MY TIME AT ABERDEEN

MY TIME AT ABERDEEN with THE PEGASUS FLYING CLUB & ABERDEEN AERO CLUB
by Jon Price





Behind me and the Lake Amphibian, which Forbes 'got hold of' for a summer on the basis he was going to do pleasure flights off some Scottish locks, is the clubhouse, a mobile caravan! You can also see the old Hangar which both clubs used.




Tell anyone that BOAC operated a Viscount and they wouldn't believe you, well here is the proof! Note Forbes bowser on the far left, just behind it out of shot was the portacabin belonging to the Aberdeen Aero Club.



 
HOW I GOT MY FIRST JOB BY FLYING BACKWARDS!
 
After gaining my flying instructors rating I needed a job, it was the time around the 70s fuel crisis and there was little hope. My wonderful mother came to the rescue by phoning every flying school in the country while working at the GPO in Baskerville House, Birmingham. There were just two jobs available, one at the Cheshire Air Training School at Liverpool, which thankfully I didn't get, and one at the Pegasus Flying Club in Aberdeen.

Aberdeen was a long way away and when you have little or no money its even further! However I got the train up there to meet the owner, Peter Forbes. Peter was a dapper, rugged, eccentric, handsome character in his fifties with a cravat, jeans and motorcycle boots! He was an ex army man and spoke with a bit of a plumb in his mouth. which everyone reckoned was put on! He was one of those characters that oozed charisma, when he spoke, you listened. I was impressed immediately with Peter but not with the flying school which was a tatty old small mobile caravan! Next to the caravan was a small green hangar which was in much better condition than the caravan. It had been used by the famous Gander Dow when he had started his pioneering Scottish island services in Dragon Rapides but that is another story.
Peter had two Cessna 150s and a Cessna 172. There was another full time instructor, the charming old fashioned, Liz Gliddon who was married to Paul, a Bristow's helicopter pilot. There was another rather large butch looking grumpy female who was also a skiing instructor who I immediately took a dislike to, thankfully she was only part time!
I went thorough a very informal interview with Peter and he then asked me to take him on a flight. It was dark by this time as we set off in the Cessna 150. He asked me to demonstrate a stall at night which I thought a little bizarre but no matter I did what I was told. He then asked me to climb up to 5000 feet and turn onto a westerly heading and he then asked me to fly as slowly as possible. I felt quite uncomfortable about this as I slowed right down into the very strong upper wind he said ,"Now look out of the window, you are flying backwards over Aberdeen"! And that's how I got my first job, by flying backwards!

Peter arranged for me to stay that night with a very peculiar effeminate blond haired chap who had a flat near the airport. The deal was I would fly him or rather let him fly back down to Birmingham and I would accompany him. Everyone obviously thought I was an experienced pilot! He was nice enough but very odd, he used to insist on all the sauce bottles being turned upside down and the butter had to be scraped from the end not the top, what a twat!!!
The flight back to Birmingham went well and after Christmas I returned to start my new job.


Forbes always made a point of of inviting any celebrity who was in Aberdeen to the club for a flight. He was mortified that Anita Harris refused his invitation. No problem with Michael Barratt the anchor man from NATIONWIDE, he accepted Forbes offer of a flight in the Cessna 172. Here he is being shown the Tipsy Nipper or as Forbes called it, 'The Kipper'!

I was very excited at being at Aberdeen and I was also very worried, I was not used to terrain flying or to a busy airport and Aberdeen was very busy, being then at the peak of the oil boom.

My first lasting memory of my initial efforts was that I was actually learning more than the students I was teaching! I think my first detail was to check out a PPL in the Cessna 172. In those days Aberdeen had four runways(2 lengths) and we were using the cross runway (now closed) while the big stuff was using the main North/South runway. After being told to orbit at the end of the downwind leg I was told to, " call on final". The student was actually on the centreline of the landing runway at this time and due to his large orbit I called "on final" the controller replied, "continue", obviously thinking I would continue the orbit but we interpreted this as continue on final approach and the scene was set up for a near miss. My attention was completely taken by the student, I was checking him out in an aircraft I was barely familiar with myself at an airfield I was unfamiliar with too. Unknown to me there was a BA Viscount approaching to land on the cross southerly runway. We did a touch and go on the easterly runway, amazingly unseen by  anyone in the tower or the other aircraft but when we lifted off across the runway the Viscount was landing on, the Viscount pilot was heard to say," Christ that was a bit fxxxing close wasn't it"?
It resulted in the BA captain quite correctly filing an airmiss and some awkward questions being asked of everyone on duty in the tower that day. The CAA Ops Inspector interviewed me but as it was my first ever instructional detail he apportioned most of the blame elsewhere. It shook me up quite a lot it was my first real hard lesson but it would not be the last, Aberdeen was in fact the quickest and longest lasting learning exercise of my entire flying career! The embarrassing thing was that the controller concerned flew with the Pegasus Flying Club and I would later fly with him at British Midland were he became a Captain after leaving ATC! (Hello Malcolm!)

