Technique Advanced handling
The Hayes
school of
advanced flying
Fancy honing your skills in classic British training aircraft?
This club boasts quality machines, and instructors to match
Words Nick Bloom Photographs Keith Wilson
58 | Pilot August 2012
T
he boys in the RAF are a choosy
lot and they don’t pick their
training aircraft lightly. Most
instructors will tell you that the
Bulldog (which the RAF used
for nearly thirty years, up to 2001) and the
Pup from which it was developed are two
of the finest trainers ever to leave the
drawing board−and furthermore, they
were both made in Britain. So why doesn’t
every flying school have one?
Making the best pilots (like the RAF does)
isn’t necessarily the primary mission of
civilian flying schools. To survive at all, they
need to keep prices competitive, get students
qualified quickly and make a profit. The Pup
and Bulldog are relatively expensive to run,
and they don’t make things quite as easy as
Pipers and Cessnas. It also takes specialist
know-how to keep them flying. They are
worth it, though: with sensitive, wellbalanced controls, superb visibility and
terrific handling, they are a joy to fly and
make the perfect classroom.
Enter Roger Hayes and his advanced
flying school, SkysportUK. He and his
fellow instructors are a hand-picked crew,
chosen for their high standards, long
experience and patience. They are a highlymotivated lot, and what motivates them is
the pursuit of excellence. “Excellence isn’t
something you can rush,” says Roger.
He is briefing me on all this in the
restaurant at SkysportUK’s western base,
Cotswold Airport, Kemble (its other base is
at North Weald). We are sitting next to
each other in the AV8 restaurant and in an
hour we will be flying together. But first,
I’m learning what SkysportUK is all about.
“Everyone who has trained with us
says the same−that it’s sharpened up
their flying,” says Roger. “I don’t just want
our students to fly safely and with
a reasonable level of skill. I want to see
panache, superb airmanship and justified
confidence. Train with us and you could
demonstrate your flying in any
professional setting and pass.”
So the training on offer is first class.
What about the aeroplanes?
Roger knows his Pups and Bulldogs. He
owned the first civilian Bulldog to fly in
the UK. In 1998, he became the first nonmilitary instructor qualified to instruct on
the type. He is the only pilot to have won
the King’s Cup Air Race four times; two of
those wins were in a Pup 150, the other
two in a Bulldog.
I ask how his obvious love affair with
these aircraft started. “In 1969, I was a
police constable in London with three
young children, so it was a pretty bold
move to learn to fly,” he says.
“Nevertheless, we were careful with money
Pilot August 2012 | 59
Advanced handling
Above: Nick flies the Bulldog, readily distinguished from
the lower-powered Pup by its large sliding canopy
Insert: SkysportUK founder and Chief Flying Instructor
Roger Hayes, seen below giving Nick a thorough briefing
and I started my PPL at White Waltham in
a Piper Colt. I ran the Police Flying Club for
six years, which taught me a lot about club
management. I then formed and ran the
Lion Flying Group at Elstree.
“My affair with the Pup and
Bulldog really began in 1983,
when several friends had Pups
based at Elstree. I persuaded the
Lion Group’s members that we
should have one too, but it
wasn’t a success with the other
members.
“So in the mid-eighties, I said goodbye
to the Group to devote myself to setting
up the Beagle Pup and Bulldog Club,
which today has 150 members. Specialist
aircraft like ours that are no longer in
production need the support of a really
good club. You need one to disseminate
maintenance and repair information,
ensure a flow of replacement parts and
represent owners to the CAA and other
bodies. I saw that and made it happen.”
SkysportUK was Roger’s retirement
project, envisaged a year before he left the
police with the rank of Inspector in 1995.
He has a CPL and is a QFI with 1,500
hours. SkysportUK has three aircraft: two
Pup 150s and a Bulldog. Membership at
the Bronze level is £145 a year and the
Bulldog hire rate is £170 an hour (wet)
solo, plus £40 an hour if you fly with one
of SkysportUK’s instructors. Landing fees
are additional, but not VAT−the club isn’t
VAT-registered. The club has sixty
members and six instructors, including
one who is ex-RAF. You can take the
Technique
It’s valuable to have
the benefit of Service
discipline and
teaching methods
structured advanced flying course, known
as ‘Elite’ with Roger, who is the club CFI.
Or you can draw on the specialist skills of
the other instructors and learn−or brush
up your skills in−instrument flying,
formation work, aerobatics or air racing.
The club will tailor itself to your needs:
the common denominator is British-made,
RAF-style trainers flown by instructors
with advanced skills.
You couldn’t ask for a better-qualified
pilot than Roger Hayes when it comes to
teaching air racing. I ask him what’s the
secret to winning. “Accurate and precise
flying, without a doubt,” he says. “It’s
particularly important to know how to
make minimum-drag turns, which are in
perfect balance, and you must have just
the right angle of bank and turn-rate.”
I ask which is the better aircraft for
racing. “They are both good,” he says,
“but the Pup probably has the edge, being
lighter, having a lower wing loading and
sharper roll rate.”
