Page 185 - Demo

181could see almost nothing forward from the rear seat and had to look through a periscope. That was fine until you pulled G and that forced you down in the seat. We did some formation which was easier than in the JP as you never had another pilot to see past but not for tail chasing, which is follow my leader. You lost sight of the leader as soon as you pulled G. It didn%u2019t help that the French were quite happy to tail chase through cloud which we thought was suicidal. Actually, I liked the tandem seating system. Although you could not see the student, you could see what he was doing to the aircraft and I thought that with the coming of simulators you would not need to see him anyway. Later when we were involved in the design for the JP replacement, I was one of those who pushed for tandem seating. The Fouga Magister was extremely noisy when you stood in front of it. Indeed, it was so bad that you could feel your insides shaking. On the Monday I flew their Chief Instructor, and as he landed, I was surprised to see a Buzzard on the runway and it did not move until just as we got to it. It smacked into the wing and dropped down onto the runway. I could see in the mirror that it was dead on the runway. It took a few moments before I could get the message through to ATC that there was a large dead bird on the runway behind us. Presumably it did not hear us. Luckily it caused no damage. In the afternoon, they gave us a ride in the Cab Dix. That was a piston engine elementary trainer. The thing about that was that it flicked violently. You just applied a bit of rudder and pulled back into the stall and round it went. Easing forward on the stick stopped it but it was funThe French were very hospitable to us. I remember they had a Squadron BBQ on the hills surrounding the town. They cooked a sheep, having sent the junior members of the squadron to dig a pit and light a fire in it very early in the morning. They also had a barrel of red wine with them. This eventually ran out and then people just reached into the heather and retrieved bottles of wine saying, %u201cI knew we did not have enough%u201d. Eventually the sheep was cooked, and I was given a great