My next big lesson was the weather. I took up a Doctor, Moreton Mair on a lesson one morning and we flew out to the west, returning after around an hour. As we approached Aberdeen I could see that there was low cloud completely covering the airfield and all the land area to the south and north of the airfield. Moreton got quite excited and immediately asked me what I was going to do. I replied," Don't worry, its no problem". I well remember looking out of my side window and saying quietly to myself, " what the fuck do I do now". Aberdeen had no radar in those days, not that I knew how to or had ever done a radar approach. Not that I had ever even done a let down for real in cloud before! As I waited for a miracle to happen I heard the British Airways  BAC 1-11 come on frequency, just airborne for Heathrow, I knew I was saved . The Rolls Royce Spey engines on the 1-11 put out so much black smoke you would think they ran on old tyres rather that kerosene! As I looked ahead I could see that today was going to be no exception. Sure enough it had left a nice black trail as it had come through the cloud and that had to be where the other end of the runway was I needed. I flew over the smoke at right angles timed 30 seconds then turned 90 degrees and let down to 300 feet before breaking cloud, out we popped downwind, exactly opposite the landing runway. My heart rate was so high I felt like calling upon Moreton's services there and then but carried on the charade and landed as if it was something I did every day of the week. Moreton, who knew or saw nothing of the smoke, was amazed and promptly told everyone in the flying school what an ace I was. He still doesn't know till this day that I was a complete chancer who knew so little about flying you cold have probably put my sum knowledge on the back of a postage stamp. Again it was a lesson hard learned, it was the North Sea Haar and could form very quickly and blanket the east coast of England and Scotland completely up to a distance of around 5 miles in land, a regular phenomenon at Aberdeen. I had never been involved with bad weather before. I had limited flying experience and zero real time instrument flying experience. Bad weather flying in this part of Scotland was expected but for me it was all new and I was worried. Forbes kept pressurising me to fly in poor weather and I remember flying around the circuit one day at 300 feet just beneath the cloud following the River Don and coming across a Dan Air 748 going the other way! I saw the crew later in the bar of the Skene Dhu and when I asked what the fuck they were doing they just said, " commercial pressure old chap"! That about summed it up really there was an awful lot of commercial pressure to keep going in all weather and there must have been more busted minima at Aberdeen than anywhere else, all though Sumburgh in the Shetland Island's was another place where there were many "no limit operations." the oil business was '24 hour, got to get there'.

It soon became obvious to me that Forbes was a bit of a con man, he either never paid bills or was really slow at paying them. The bank manager from the local Clydesdale Bank came round to see him every lunch time when I was there, what was all that about? Forbes would keep the operation going in any weather. He used to even try and fly in 100 metres when everything else was grounded. He would do what he called 'hops', he would taxy onto the runway call for take off, put on full power lift off to about 10 feet, close the throttle and land back on the runway. He would do several of these down the runway and then taxy off all around the perimeter track and back onto the runway for another repeat. ATC banned him from doing it the end and then he just taxied students around the taxiways. Of course the student would pay full rate.

He said to me one day, "You see him over there, pointing to smartly dressed small man, "I want you to take him flying for about 3 hours".

"And what would you like me to do with him for 3 hours"? I asked sarcastically.
"Whatever you like, just fly him around in circles if you want to, he has got lots of money, he is a butcher in Aberdeen".

That was Peter's attitude, he just wanted the cash. Everyone was generally taken in by him as he was so charming!

One of the most amazing things I did while working there was to fly along the Great Glen from Inverness to the Isle of Mull along the length of Loch Ness at 500 feet  and then on to land at Mull.



