IT’S GOODBYE FROM ME

Reminiscences and anecdotes…

Francis Donaldson and Brian Hope chat about 30-plus years of involvement with the Association…

Hello Francis, it’s nice to meet up for a chat about times past. We’ve both been involved in the Association for a long time and, coincidentally, are leaving its employ at the same time. You put your thinking cap on while I make the coffee and let’s take a look back over the last 30-plus years, and hopefully forward to what’s next…

OK, here you go, white no sugar. So, how did you come to work for the LAA – or the PFA as it was then?

Francis: In 1990 I was in touch with Barry Smith, who was one of the PFA’s Executive Committee, because Barry had built the fuel-injected Acro VW engine fitted to an Evans VP2 that I had rescued and got flying, together with a chum from work. Barry, who was the UK’s VW guru for many years, had given me a lot of advice over the phone and talked me through the starting procedure for our long-stored engine. In return I had helped him get the aluminium alloy undercarriage legs for his owndesigned ‘Acro Advanced’ monoplane bent to shape – I guess I let slip that my place of work had a heat treatment oven and that being close to Southampton, with its maritime tradition, there were engineering shops handy with folders that would laugh at bending a bit of 5/8 thick aluminium plate.

Barry sent me his undercarriage leg as a flat blank, I annealed it in the heat treat oven as a ‘homer’, quickly cooled it in the works freezer then rushed it down to Southampton in the car, surrounded by bags of ice to keep it in a soft state for bending. Fortunately, at the second attempt, the outfit I took it to got the bends in the right places and through the correct angles, and it didn’t crack in the process!

Shortly after, I had a call from Barry saying that the PFA was looking to recruit a new engineer to work at the Shoreham HQ, and was I interested? It happened that the aircraft company I was working for at the time was about to relocate from

Salisbury to Bournemouth, under new management, so it was a natural point for a change in direction. I guess if Barry’s undercarriage legs had cracked, everything might have turned out differently! I was interviewed by another member of the Executive Committee, Tony Oliver, at his house. Presumably there were other candidates, but I never met any. From my recollection Brian, you came onto the Executive Committee shortly afterwards. Brian: Yes, that’s right. I had joined the Association in 1976 when I learned to fly, and I know from previous chats we’ve had that around that time we were both members of the North Kent Strut, though never actually met. It was a dozen years later before I was able to buy a Jodel and by this time was involved with the Mid-Kent Strut (now Kent Strut), and attended the National Council as Strut Rep. I was also an active member of the Jodel Club, so got to know the new PFA Chairman, Peter Underhill, who was a founder member of the Jodel Club, and he invited me to stand for the EC. It was actually a little later than you starting as Chief Engineer, in 1992 I think, when I got elected to the EC, not through any particular merit I hasten to add; then, as now, there was no great rush from members to get involved. However, I’ve never been one to bitch from the outside, if something you are passionate about is not running as you think it should, it is far more productive to get involved and see if you can change things Above Francis in the cockpit of his Pobjoy engined Currie Wot. from the inside. It was when on the EC that I met Barry Smith and I like to think that we became friends and allies, he’s a ‘straight as a die northerner’ and was instrumental in ensuring the Engineering Department transitioned effectively from a single engineer with a secretary to a well-staffed team able to cope with a growing demand for its services. As the cornerstone of that transition, what had you been doing prior to accepting the challenge? Francis: My previous job had been involved in the design of modifications, certification and flight test on the Optica

observation aircraft, after a primer on the shop floor where I’d been involved with production engineering and problem-solving on the early aircraft builds.

I had been a member of the PFA since my teens and an avid reader of Popular Flying, as well as the EAA mag Sport Aviation. I had been involved with building a Bowers Flybaby project at home as well as owning and flying Volksplanes, a Turbulent and Taylor Mono, so in one sense the transition wasn’t too difficult. The main challenge, as now really, was to deal with the number of Permit to Fly applications and the enormous volume of correspondence of all sorts that was constantly flooding in, and the number of types of aircraft that we were dealing with. Requests to bring in new models of aircraft, queries about repairs, mods, flying abroad, where can I get spruce, complaints about suppliers, glitches during test flights, the lot… One chap wrote asking about making a one-man helicopter – on HM Prison notepaper! It seems strange now to think that at that time there was no IT to help us, the most ‘modern’ office equipment we had was a fax machine and, prior to my arrival, all correspondence in the office was handwritten and then typed up by a typist, carbon paper and all. My personal PC, with its dot-matrix printer, was the first IT we had on site. Brian: We’ve certainly come a long way since then, and computers and the internet have literally changed our lives and how we work. At that time, I was writing our Strut newsletter using an Amstrad PCW although I wasn’t then, and still am not, a lot of cop when the computer decides to start playing up. I do come from a mechanical engineering background though, having served an apprenticeship with CAV Ltd., part of the Lucas group, who manufactured diesel injection equipment.

