Lockdown special A happy LAA test pilot Dan Griffith, with Peter Kember (standing).
A lockdown special…
The completion and test flying of HAPI SF-2A Cygnet G-CYGI was 30 years in the making, as Peter Kember reports…
T
he period of the Government imposed ‘lockdown’ during the Covid-19 pandemic from March 2020 has produced some interesting and widely varying individual responses. In my case I found myself walking and cycling with my wife Marion on local roads and pathways which were free of traffic, discovering parts of the local countryside that I didn’t know existed, and with time to consider the future, however long I might have. Sometimes Marion and I would ‘socially distance’ with similarly retired friends on longer walks – an excuse for eating copious quantities of homemade snacks and supping warm glühwein from our flasks. Marion has also developed her artistic and teaching skills with mostly animal drawings and paintings, and I
22 | LIGHT AVIATION | November 2021
have restored two 40-year-old Honda motorcycles, one of which I sold, and the other which I regularly use on trips to local airfields. I also bought a powerful Ducati Scrambler which has acceleration I find disturbing, so that may have to go! I still fly the second of the two Europas that I have built, courtesy of the present owners, which I maintain and inspect for its annual permit renewal. But I needed another, more absorbing project which would attract me into my single car garage/workshop – fortunately adjoined to the house and centrally heated. Although in my flying life I have owned a number of different aeroplanes, including a Piper PA22 Tri-Pacer, a Grumman AA5, and a Jodel DR1051 Sicile Record, my greatest enjoyment has come from the two Europa kits that
