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37My final handling test was again held in foul weather. The upper air work was OK but the cloud base was too low for circuits. And so I had to do those in a separate sortie the next day. I remember that the cloud base was still blow 1000ft and there was a very strong wind. This made the circuits very demanding but good fun. Any way I passed and we then just finished the course with a spell of night flying. I was commissioned and got my wings on 26 May 1967. And I was awarded the Hicks Memorial Trophy for the highest marks in my Ground School exams. I was selected for multi engine training at RAF Oakington but no flying course appears to flow one into another in the RAF then as now and so as that course was not due to start until July we first had a period of holding. I arranged to go to RAF Gaydon where they flew the Varsity for navigator training. On one of the trips from Gaydon, I saw that we were going to fly over Cranwell and suggested to the pilot that I call them to let them know. Immediately the navs said that we were nowhere near Cranwell. We went right over the top! I had by now bought a Hillman Imp car which was sporty and so moving around was not so much of a problem. Up until then it had all been by train although sometimes, I had gone home with Peter Bedford whose father was the test pilot for the Kestrel which eventually became the Harrier. It was interesting looking at all the aircraft in the Hawker hanger when we were there.Chapter 5After a short refresher course on the JP at RAF Manby which seemed a bit pointless as at Gaydon we were flying the Varsity, I started at Oakington in July 1967. The course was to teach us about handling larger aircraft and concentrated on the asymmetric problem. If you lose an engine on one side, you must correct the yaw and if you are flying too slowly the rudder will not do this and so the aircraft will roll and descend. Obviously, this could be fatal at low level and so you always had