There’s a degree of irony as at that time my life revolved around motorbikes, but the factory was the former Short Brothers works on the banks of the river Medway in Rochester, where it had built land aeroplanes and flying boats from 1917 until 1947, when the by then nationalised concern was transferred to Northern Ireland.

Aviation came onto my radar when I was in my mid 20s and read an article in a DIY magazine by Alf Knowles about building and flying his Luton Duet. Alf would go on to build a VariEze and also become Chairman of the PFA from 1989-91, the period we are currently discussing! Which leads me to ask, what was your brief when you became Chief Engineer? Francis: Back in 1990, there was a rather unfair perception that the PFA wasn’t engaging with the new types of kitplane which were coming out in the USA at that time, and only really wanted members to build the very basic types that had been around for years. In truth this was quite unfounded, but apart from a brief period shortly beforehand when ex-ARV designer Nick Sibley had made a big contribution, there had only been one man, FIV ‘John’ Walker on the Engineering staff. John had been trying to look after everything, including running the

commercial side of the PFA, and despite the best of intentions there was only so much he could do. When I started with the PFA, it was as part of a major commitment to increase staff numbers and employ not only a Chief Engineer but also a Chief Inspector and a full-time Commercial Manager, so we were able to get much more done. Shortly after, we transitioned to a non-expiring Permit to Fly system which avoided having to send the Permits back to the CAA every year at renewal time, and the savings in CAA fees meant we were able to add another key figure to the Engineering team, John Tempest. He had recently graduated and, already steeped in all aspects of the PFA, joined us as Deputy Chief Engineer. John’s main interest was in design, so we were able to make up for lost ground by tackling as many new designs as we could, to create as large and varied a fleet as possible and offer the membership a wide choice of aircraft types. At the same time, we had the very interesting job of setting up a whole new Above Barry Smith and his superb own design Acro Advanced set of systems and fuel injected VW powered aerobatic monoplane. He was instrumental in Francis becoming the Association’s Chief Engineer. procedures appropriate to the growth in the organisation and moving away from a one-man-band arrangement. John’s IT skills brought us the first electronic database which was developed entirely in-house, soon becoming an essential element in tracking the progress of applications through the system and quickly laying hands on the all-important paperwork. Despite being based in Redcar, at the other end of the country from Shoreham, through this period of rapid expansion Barry Smith, as the unpaid Engineering Director, was our link with the Executive Committee as it was then. In many ways, if Ken Craigie, John Tempest and myself were the builders of the 1990s PFA, Barry Smith was its architect. Brian: The 1990s were certainly one of the sea change periods in the history of the PFA, as staffing levels rose and kit aircraft became the predominant choice for members, opening up an easier route to building your own aircraft. From an EC standpoint, with the limited office space available at Shoreham, there was a lot of interest in acquiring a new HQ, the emphasis being on owning rather than renting. A number of locations were looked into, including buying a building on Shoreham Airport, building something at Long Marston, and a possibility at Sywell. Barry Smith and I put forward a proposal to buy what had been Optica’s offices on Old Sarum Airfield, but that was narrowly defeated when put to the vote. This issue would rumble on into the 2000s when we moved to Turweston. For my part I became a Vice-Chairman and then the temporary Treasurer, as our long time Treasurer, Laurie Shaw, took time out to care for his sick wife. It was certainly not an easy task as the Rally team was, in my opinion, overspending on the event and opening the Association up to the risk of financial losses it simply could not afford. That was something else that came to a head in the early years of the new millennium.

In 1995 I had my first crack at editing the mag, producing four issues, June/July to December/January 96 after the previous editor stood down and a replacement was being sought. I applied for the job only to see it go to somebody who threw their hand in within a few months. Coupled with personal issues I needed to resolve, I decided to call it a day and resigned from the EC in 1996.

I know you had your work cut out during this period too Francis, what were your main challenges?

Francis: I’ve always felt that for the staff to be effective in the LAA / PFA Engineering Department, between us we had to have a good grasp of all of the technologies involved in the many and varied aircraft in our fleet. Members ringing up asking for help want to talk to someone who knows what their aircraft looks like, how it’s built and where it fits into the scheme of things. We can’t really empathise with the owner’s problem or offer useful advice unless we have a grasp of all these aspects. Back in 1990, the vast majority of the PFA fleet were very simple aircraft, the typical two-seater being a Jodel or Cub, probably non-radio or with a 360 channel VHF comm and powered by a small Continental engine with a fixed pitch wood prop. There were no RVs, no Europas, no Chipmunks or Bulldogs. Most of the new kitplanes being built were powered by two cylinder two-stroke engines, which were all the rage, having found favour in the booming microlight scene.

