some great stories to tell about his time as a flight engineer on Lancaster bombers.

At the invitation of RAF Coningsby, today I’m visiting the Typhoon Display Team to find out what it’s like to fly the Typhoon and to get a taste of what it takes to put together the superb Typhoon display. The 2 members of the team that I’m talking to are: Flying Officer Gregor Ogston who is the display team manager and Sergeant Liam Whelan the Typhoon display engineer manager.

An interview with several of the staff at the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight based at RAF Coningsby. I spoke with Yvonne Masters, the PR Officer and a couple of the engineers lucky enough to work on the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancaster, Dakota and Chipmunks.

Continuing with the Lincolnshire theme, today I'm at Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre. The centre is home to several WWII aircraft, most notably a Lancaster bomber and a Dakota; both of which are available for taxi rides. I started my podcast interview with Andrew Panton who runs the museum and concluded with a chat with Paddy Green, owner of the resident Dakota.

An interview with Malcolm Howland who runs Fly365 Flying School and also works for Thruster Microlights, both based at Wickenby Airfield in Lincolnshire. We talk about the history of the Thruster from its early days in Australia right up to the present day with manufacturing of new aircraft on the airfield. Malcolm also tells me about his flying career and what brought him to be a flying instructor and what part he has played in the Thruster story.

Today I'm visiting Sherburn Airfield in Yorkshire to meet a fellow pilot, Brian Cattle. Brian is a very keen aviator and has been flying privately for quite a few years now. Dedicated and passionate flyers are always welcome on the podcast so I'm glad to say Brian's agreed to come on the podcast to share the experiences of his flight training from PPL to CPL and on to Flying Instructor.

An interview with Captain Marc Rowley, a pilot with the North West Air Ambulance service. Marc tells me about how the charity air ambulance works and what it's like to fly helicopters for such an important emergency service.

A chat with Rob Hart from Sky Demon. Sky Demon started out by developing VFR flight planning software and have since brought out their own aviation GPS unit. The flight planning software first caught my eye due to the quality of their charts which, I'm told, are built using adaptive vectors. That means that the detail on the map is always extremely clear no matter what level of zoom you are using. The main driver behind the product's development is to present all relevant data to the pilot in as clear a way as possible and this they have accomplished well. Even NOTAM and weather briefing information is presented both in text form and graphically on the charts in a simple straightforward fashion.

An interview with William Moore of Airbox Aerospace. William describes his Aware and Aware Plus GPS units. The Aware GPS device was developed in association with NATS to help reduce the number of controlled airspace infringements in the UK.

An interview with Tony Cowan MBE, Chairman of Sky Watch Civil Air Patrol. Sky Watch is an all volunteer charity consisting of pilots, observers and groundcrew. They work alongside the country's police and search and rescue organisations acting as aerial observers in emergency situations.

By way of a follow up to episode 33 I'm interviewing another UK pilot that chose to go the USA to do his flight training. This episode features Oli Cooper who chose a flight training school at Long Beach Airport and that's Angel City Flyers. Oli tells us about his experiences of fininshing off his PPL training in the US and how going for an FAA license affected his flying back in the UK.

This episode of Flying Podcast features Steve Bridgewater, Commercial Director at Air Atlantique’s Classic Flight. Classic Flight do a superb job of keeping some classic old British Aircraft in airworthy condition. They have recently opened ‘Airbase’ at Coventry Airport. Airbase is not a museum in the conventional sense but more a working hangar that allows visitors to go and have a look around. In addition they also offer pleasure flights in several of their aircraft.

Episode 33 of Flying Podcast features a fellow Barton flyer called Dave Crozier who trained in the US some time back. My first question for Dave was ‘what was your experience of flight training in the USA?’ His response was that he'd been struggling to get his PPL completed over here in the UK. The weather in England was conspiring to prevent him getting his flying licence so he decided to go over to the US to complete his training. After a great deal of research, Dave chose UK Flight Training of Long Beach in California. He chose California due to the predicted better weather and with 360 flying days a year who could argue.

Episode 32 of Flying Podcast sees me back up to York to interview Peter Davies. Peter is an instructor on gyrocopters for the Gyrocopter Experience. He currently runs their Preston franchise. Quite by chance, when I was reading about gyrocopters I came across Peter’s name and I was fascinated to read about his experiences in the world of aviation. His flying pedigree goes way back to the early days of hang gliding and microlighting here in the UK and so I thought he’d make a good candidate to appear on the podcast.

I was interested to find out what it takes to become a flying instructor and what is involved in getting a flying instructor rating. For episode 31 of Flying Podcast I’m talking Martin Hatton. Martin spends much of his time training flying instructors for Ravenair, based at Liverpool Airport and City Airport, Manchester.

Craig is at the point in his flying career where he’s about to launch into training for the ATPL and he’s trying to decide where to do his ATPL groundschool studies and the CPL/IR flight training. He thought that the decision making process that he’s going through would make for an interesting podcast.