Andy opened by saying that thirty years of fooling around in aeroplanes had taught him that a sense of humour was vital and went on to demonstrate this.

Often the most bothersome events happened while flying with guest pilots on overseas demonstrations. The Algerian air force required that the Hawk demonstrate its ability to carry a 4,000 weapon load over a certain range and their CTP decided that he would cross the mountain range to the south of Boufarik and then descend to low level and fly at maximum speed to the target; a large outcrop of rocks in an expanse of flat desert.

He flew competently and as the nose went down and the speed went up he began to sing in operatic style; the lower the aircraft the louder the singing. As the target was approached it became clear that there were two rocky outcrops with a narrow cleft through which Andy realised the CTP intended to fly! As there was a fair amount of room Andy acquiesced and in any case the singing was now so loud that communication was impossible. As they entered the cleft at 500 knots they passed by, not over, a startled group of camels indicating to Andy just how low they were. During the subsequent climb all went quiet, the opera was over and Andy was, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words.

A less amusing event followed when the Algerian President visited Boufarik to witness a demonstration, with an Algerian pilot on board, including spinning. Andy was to fly the initial high speed low altitude fly-by and zoom to 10,000 ft. whence a ten turn spin would be performed. Initially all went well but when Andy pulled up to execute a wingover to fly back towards the airfield for the high speed pass the Algerian announced very loudly “I fly, I fly”, and grabbed the controls. He ignored Andy’s “I have control” calls several times and as they crossed the airfield boundary at well over 500 knots and well below 50 ft he shouted “My President, I fly” as he continued to push lower. Andy could only pull as hard as possible hoping that the control linkage would not fail. The rest of the flight went calmly; but it was an experience Andy wished never to see repeated.

On a trip to Tunisia with G-HAWK in desert camouflage carrying dummy bombs painted bright orange Andy flew with a local pilot setting off in a southerly direction at high speed and low level. Conversing in broken French it was not clear whether the pilot was comfortable with flying and navigating. They were flying south for an awfully long time in a country which comes to a very fine point at its extremity; after which it is Libya!

Suddenly they flew across an airfield; and there are no airfields in southern Tunisia, so Andy knew it was time to go back north. He never found out if the Libyans on the airfield were diving for cover or simply hadn’t noticed. Later Andy was told that his copilot was a VIP’s relation who had just got his PPL and not a military pilot at all.

The BAe marketing people made much of the fact that the Hawk could carry four 500 kg and five 250 kg bombs; and sometimes the pilots had to prove it. For a particular demonstration G-HAWK still had the low powered Adour 151 so take off had to be with full flap which was fine so long as full flap was selected only after the nose wheel was off the ground otherwise the aircraft would not rotate. Without full flap Dunsfold’s runway was not long enough. As required Andy rotated G-HAWK and lowered full flap, the aircraft became airborne so he raised the undercarriage. But at 160 knots the aircraft sank with almost no runway left. Andy raised the nose to achieve maximum angle of attack and the aeroplane flew - just. He then noticed that the flap gauge indicated full up although his selector was at full down. The visitor in the back seat, a very experienced Egyptian pilot, had decided to raise the flaps and his control, the instructors, overrode Andy’s in the front cockpit. Happily an alert air traffic controller saw that the aircraft was about to hit the arrester barrier net, which would have been disastrous, so he immediately dropped it. G-HAWK just cleared it and the trees beyond.

In Egypt Andy flew with an Air Force General in G-HAWK, again fully loaded with dummy bombs, who took him on a low level 500 knot flight past the pyramids and out into Western Desert, then militarily active due to tension with Libya. Ahead Andy noticed a small hill with a radar installation on top so warned the General. “OK” he replied as they flashed over the unit, scattering the crew of the anti-aircraft missile system. The General was now roaring with laughter. Andy asked him if there might be any repercussions. “No chance, all complaints come to my desk!” the General replied.

For a Hawk delivery flight to Abu Dhabi BAe had been requested that their pilots accompany the ferry pilots for experience. It is the responsibility of the customer’s embassy to obtain Diplomatic Clearances to overfly the countries on the route and the accompanying pilots were asked to bring the documents with them to Dunsfold.

All went well across France, past Italy to Malta for refuelling, then through Greek airspace and on towards Cairo whose Air Traffic seemed unhappy. They requested the Dip. Clearance number and were given it by the man in the back seat. This unusually long number was queried but before the matter was resolved radio contact was lost and they were nearing Luxor where the usual welcome was given.

When ready to depart clearance to taxi was curtly refused and the crew was ordered to shut down and report to Air Traffic. Cairo had complained that Egyptian air space had been invaded by a foreign military aircraft with no diplomatic clearance! A long conversation in Arabic between the Egyptians and the Abu Dhabi pilots ensued and the pilots were told to wait. Before long an old friend, the Inspector of Quarantines and Inoculations, gave an assurance that the predicament could be resolved … but there would be considerable expenses. He disappeared and the guest pilots were taken away, by stern looking escorts.

Eventually the friend returned, not in his well worn local garb but resplendent in a double breasted pin stripe suit which was not exactly his size and lacked fly buttons, no shirt or socks but a pair of dusty black and white shoes, presumably all bought from the local soukh out of the expenses. He said the pilots were all to be placed under arrest but as the British were good friends they could choose their own hotel of imprisonment whilst the customer pilots were to go to a military jail. A very expensive luxury hotel on Crocodile Island was selected as all bills were to be picked up by the customer. Next day the ferry continued with very quiet copilots and the bill for imprisonment was met without query.