Pilot August 2012 | 61
Technique Advanced handling
Above: one of the Bulldog’s great virtues as an RAF
trainer was sufficient climb power to cut down sortie
times. It’s aerobatic and a good instrument platform
62 | Pilot August 2012
The instructor who teaches formation
flying for SkysportUK, and runs its display
team, gave instruction on the subject in
the RAF and has thousands of hours of
formation work. This kind of flying is
potentially dangerous, so it’s valuable to
have the benefit of Service discipline and
teaching methods designed to minimise
risk−and a pilot with lots of real-life
experience. (As with so many skills, you
don’t realise what can go wrong at first. It
takes time to encounter bad wake
turbulence, an in-formation engine failure,
a pilot who does something unexpected,
and other rare hazards.)
At this point the man himself arrives, in
the form of Squadron Leader (retired)
Derek Sharp. Derek’s going to fly the Pup,
and I’m taking the controls−under Roger’s
watchful eye−of the Bulldog. The
SkysportUK fleet has just been painted in
a brand new colour scheme and we’re to
produce photographs of the Bulldog and
Pup in formation.
The briefing that follows is relaxed, but
thorough and shortly afterwards I’m
strapping myself into the left-hand seat of
the Bulldog and adjusting its rudder pedals
to fit my short legs. We start up, Roger
runs through the checklist and hands me
the controls. We take off in a three-ship
formation, cameraman Keith’s Cessna
being the third aircraft, and run through
the agreed photoshoot. This is the first time
I’ve flown with Roger and I’m impressed.
He’s the kind of instructor I like, only
pointing things out when necessary, acting
as your ‘reserve safety factor’ while you get
to grips with the task in hand.
The Bulldog is as I remember: a most
impressive aeroplane, vice-free,
responsive, with plenty of power in
reserve. As the heaviest aircraft of the
three, I have a little difficulty at times in
getting it to slow down sufficiently. I can’t
let it draw ahead of the other aircraft,
because that would put at least one of
them in my blind spot. Roger suggests
lowering first stage of flap just as I reach
the same conclusion and reach for the
control. With flap, the stall warner shuts
up and now I’m having no difficulty in
keeping station with the other aircraft.
It’s a beautiful sunny day and light
pours through the canopy. It’s so clear I
can practically count the rivets on the
Cessna cameraship. Derek does his stuff
with the Pup with all the skill you would
expect from an RAF Squadron Leader and
we finish the photoshoot in record time.
This isn’t a flight test so, after returning
to Kemble, I fly an overhead join and land.
I ask Roger what he would say to me were
this a sortie as part of his Elite course.
Left: originally a Beagle design, for all the pugnacious
connotations of its name, the Bulldog has long, slender
wings and — in the air especially — an elegant look...
Below: nevertheless, when you start stirring the stick
around under a SkysportUK instructor’s expert guidance,
its crisp control response and aerobatic abilities are a
relevation to those of us used to club Cessnas and Pipers
“Well, you let the aircraft go 100ft below
circuit height−you knew that, of course−
but to be honest, I thought you could have
noticed and corrected it rather quicker.
You let the approach speed go five knots
over, to 85kt−which was why you had to
sideslip in order to land on the numbers. I
noticed that you were still working the
throttle during the approach, which means
you were playing catch-up: if you plan
ahead, you can set the throttle and leave
it. A little lacking in smoothness and
perhaps overcontrolling a touch. Not bad,
though, considering you’re not altogether
familiar with the aircraft.”
All fair points, I tell him−and they are.
A most impressive
aeroplane, vice-free,
responsive, with plenty
of power in reserve
Keith and Bob have to fly the
cameraship back to base, so after taking
some ground photographs they leave and
Roger and I return to our SkysportUK
briefing. He shows me a very smart,
bound ‘Skypilots Manual’, which club
members receive as part of the joining
package, along with copies of the RAF
Training Notes for the Bulldog. It contains
the Elite Advanced Training Programme
for General Aircraft Handling.
To earn the Elite Certificate, applicants
have to complete five modules including
three that are compulsory: stall avoidance
and awareness; precision circuits; and
precautionary forced landings. The
remaining two can be chosen from:
variable-pitch propeller procedures;
unusual attitude recovery; steep
descending and climbing turns; VFR
navigation; formation flying; aerobatics;
air racing and IMC training. (You can also
gain an IMC rating.) You don’t have to go
for the Elite training to join SkysportUK.
Roger gives me an example of a member
who didn’t. “John Dean, whose licence
lapsed forty years ago, decided he wanted
to get flying again. He chose to do it with
us because he liked the aeroplanes and
liked our style,” says Roger. “We weren’t
in any particular hurry−he wanted to
become a really good pilot, not just get his
licence back, and it took twenty hours of
instruction over a summer before he took
his GFT. He passed with flying colours. He
since bought a share in the North Weald
Pup and as a Doctor of Science, he helps
out on the engineering side.”
At present the SkysportUK club is a nonprofit organisation that owns aircraft and
rents them and the services of its
instructors to members. Some ownership
of the aircraft has already been transferred
to members and Roger thinks it may be
that the future lies in that direction.