It would have been unthinkable at that time that PFA aircraft would ever have a wing leveller, let alone a two-axis autopilot coupled to a satellite navigation system. The number of PFA aircraft with retractable undercarriages and constant speed props could probably have been counted on one hand, and the only automotive engine conversions were VWs.

Now of course, there’s a plethora of new equipment coming out all the time and we have 260hp four-seat RV-10s being completed regularly, with instrument panels hugely more capable than the commercial transports of the 1990s. We also have a much wider range of engines including diesels, electronic fuel injection, converted V6s and V8s and a plethora of constant speed and in-flight adjustable props. Trying to keep

Right Home of the PFA for 31 years, Shoreham Airport’s Terminal building, PFA being housed on the upper floor, right-hand side.

Graham Newby was the Association’s first CEO and was instrumental in moving the HQ to Turweston. He also invited BH to take on the editorship of the magazine. up with these developments has been a challenge, especially where, in many cases, we are dealing with innovations that have no certificated equivalent, so in deciding how to tackle the acceptance process and sensible requirements, we’ve been on our own.

Of course, most of this new equipment is made primarily for use in the US Experimental Amateur-built category, where there’s no requirement for any design investigation at all, and builders are completely free to do whatever they like. Trying to fit this equipment into the UK’s regulated system, even with the relatively lightweight interpretation of the rules used by the sporting associations for Permit to Fly aircraft, finding a ‘middle ground’ that’s not too onerous has been challenging.

In the Permit system, I like to think that by concentrating on the most important aspects we try to provide 90% of the benefit of a full certification programme for 5% of the cost. Part of the reason why we can do that is because we get to fly a lot of the equipment ourselves, and through contact with our members we can keep an eye on how things are going in the field – if problems start to emerge, we can quickly get on top of them by adjusting our policies and advice.

I believe it was in 2001 that you came back onto the scene, how did that come about?

Brian: Well, to be honest I had had enough on my plate to keep me occupied and had no intention of becoming involved again. My dad had passed away in 2000, I was caring for my mum and still working full-time as a self-employed tradesman in the building industry. Then, in early 2001, the Association’s first CEO, Graham Newby, completely out of the blue offered me the contract to produce what was then the bi-monthly magazine. It was an opportunity I simply couldn’t refuse, firstly it was a challenge I was enthusiastic to take on, despite my only qualification to do it being an ‘O’ Level in English Language, but just as important at the time, it enabled me to work from home a couple of days a week as my mum’s condition worsened. My first issue as editor of Popular Flying was the May/ June 2001 issue. It was another couple of years before I finally succumbed to pressure to rejoin the EC, thankfully by then a somewhat less fractious affair to what had been my experience in the past. Roger Hopkinson was by then on board and soon to become Chairman, and over time he introduced governance procedures which greatly improved the manner in which the Association was ordered. It was another stage in the Association ‘growing up’ into a more mature organisation. During this period of course, EASA had come onto the scene, and I recall that it caused more than a few headaches for you guys in Engineering.

Francis: Yes, that was in 2003, and I well remember the day when Graham received a round-robin letter from the CAA saying that EASA was coming into existence in six months’ time, and did we know about it and had we thought about the implications.

It was clearly going to upset the applecart for most of GA, especially the BGA, which had until that time enjoyed selfregulation of all their gliders. Fortunately, homebuilt and microlight

aircraft were excluded, so it was only our ex-certified vintage fleet that was threatened. Cometh the hour, cometh the man – and PFA stalwart Barry Plumb joined us as volunteer Engineering Director and helped us through the crisis by negotiating with EASA a loophole, whereby existing ex-certified Cubs, Luscombes etc., already on the LAA fleet, could remain with us and continue to be operated under the existing arrangements. This involved not only trips to Cologne to attend EASA working group meetings (pre-Zoom and Teams), but also going through the whole vintage LAA fleet and inventing reasons why each type should be classed as exempt under the somewhat woolly definition of ‘Annex 2’ at that time.

Of the hundreds of vintage aircraft on our fleet, only a handful of types weren’t eligible to stay as they were, and for them Barry negotiated a half-way house Permit to Fly, which carried an EASA logo, but was in fact little different to a regular permit.