Early in his career at Dunsfold Andy flew a routine production test flight on a refurbished export Hunter. On getting airborne he found the air conditioning stuck very uncomfortably in Flood Flow- fully hot. The first part of the schedule was a climb to 48,000 ft during which Andy made notes and spoke occasionally to London Military Radar when he realised somebody was shouting at him, the Controller who had notice that nobody was responding. Andy was very very dopey and losing consciousness but managed to select emergency oxygen. Still feeling quite ill he decided to operate the seat mounted oxygen bottle but could not get it to work because the operating cable was jammed, so he passed out. He came-to in a fairly steep supersonic dive with a town beginning to fill the windscreen but happily there was enough height to recover.

Back at Dunsfold Andy suggested to Chief Inspector Jock Gould that the gas in the oxygen system was not actually oxygen and suggested blowing the gas through a lighted cigarette which oxygen would cause to pop and produce a bright flame: result, no bright flame. Apparently during long refurbishments oxygen tanks were filled with air and this time the purging and replenishment had been missed. Also the cable to the seat bottle had been misrouted. The symptoms of anoxia vary with individuals and Andy’s was to feel stiflingly hot so he was unable to spot this effect with the cabin air fully hot.

    For a radio range test flight on a Hawk the briefing was to keep flying west over the Atlantic until contact was lost. Half joking Andy said it would be just their luck (the Captain this time was Sq Ldr Dave Young, the Operational Requirements Liaison Officer - ORLO) for the engine to fail at this point, so they asked Flight Development to change the height so that contact would probably be lost over the Scilly Isles. As predicted contact was lost over the Scillies and as they turned for home there was a high frequency buzz from the engine followed by the oil pressure warning light! An emergency diversion to Culdrose was requested but the station was closed for runway resurfacing so St Mawgan was offered instead and accepted. Shortly afterwards there was an appalling noise like a circular saw followed by a profound silence. St Mawgan seemed a bit put out by the trouble being caused and after the dead-stick landing asked Andy to move onto the turn-off to make way for landing aircraft! When he said he would need a tractor they actually asked why. St Mawgan was a world of four engined aircraft.

In the early testing of the Hawk Andy discovered a severe engine vibration at about 93% rpm above 43,000 ft. No indication could be found on the instrumentation and the Adour engine was trouble-free in the Jaguar so there must be, some said, either a problem with Hawk or with Andy. It was even suggested outside Dunsfold and Kingston that he should be replaced as Project Pilot. To the rescue came Chief Designer Hawk, Gordon Hudson, who flew in the back seat. By the top of the climb to 48,000 ft Gordon had, correctly, felt no vibration, so Andy said “Why don’t you bring the power back to about 93% now for cruise flight?” As he did so there was a horrendous onset of vibration. “What the hell is that?” said a moderately alarmed voice. “That’s the vibration that everybody says is not there”, replied Andy.

Back at Dunsfold Gordon immediately got on the phone to Chief Designer Adour using a lot of strong language. The cause was found to be longitudinal vibration or shaft shuttling, a known problem with two-spool engines. A simple spring loading modification was the cure and a mod. was on the shelf at Rolls. The problem had been known all along by Rolls and MoD(PE), it was just a question of who should pay for the mod. should it become necessary. By the way, the engine instrumentation on the Hawk recorded only radial, lateral and vertical vibration!

    Whilst at Boscombe Down having recently converted to the Harrier and done some flight refuelling trials Andy was told to collect a Harrier from Dunsfold and fly it New York to be a spare for post transatlantic air race demonstrations. Given about two days notice he was told that all he had to do was link up with the tanker and they would do the rest. He had a miserable flight with cloud the whole way across and severe toothache hampering vision in one eye. Because of bad weather on the east coast of the States they was diverted to Gander arriving in a snow storm.

Next day as they approached New York the tanker surprised Andy by announcing that he was departing for Georgia leaving him to negotiate the NY Metroplex with only rudimentary navigation kit; and then the TACAN failed leaving no navigation kit at all. Andy was then diverted to a USMC base in Pennsylvania, arriving on a wet Sunday afternoon to be greeted warmly by the base commander. As the Colonel opened the door of his quarter Andy was struck dumb by the presence of an extremely well endowed young lady in a very inadequate and more or less transparent nightie. “Andy, this here is Doris. She is my fourth wife. Don’t you think she has a beautiful body?” said the Colonel. They took Andy out to a sumptuous dinner that night and it became clear the Colonel, and possibly Doris, would do anything to get him to fly the Harrier. Happily the Colonel finally had one Jim Beam too many and Doris drove them home where they all slept peacefully - and alone. Next morning Andy flew the Harrier along a low level military corridor requiring no navigation aids to Floyd Bennett Field, safely clear of the Metroplex.

John Crampton had persuaded the French to accept the idea of a Harrier demonstrating a landing on a helicopter carrier, the training ship Jeanne d’Arc. Although he had never operated from a ship Andy was selected to fly a hastily repainted AV-8A to the ship whose Captain would hold it on a steady course at 20 knots with the wind 30 degrees off to one side. Visibility was not good so Andy called the ship. Silence. He called again. Still nothing. All of a sudden and very luckily he caught a glimpse of something large and grey and was astonished to hear the voice of Danny Norman. While, rather late, the deck was being cleared of helicopters, the Captain decided to slow his unstabilised ship with a hard turn and reversed engines. This stopped the ship but left it rolling and pitching. Coming to the hover over the aft deck with the mast structure right in front of him, swaying, heaving and pitching, and festooned with dozens of cadets, was an unforgettable sight for Andy. The Captain refused to believe that it had been Andy’s first ship landing but broke open a bottle of Champagne anyway.

So ended Andy’s talk which opened many eyes to the perils of test and demonstration flying and won the audience’s admiration for the technical and improvisational skills of our test pilots. And, of course, it was delivered in Andy’s inimitable witty and entertaining style. The vote of thanks was given by Duncan Simpson.