I am reminded of when I owned a
Stampe and sold shares in it when it
became too expensive for me to run on my
own. I provided hangarage at my airstrip
and went flying with the other owners to
coach (but not instruct) them on how to
cope with a tailwheel aircraft. I got plenty
of subsidised flying as a passenger while
coaching and we also made some flights
together on a cost-sharing basis when I did
some of the flying. SkysportUK may head
in that direction, although, unlike me, its
instructors are qualified, have CPLs and
can charge for their services.
Where other instructors can be inclined
to spoon-feed their students, Roger expects
more from them. “For instance, I ask them
to read up on the subject in advance and
then brief me,” he says. Roger is
particularly proud of the way SkysportUK
teaches precautionary forced landings.
“One member, a 300hr private pilot, said
he was never quite sure whether he would
be able to make it into whatever field he
had his eye on, so I developed a method
Pilot August 2012 | 63
Advanced handling
that takes the guesswork out and gives
you a definitive answer in stages as the
aircraft descends. Our aim isn’t to enable
you to muddle through some exam, it’s to
make you do the right things instinctively
in a real-life emergency. All the evidence is
that when a crisis arrives, too many people
haven’t had enough training and their
mind goes blank.”
He tells me about another student. “Chris
Liston is a forty-year-old electrician, who
joined as an ab initio pilot because he
wanted to learn to fly in the Pup. He got his
PPL in sixty hours. John Strong gave him
his final exam. They landed much sooner
than I was expecting and I asked John why.
He said, ‘There was nothing I could fault
him on. He’s well above average’. And
Chris went from strength to strength−he’s
participated in air racing as my navigator
and he’s going on to study formation work.”
Derek Sharp comes to join us. He says
in passing that the first aeroplane he
landed at Kemble was a Hawker Hunter,
so I ask about his RAF career. “I used to
carry VVIPs,” he tells me, “That’s RAF for
very, very important persons. Margaret
Thatcher was the most thoughtful of the
five Prime Ministers I’ve flown−she
bought Christmas presents for the crew.
She said she wrapped them herself, and I
believed her. They all came on to the flight
deck and John Major was the only one
who asked permission−the rest just
assumed it would be okay”. Aged 66 now,
he was a fighter pilot until the age of 38.
“My true heart is at 540kt in a Jaguar,
which I flew for ten years,” he says.
If you like the idea of brushing up your
flying skills in something a bit more
challenging than the club Cessna, with
instructors like Derek and Roger−who
have a lifetime’s flying experience to draw
on−SkysportUK is the place to do it. It
Technique
Above: just the kind of no-frills cockpit you’d expect in a military trainer, with sticks and proper quadrant controls
may also be a shrewd investment if you
can persuade your insurer to discount your
premium once you have a SkysportUK
Elite certificate to show.
When I wrote a flight test for Pilot
(published June 2010) on the 150hp Pup,
I concluded: ‘It’s easy to see why these
beautiful little aircraft are so popular. They
retain the docility of the training aeroplane
while taking a large and significant step
towards true aerobatic and military
machines.’ I noted the relatively long take
off, the strength limit in semi-aerobatic
manoeuvres (neither aircraft has power units
capable of prolonged inverted flight) and a
minimum approach speed of 60kt, which
still enabled me to land within 250 metres.
My Bulldog flight test was even longer
ago−it appeared in November 2006. Here
I said: ‘The Bulldog has buckets of
character. It has pleasant, well-harmonised
controls that aren’t at all twitchy... and
you needn’t worry about overloading it,
strong crosswinds, short runways or not
having room for luggage. It has one of the
most comfortable cockpits around and
offers its occupants a superb view and
cavernous space. It’s huge fun to fly.’
For aerobatics, I found the Bulldog
rather a compromise. It is close to ideal
as a primary trainer, performing an easy
aileron roll, but sufficiently challenging
for axial rolls to be a good teacher. The
aircraft stall turns easily and makes big,
graceful looping manoeuvres. You are
unlikely to overstress it because the stick
is designed to be heavy in pitch. As a
primary trainer, I thought the Bulldog’s
unwillingness to stall and autorotate a
handicap. However, this will make it less
likely for a ham-fisted student to get into a
spin by mistake, so to some extent it’s a
safety advantage. In the piece I estimated
landing to a full stop in just 180 yards and
taking off in just 200 yards.
Both aircraft were superbly engineered.
Money seemed to be no object as far as
both designs were concerned and today’s
cost accountants would have a fit. This,
plus all the test flying that the aircraft were
subjected to, explains why they are so
pleasant to fly and such classics.
further information
Founded in 1994, SkysportUK
operates from Kemble and North
Weald Airfields. It trains new pilots
for their licence, and offers lessons
for those with more experience in
advanced handling, formation flying
and air racing.
Office address: Three Ways Cottage,
The Pound, Ampney Crucis,
Gloucestershire. GL7 5RZ
Phone/fax: 01285 851311
Mobile: 07860 257333
Email: rogerhayes@dial.pipex.com
Web: www.skysport-uk.com
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