Meet the Members
Vintage veteran This month we talk to Arthur Mason, early UK Pietenpol builder, vintage enthusiast and highly regarded fabricwork specialist…
W
elcome Arthur, can you tell us about your early life and career?
I was born in Chesham in October 1948 and was educated at Dr Challoner’s Grammar School at Amersham (which had a great handicraft dept). I dropped out of sixth form A-levels to join the big wide world and had a brief spell locally in the drawing office at Modern Wheel Drive (marine gears), which I thoroughly enjoyed until they moved to English Electric, in Slough. I then joined GPO Engineering (later BT), providing/ updating telephone exchange equipment. Some 27 years later, as a Technical Officer, I took a generous early redundancy deal, and contracted for a year with Mercury. Having opted for a pension at 50, the accompanying lump sum paid off my debts while the monthly payments covered my basic needs. My options were open, and I didn’t necessarily have to work for anyone else again. So, along with my main flying instructor John Giddins and CFI Tom Eagles, in 1994 we formed Hinton Aviation
Above The Air Camper aloft with Arthur at the controls. He flew 236 different passengers in it over the years. Photo: Michael Miklos.
Services. John was already servicing gliders and motor gliders, and when my Pietenpol, G-ADRA, appeared on the scene, my perceived fabricing skills were added. I started with one of Tom’s Ventures, then quickly moved on to a couple of the gliding club’s Ka-13s. It all sort-of took off from there, and by 1998 there was so much fabricwork coming in I went solo, under the name of The Incredible Cloth Flying Machine (ICFM) – which had a suitably Pythonesque ring to it but also alluded to observations I’d made of people poking at Tiger Moths believing them to be metal, only to discover with incredulity they were actually fabric and just painted silver! To cut a long story short, I mainly cut my teeth on the many Yaks then coming into the UK – it was required by the CAA that the Russian fabric be stripped from the control-surfaces and replaced with ‘known’ material. All this, including wings, I could do at home, and for bigger stuff a friendly local flying farmer rented me a barn for a small fee whenever needed. I never thought then that I would still be doing it now! There’s been a good steady flow over the years on all
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