Page 201 - Demo

197tainment for the weekend was talked about. Steve and I religiously went every day. We were eventually given a staff car which helped us do this, but it could only be used on the base. We then had the first of our 2 conversion sorties. I flew with Flt Lt Meikle who was the Flight Commander, but he had only been in post for a couple of months and also had to teach in ground school and, in addition, was also a student on the Vampire Flight which was their advanced trainer. The flying day started at 0630 and ended at about 1300 when it got hot, and the air was rather turbulent. We were then free for the day. The other instructors were Wg Cdr Rob Tasker, the boss, another Sqn Ldr and 2 flying officers. Rob was a great guy and just filling in time before he left the Air Force. He had been on a staff appointment in Harari but as he was an A1 QFI had come back to help with the course. He showed us a map which he said they had managed to get hold of as they did not have many maps. It showed all the power lines in the country. The larger ones all radiated out from the Kariba Dam but lower powered one often ran alongside roads. He said that as we were not used to the country, they were very worried that we might fly into one of these as they could be hard to see. Indeed, one of the students on the course had done just that and suffered severe burns. This was a bit of a worry to us as these wires were not generally shown on the maps we would use. Gosh, we said. How high are they? The bigger ones are usually at about 30ft we were told. We stopped worrying, although we did have to teach our students how to teach a student pilot to fly at 50ft later in the course. The next day I flew with the Wing Commander and was then sent off solo. One of the things I practiced was an inverted spin which I had never done before. The SF260 must have been designed for small pilots. I was fine but Steve must have been cramped. Even I, when pushing negative G,found my head pressed against the canopy, and because of its curvature the heads of the 2 pilots would come together. The other problem was the parachute harness we had to wear. It was very tight around your up-