Page 49 - Demo

47The discrepancy between my medical history and the A1G1Z1 Category did not come to light until the commissioning medical. The doc nearly blew a fuse but, by that stage, I represented an investment by HMG (albeit a minuscule one). My chances of progressing through the Biggin Hill medical as a pilot would, I was curtly informed, have been slim-to-nil. The eventual upshot was several trips to CME in London, running up and down and blowing into various lungmeasuring devices, and then a grudging sign-off of the medical category.Fast-forward from Biggin Hill about 3 years. When we, at long last, finally arrived on D Flight of No 2 Squadron to begin flying training, I was allocated as my primary QFI a nice fellow called Pete Armstrong. He had come from the Vulcan force, and was very much into the heavies and multi-crew concept %u2013 so much so that, when given an emergency, hopefully digested the implications and carried out the immediate actions, my next step was %u2018Captain to crew %u2026.blah%u2019. This was supposed to instil in me the need to assess and communicate the circumstance in which I found myself, and my intentions %u2013 and very useful it was too. I felt that my future definitely lay in the multi-engine world. However, after only a couple of months, Pete Armstrong was summoned back to the bosom of the VForce, to become a very young Vulcan captain.My new QFI was Frank Bebbington, ex-Canberras but very much a frustrated Hunter pilot (there had been no Hunter slots on his course). On our first sortie together, he gave me some simple emergency - generator failure, I think %u2013 and I launched into my %u2018Captain-to-crew%u2019 spiel. I hadn%u2019t got very far into it when over the top of the right-hand-seat oxygen mask I spied a couple of eyes like organ-stops, and %u201cWhat is this s**t?%u201d came clearly over the intercom.I was fortunate enough to stay with Frank until the end of the course, by which time my aspirations had clearly changed to fast-jet.Sadly, my capabilities had not developed to the same degree; it seemed that I had missed the cut for Valley by a single place, and was bound for Oakington %u2013 which was OK by me, I was just happy to get