Forbes bought two C150s from Lonmet at Ipswich while I was there. Here is 'CF' at Dornoch and I can remember this student as if it were yesterday, but it was 35 years ago! The building in the background housed the fire engine but was allways kept locked, adding to my illegal situation!

Forbes used to send me illegally, as I had only an AFI rating, to Sumburgh and Dornoch instructing. Dornoch was an amazing airfield, as close to a beach as you could get and so peaceful. All it had was an excellent grass runway and a shed with a fire engine in it. When I was there I was the only aircraft operating and its much the same today although Bond Helicopters have a base there now. I used to stay in a lovely Hotel but interestingly when I tried to hand my notice in to Forbes he said I owed him for all the accommodation I had  at the Dornoch Hotel. I wrote to the hotel and they wrote back saying that Forbes had never paid any bills for me at all and he still owed them the money!



'PF' being refueled by the Loganair bowser at Sumburgh. The shed in the background is actually the terminal building!

One incident stands out in my mind about Dornoch. I went up to do a stall/spin detail taking off on the easterly runway. After about 50 minutes I returned allowing the student to fly the base leg approach. I talked him through it noticing he was getting a bit high, when I asked him to select flap I noticed again he was a bit high so I asked him to select more flap, he still seemed too high so I got him to close the throttle and put more flap down till we had 40 degrees out. I had intended to let him do the landing and now it was looking as if he would touch down quite deep but I let him continue still not realising what was going on. As we touched down I realised that there was a very good chance we were not going to stop in time so at last I behaved like the commander of the aircraft and turned this complete cock up into a very late go around. It was a weekend and as always a crowd with cars had gathered at the end of the runway to watch. I could actually see the smiles on their faces but those smiles soon turned to horror as the realisation sunk in that it looked like I was going to wipe them all out, they ran left and right. I wouldn't like to say by how many inches I missed the cars or how many inches I missed the sand dunes, I remember looking at the ASI and I could not detect any speed showing! Still, I never saw anyone watching me from that point again! What I had completely missed is that the wind had gone around 180 and it has been the nearest I have ever come to killing myself in a light aircraft!

Sumburgh was a different kettle of fish entirely and just getting there could be a nightmare. I flew via Wick and then Kirkwall then direct to Shetland. I was  told that when flying over the sea in a single engined aircraft to always be on the lookout for ships or boats in case you had an engine failure but I never even saw one on the occasions I flew the route. On one occasion when the weather was bad I was forced down to 300 feet and got quite a shock when Fair Isle suddenly appeared directly in front of me. Fair Isle was about half way between Orkney and Shetland. I gave ATC quite a laugh when I made a direct approach over Fitful Head onto the Northerly runway. I also did the same with a couple of students until somebody told me that no one fly's over Fitful Head they all follow the lead in lights onto a curved final on the other side of the head, did I feel stupid. I had quite a battle on as Fitful has a 400 feet sheer drop into the sea on the one side and the curl over and turbulence was quite frightening and the only time I have ever had to use full power to stay on a glide path!!!

While I was at Pegasus I had lodgings with Mrs Cocker on the Dyce Road, also there was the Air Anglia station manager and a met forecaster. Mrs Cocker's husband was a fireman at the airport. It was my first introduction to the Aberdeen beef sausages which I thought were awful, in fact Mrs Cocker cooked the worst breakfast in the world, they not only tasted awful they looked awful! I always remember the sign she had put in the bathroom.
ONLY ONE BATH PER WEEK AND NO WASHING OF UNDERWEAR IN THE SINK
What a pisser, I had to take all my underwear to work and wash it in a bowl!

She was a fierce lady and everything had to be done to her command, you had to be in by 10.30pm or she just locked you out. I came home in the early hours of the morning once and couldn't get in so I tried to attract the met officers attention, we shared a bedroom, but he slept like a log and no matter how hard I tapped the window he just wouldn't wake up. After about an hour I finally got the upper sash window to slide partly down but as I attempted to squeeze through I got stuck. I shouted as quietly as I could but nothing I could do would wake the forecaster, eventually after about 30 minutes of wriggling I fell onto the floor beside his bed with a loud thump but it still didn't wake him up!

