The FLYER Club
Flown West On 4 August, an accident in Sussex took the life of Richard Warriner. One of the UK’s most enthusiastic aviators, Richard was also an active FLYER Forum member known as Whiskey Kilo Wanderer. Here’s a few memories of Richard posted by forumites…
J Rob P
ust as it was for many of us in the FLYER orbit, I had bumped into, passed the time of day with, nodded to Whiskey Kilo Wanderer and Champ Chump at fly-ins, ad-hoc gatherings and Bourn’s Burned Children’s Day. I make no apologies for using forum names, you get to know people well over the years, and I am still having difficulties with ‘Richard’. He’ll always be WKW to me. It was a rather sad meeting, this one. The December weekend the restaurant at St Omer closed for good. A few St Omer fans had proposed we fly-in for the last night. “In December?” I had queried. “Sure,” said Hatz. It wasn’t a bad flight over, needless to say I was the only one stupid enough to fly there. Hatz came on the ferry, Richard and Nic by camper van. It was a memorable, boozy, chaotic night, tinged with sadness. The next morning I walked up to the aerodrome, it was deserted, windswept, intermittently raining. The forecast had given a slight promise that it might clear, so I stood there with my luggage wondering what on Earth I could do while waiting, when I was hailed. Richard stomped across, “No use standing in the cold, come and have some tea with us,” he said. The start of about five or six hours of conversation, reminiscences, funny stories and occasional supremely hopeful glances out the window at the ‘definitely-notclearing’, leaden sky. I recall there were biscuits, too. Eventually, possibly early afternoon, I binned it, said my goodbyes and trudged back to the Ibis, hoping they had a room free. There are a lot better things to do than sit around St Omer aerodrome in December. I am sure that Richard had plans for that day. But he never mentioned them, simply devoted his day to providing me with warmth and shelter. We have nodded to each other since, fly-ins and chance meetings. I always assumed we’d sit in an airfield café one
76 | FLYER | October 2020
Richard and ‘WK, his Rans S6. As a duo they accumulated over 5,700 hours flying together
day and reminisce about the foolishness of flying to Northern France in December, and then being surprised when the weather took a turn for the worse. Now we never will. It makes me profoundly saddened to realise it.
Ridders
I first bumped into Richard (and Nic) at an impromptu fly-in that Jeremy Atkins and I arranged at Peterborough Conington, back in 2007. It turned out to be quite a gathering, and I was impressed they made it in the Rans, as there was a stonking headwind northbound! Over the years I always valued Richard’s postings on the forum, and in the end we had quite a lot of chatting offline. He had a knack of getting people to push themselves. He persuaded me to go and do the CRI rating at Andrewsfield in 2010. In fact, I am pretty sure he had written a magazine article about his experience. That was the beginning of regular chats and discussions and many meet-ups at various fly-ins and events. I always admired his aircraft – the number of GPS devices and systems he had installed on the aircraft was simply
impressive. Even more exciting that you could see all the wiring and gubbins through the panel and the RO Bear in charge of comms at the front. Richard was always just so very laid back, calm and knowledgeable, he would listen intently and then offer sage advice. Such a wonderful guy to talk to. Our last discussion was a few weeks ago and we talked for, well – I looked it up on my phone – two hours nine minutes! Mostly because I can talk for England, but also we just talked about all sorts of things, our aircraft, our flying, my work… you name it, we covered it, and he helped me immensely. It was his nature. He revalidated my SEP rating a few years ago. We did it in the Rans. He knew that aircraft so well, he was at one with it when he took control (after my hamfisted attempts!). Together we explored all edges of its flight envelope. It was a great learning experience for me, in a much lighter airframe aircraft and we had a great time. The Saturday before the incident, we had been picnicking at a fly-in at a farm strip, with the ladies. Richard’s was the very last aircraft to leave. Shortly before
