Driving very excitedly, for other
reasons, off the St Malo boat, this week, for my house in the depths of Central
Brittany, who should shout out across the car deck but Mark Wilkinson,
‘Beechcraft Bananza Pilot Extrordinaire', one of the fifty odd pilots I beat to
Sydney in the, ‘not without incident', 2001 London to Sydney Air Race. Well, I
say 'beat' loosely, as I vividly remember back to those three shiny black
police helicopters, as I approached the old 'coat hanger' bridge, high over the
waters of Sydney Harbour.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Well, I say high, high for a cub!
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Just high enough to expedite the
aerial manoeuvre so meticulously planned, a week or so earlier, in Singapore,
taking into account, on the back of an old envelope, ‘g force' variables, ‘drag
co-efficients' and the like, all first leant in an old RAFVR Chipmunk 4000 feet
over Bristol's then very productive Filton airfield and her Brabazon 28 runway,
now destined for Concorde 002's first flight.<o:p></o:p>
The Aussie ‘flying squad' quickly
scrambled their machines and climbed to defend their precious prohibited air
space surrounding the sailing boat infested harbour. They came at me like a
swarm of angry bumble bees as if disturbed from some highly charged liaison or
sexual encounter!<o:p></o:p>
But looming up on the horizon,
through the heat of the mid day haze, was my ‘target'. I had failed to put my
wheels down, to start the stop watch, on Amy Johnson's foggy clogged Croydon
aerodrome (now playing field) , at the start of this race, to try and beat her
record to Darwin and I was damned if I was going to be thwarted , this time,
just by the ‘men in blue'.<o:p></o:p>
Also further flight variations
were looming, for Maurice, to an already meticulously planned and precisioned
flight to Australia, just in a tired old WW1 Piper Cub with a maximum air speed
of 55mph, for hours and hours, when full of ‘motion lotion'.<o:p></o:p>
Strong rumour from my badgering
questions to the Aussie pilots, over a 4 in the morning Singaporebreakfast
table, re height of bridge from road to the top etc., may just have been the
catalyst for me to now have two burly policemen, eye ball to eye ball with me
at less than 100 feet, flying backwards! <o:p></o:p>
"Air Race 35 do you read,
over?"......no answer....... the police man continues.....<o:p></o:p>
"That is as close as you
get to the bridge". "Expedite a
180 immediately" or words to that effect. <o:p></o:p>
Now the other two police
helicopters had closed in but flying facing forewords, in the conventional
manner. I could have sworn I could smell their after shave as they flew in neat
'vic' formation, one at 10 o'clock, the other at 2 o'clock. The original
helicopter continued flying on backwards at around 60mph positioned at 12
o'clock with their rapidly changing expressions on their faces now causing me slight
concern.<o:p></o:p>
OK, I thought, let someone else
‘loop' the old bridge. After all, ‘Liberty Girl' was only designed and built by
the Yanks, in 1943, to last just six weeks after the D-Day Landings and here
she was now approaching her 60thbirthday!
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