The Skene Dhu was the local watering hole and as so many pilots in Aberdeen were either single or away from home the piss ups were legendary. You also got to meet most of the lads who were flying out of Aberdeen. At that time the companies I remember were Peters Aviation, Fairflight, Air Anglia, Alidair, Edinburgh Flying Services, Peregrine Air Taxi, Bristows Helicopters and also Bill Hanton who's father owned the Aberdeen Aero Club. The Aberdeen Aero Club had been started up by Bill Hanton snr, 'Old Bill' as he was known. The usual thing had happened, they had started flying with Forbes and fallen out with him but they had the money to start their own flying school and that is exactly what they did. The only purpose of their flying school seemed to be to get at Forbes and they did it with great skill and devotion much to the annoyance of Forbes who would taxy past with his hand behind the students back making V signs at the laughing members in the club. So many students fell out with Forbes that the Hanton's had a ready made clientele. They also always tried to poach all of Forbes instructors which they were also very good at doing. Of course I was the next in line to be poached and the offer of my own caravan, the Hantons owned a caravan site, was too good to miss plus no more flying to Sumburgh which was starting to frighten me as Forbes would try and make you fly in any weather. He asked me once to go and I refused because the island was in fog and he said," frightened of fog then are you!" This irresponsible attitude eventually compounded the death of a student on a cross country to Wick while on a qualifying cross country from Aberdeen.

Anyway getting back to the Aberdeen Aero Club I was intrigued at being offered the job of CFI because I had not got a full instructors rating so it could not be legal, still this was Aberdeen, so what the hell!

Once you handed in your notice at Pegasus Forbes would not pay you, this fact was well known but he made a big mistake trying that with me. One of my students at the Aberdeen Aero Club was the local solicitor, Peter Emslie and Peter launched a court action against him. Forbes paid up before the court hearing and he also had to pay my income tax and stamps. Sadly Peter Emslie has passed away.



The Hanton's were a strange couple, wildly eccentric, scruffy and not very bright, although of course when it came to money very sharp! The first thing I noticed was that the standards were much lower than Pegasus and that was quite low! PPL's seemed to do as they liked and there was some soft pencilling of records going on. PPL flying was very much of, do anything you like.

I brought about some changes immediately, most of which were unpopular! Working at the Aberdeen Aero Club, well working for the Hantons was unpleasant but the club itself had a great bunch of characters. Trying to get paid was another nightmare. Old Bill didn't part with money very well and at Xmas I went home with 9 weeks money owing, pretty disgusting really as I was penniless!

The Hanton's were always up for any action that would annoy Forbes, if he sent an instructor to Sumburgh they would send one too, that sort of thing, they watched his every move. They especially liked my idea I hatched one day. Forbes had a massive sign written yellow lettering saying, LEARN TO FLY HERE, on the back of the hangar that was visible from the road. I got up one night and painted a large yellow arrow pointing to the Aberdeen Aero Club end directing everyone to the Hanton's flying school!

It was around this time that I met Doreen Black. Doreen worked in a wedding photographer's studio in Aberdeen (Martin Johnson) and lived with her father Gordon and step mother at the Balnacoil Hotel in Aboyne on Deeside. Doreen's father was the manager of the hotel. The Hotel was the most charming I have ever been in, Gordon had a  lovely attitude and was a well respected Ghillie (gamekeeper). It wasn't a fancy hotel but it was a good, well run  country house hotel. I thought it was like being in heaven. Undoubtedly meeting Doreen and living at the Balnacoil was the highlight of being in Aberdeen and I am glad to say that Doreen remains a well respected friend to this day and one of the nicest kindest people I have ever had the privilege to meet.

One night I thought I would impress Doreen after borrowing her Mini, so I drove behind the hanger and filled it up with Forbe's Avgas. I felt really pleased with myself when I went back into the Skene Dhu to tell her how her car was full to the brim with petrol. Her face dropped, " Oh know", she said, "its got a rust hole in the middle of the tank". We rushed out to see the Skene Dhu car park swimming with Forbes Avgas, good job nobody dropped a cigarette!

There was an astonishing amount of accidents and incidents at Aberdeen but I am glad to say I wasn't involved in any of them. Most of them resulted in very poor supervision, especially not checking the weather. Jim Alexandra, an instructor at Pegasus, sent a PPL student to Wick on a qualifying cross country and he spun in on short finals in cloud and was killed, there was an eight eights 200 feet cloud base, even Loganair  had diverted. While I was there I heard a student on the Aberdeen frequency shout " Please help me I have just spun the aircraft in cloud". Amazing but true he had just been sent on a qualifying cross country by the female instructor at Inverness. I never forget her white face when she came down to pick him up she stood in the flying school and was shaking and trembling. Fortunately a Bristow's S61 helicopter diverted to find the student, found a gap in the cloud and lead him back to Aberdeen, he was very lucky to have survived.