Incidentally, Barry also made a big contribution in investigating the criteria for the safe use of unleaded mogas, at the time when ethanol was first introduced.

One side-effect of the introduction of EASA was the downsizing of the CAA staff team at Gatwick, which, along with the CAA’s increasing need for their GA side to cover its costs, has meant that we no longer have free access to specialists at Aviation House. Of course, conversely, over the years we’ve built our own staff up, bringing in Andy Draper as our composites expert, and Malcolm McBride, and more recently Jerry Parr, to look after continued airworthiness. Jon Viner and Ben Syson are on the design side, plus our younger engineers Mike Roberts and Joe Hadley. Equally important to the running of the Department have been our tireless Engineering Administrators, Fiona Storer and Adele Cooney. Malcolm retired earlier this year of course, and Joe is about to depart for a job with the CAA’s GA Unit, but as the number of staff took increasingly more time to manage, we have seen the recent appointment of a full-time Engineering Director in John Ratcliffe.

Brian: Over that same period of expansion, in Engineering, the structure of the Association changed significantly. It had, for most of its life, been owned by Ulair Ltd., of which there were just three directors, so effectively was not owned by the members. Certainly, in my earlier time on the EC, there was occasionally a degree of rancour that at times it was considered that the three Ulair directors ignored EC decisions, but regardless of such angst, it was a fact that the arrangement that may well have served the Association well in its early days, was outdated and inappropriate to its current needs.

In 2007 we became a company owned by the members who, unless they decide to opt out, become beneficial shareholders when they join. It is run by a Board of 12 Directors and was of course, renamed The Light Aircraft Association Limited. The title of the magazine, which had gone monthly at the beginning of 2005, changed from Popular Flying to Light Aviation in January 2008, and I became a full-time employee in 2011.

Despite all the changes, the job of editor remained fundamentally the same – to produce a magazine every month that as many members as possible found of interest, and at the same time exhibited the safety culture required of a responsible The glass fronted LAA offices at the Turweston HQ, into which the Association moved in 2003.

Left Barry Plumb, of BGP-1 Biplane fame, was a stalwart EC member who successfully negotiated with EASA to keep our historic aircraft on PFA Permits to Fly.

Association that is overseeing the build, maintenance and operation of light aircraft. It is important that the magazine and particularly Engineering, sing from the same hymn sheet. It has been great fun, particularly meeting so many interesting and clever people who have been willing to spare me the time to talk about their aircraft and activities. We really are blessed with talent, which is just as well with the challenges we face in the years ahead. Francis: Indeed, one of the things that’s been brilliant about working for the LAA is the people I’ve met through this job. I never thought I’d get to meet wartime ATA pilot and gliding expert Ann Welch, whose books I had devoured since childhood. Similarly, key figures, sadly no longer with us, including Fury and Spitfire designer John Isaacs, replica builders Viv Bellamy and Don Cashmore, designers Ray Hillborne, Keith Duckworth and Frank Costin. Test pilots including Angus McVitie, Bill Bedford and John Farley, CAA’s legendary Hugh Kendall, Darol Stinton, to name just a few…

But equally wonderful has been to meet so many enthusiast builders, pilots and craftsmen in many different fields. When I went to see one project, after I enquired about a hump-shaped thing in the corner under a dust sheet, the builder admitted that it was an E type Jag body that he’d made – in aluminium – from scratch!

Another showed me how he was building his kitplane in between jobs while fitting out the ferro-concrete yacht that he was building for a round-the-world trip… Whether masters on the drawing board, at the workbench or in the cockpit, the LAA has been a meeting place for many stars, many of whom are still rising, and many of them incredibly modest about their talents.

Working for the LAA has also brought numerous opportunities for interesting flying in a wide variety of aircraft types, in many different parts of the world, visiting factories and chatting with designers. I’m fascinated by the way that different aircraft are designed, how their structures work, and their flight characteristics. When they don’t handle well, it’s been very interesting trying out different ‘fixes’ to correct the problem, and sometimes the owners have been overjoyed how a small ‘tweak’ transforms their pride and joy’s behaviour in the air.

It’s great too to hear a builder’s enthusiasm for their project, and to be able to make their day when their creation gets cleared for flight – nowadays often at the press of a ‘send’ button which brings

them their much anticipated ‘paperwork’. Working with a team of like-minded colleagues equally obsessed with everything aviational has been great too, as has liaising with our counterparts at the BMAA’s Deddington HQ, the CAA staff and Farnborough’s accident investigator team.