Neil Beattie had a very lucky escape when an engine stopped on an early morning flight and he hit power lines and the aircraft was totally written off as it fell into a field. He told me a lovely story from his hospital bed.
He had been thrown out of the aircraft and landed up near a hedge with one leg virually up by his head. The first thing he remembered was just becoming conscious and a local policeman looking down on him. The policeman said, " Excuse me sir did you come out of that aircraft"?




CCCharlie as he was known (he had a stammer) put the Cessna 172 through the power cables at the end of the cross runway on take off blacking out Dyce. The electric cable actually cut a straight line in the leading edge back to the spar, an amazing site and incident but he got it down safely.

On another occasion a Phantom pilot took his mother and father flying and promptly flew straight into the side of a tall hill. He came out with a classic quote afterwards. 'If I had of been in a Phantom I would have got over that hill'!

Another chap, who was a Bristow helicopter pilot (say no more!) flew a local cross country in poor weather and got disorientated to the south of Aberdeen. He announced to the three passengers. "Gotta be careful around here as there is a tall TV mast". with that one of the rear seat passengers said, "Oh I have just seen that we just passed it". They were in cloud at the time!!!!!

Forbes also had a few incidents, he tied some skis onto a Cessna 150 and tried to land at Glen Shee and promptly overturned. He also flew to Orkney with the towbar still attached to a Cessna 150 and yes it is possible!

His best story was about his regular flights to Edinburgh, he had a dry cleaning business there at one time I believe. He went so often he just did it automatically without thinking but one day he had to go to Glasgow instead. Problem was he had called Edinburgh without realising and was even cleared to land by Edinburgh but he was on finals at Glasgow, suddenly realising his mistake he changed straight to Glasgow tower to hear an Irish voice say "Where the fuck did he come from" he had flown straight in front of a landing Aer Lingus B737!
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Forbes also conned someone from Elstree that he was going to do pleasure flying off the Loch of Skene and they sent a Lake Amphibian up for loan in the summer. It was great fun and I got to land and take off on the Loch of Skene. I remember doing a local trip with Forbes once and he spotted a guy fishing in the River Ythonn, he closed the throttle did a glide approach and made a touch and go right beside this guy causing him to fall into the river, did we laugh!

Forbes had a great sense of humour, when Bill Hanton first got a job at Dan Air as an FO on the 748 he was walking past one day with his two striped uniform on and Forbes went up to him and said, " Ah Bill, joined the Navy then"?

Forbes was a con man and he behaved irresponsibly but I couldn't help secretly admiring him and he was certainly the most charismatic person I have met in aviation. He was the best salesman I have ever seen and his marketing was first class. Over the years I had meant to go and see him but sadly he died before I got time. He gave me my first opportunity in flying and I would have liked to have said thank you and also return the copy of 'Fate is the Hunter' he lent me!

I have been flying for over 30 years, from a Tipsy Nipper to an Airbus, but my year in Aberdeen was the most exciting and interesting of my whole career and I am very glad I made that journey northward to the Granite City to fly an aircraft backwards, in fact, given the opportunity, I would start again back at Peagsus!
 
 
More soon including flying at Bannf, Dornoch and Sumburgh also the incidents and accidents at both clubs.

PS Bill Hanton is Ops Director at BMI Regional, Bruce Cooper (student at Aero Club and Pegasus) is with BMI based at Heathrow Jim Alexandria has retired, Peter Forbes passed away about 2004 
Rhys Perraton (part time Pegasus Instructor) has been traced to Canada but wouldnt respond to emails when he found out I didnt work for Fairflight! more soon Hi Rhys!
What happened to the lovely Margaret in ATC, she also was based at Sumburgh for a time (had a mark in one eye)? Remember Jock in ATC called everyone 'Sunshine' what a wazock! 

Roger Tribe had been CFI at Aberdeen Aero Club part time flying full time for Loganair he left and eventually joined Brymon at Plymouth.