Speaking of which, of course, like any job, it has its downsides – the dread of emailed notifications from the AAIB telling us that someone’s sunny weekend has ended in disaster. Running an airworthiness system inevitably involves a great deal of responsibility and working as closely as we do with our LAA aircraft fleet, we are often only too aware of the pitfalls for the unwary. When all’s said and done, flying is a hazardous sport and many of our aircraft are unforgiving of mistakes, when compared to the average club trainer.

As with other sports, like mountaineering or even horse riding, to a degree the risks go with the territory. Happily, our record on accident rates has been constantly reducing, but every accident brings sadness. The freedoms that the Association has won over the years to fly bigger and more advanced aircraft, to fly in more demanding conditions and to overfly built up areas without restriction, come through preserving our technical credibility and stature, as well as our accident statistics. Steering the LAA ship through the narrows separating on the one side, member expectations and on the other, acceptable safety performance and regulation has been trickier than landing a microlight in a howling crosswind, at times.

Of course, we get to know hundreds, if not thousands, of members each year through day-to-day correspondence and phone calls, and it’s been great to share news of their aviation adventures over the decades, and feel we’ve contributed.

When we have to pass on the news that those calculations or worksheets aren’t quite up to scratch, and we need to make a ‘sorry, but…’ call to a disappointed and sometimes frustrated LAA member, we usually find that later, any resentment has ebbed away in the joy of getting the aircraft cleared for flight.

There’s a relentless barrage of letters, emails and phone calls generated by our 7,000 or so members, ever eager for information and advice – usually a pleasure to deal with, but oftentimes there’s simply not enough hours in the day. Sometimes the most tentative of enquiries needs a great deal of thought to craft a proper reply – taking time, for example, to explain to a member why he shouldn’t embark on what he wants to do, because from past experience or some subtlety of regulation, it will all end in tears – or to coin Ken Craigie’s phrase, become ‘an expensive garden ornament’. Brian: Well Francis, I have been privileged to witness the growth of Engineering, from the one man and a secretary to what it is today, and it has happened under your guidance. You can leave the Association immensely proud of that achievement. What are your thoughts on the future? Francis: After 31 years in post, I’m looking forward to being able to get involved with one or two other types of projects –

there’s a lot of interesting developments out there with new configurations of aircraft altogether and the UK’s Experimental Category makes it easier to try really unusual things – more so than in days gone by. At the same time, I want to remain engaged with the LAA through a transition period long enough to help see through to completion some of the more obscure LAA members’ projects which I’ve helped initiate. Between all of the Engineering staff there’s a great deal of expertise in pretty much all areas nowadays, which John Radcliffe and Jon Viner will be ably coordinating. However, having been in a similar new-starter situation myself back in 1990, I know how much time can be saved by a steer here and there as to where to find this or that, or what happened last time such-and-such was tried. No doubt we’ll see some major developments under the new team, and with the everexpanding LAA fleet, ever more complex aircraft, and ever-growing expectations. It is inevitable that LAA’s approach will have to adapt, just as it did in the 1990s. Writing this during COP-26 it’s obvious that there’ll be significant challenges ahead for GA flying, and longer-term, one can only wonder where we’ll find ourselves in a world that’s decarbonised and ‘de-fossilised’. News of the first flight in the UK using a synthetic 100LL fuel is timely, but I can’t help thinking that many in our present fleet will one day create a reaction something like when we see a 1950s American ‘gas guzzler’ on our streets. The field for developing a new breed of recreational aircraft is wide open. Brian: I am delighted that you are going to remain in the wings for a while to help where and when required, and I wish you well for the future. Above Like Francis, Brian has unfinished business. He intends I am leaving to expand the range of LAA Training Courses. happy that the magazine has been well received over the years and that it remains a printed product, rather than a digital entity. It also generates good advertising income thanks to the support of the industry and the work of our advertising manager, Neil Wilson. I look forward to our new editor moving the magazine into a new era, although hopefully still in a printed format for a few years yet. I plan to enjoy my retirement, doing a bit of travelling by road, as well as in the Jodel that I own with a friend. Apart from trying to get the LAA Educational Courses back up and running, expanding their range where possible, I will simply enjoy being a member rather than be ‘involved’. This Association has enabled me, a very ordinary working-class Joe, to enjoy the pleasure and camaraderie of personal recreational flying, and I will be forever grateful for that. I hope generations into the future will be similarly well served by it, but I am not blind to the challenge that presents. GA will undoubtedly face increasing pressure from the environmentalist lobby. I can only hope that personal flying does not once again become an activity solely available to the privileged upper classes, reversing the trend of the last 75 years of our Association’s proud heritage. Oh, and thanks for leaving me that last custard cream Francis… you’re a gent. ■