Page 244 - Demo

240quencies for West Freugh and so had to get them out of the en route supplement which was a little book that we always carried. Now we were in formation and I could not do that and fly the aircraft at the same time. And so I handed control to Andy after a 10 second brief on formation flying. I did move him out a bit and then started to look in my book. So, look in the book for 3 seconds, check all was well and repeat. Andy had only been instructed on the basics of flying at this stage and had not even gone solo. After a very short period of time I realised that Andy was quite safe and so I got the frequencies I needed and noted them down. I led the formation into West Freugh but I think I let him do the landing. The final approach is a bit odd as there is a slope which can be deceptive. The next day I flew his pre solo flight. I could have sent him solo after his first circuit but thought I should do a few more for forms sake. After 20 minutes I was bored and so sent him off on his own. When he graduated with his wings, he came back as a creamie, going on to Harriers, the Red Arrows, which he led for a tour and finally was Squadron Commander on the Typhoon before leaving the RAF and running his own display team. A quite remarkable pilot who was naturally gifted.The other pilot of note was Cadet Ibrahim. He was one of a group of Iraqis that we trained and we called him Smiley as his first name was Ismael and he was always smiling. We had to train what were called Foreign and Commonwealth pilots from time to time. Occasionally some of them were good but usually they were just hard work. As an experienced QFI I got more than my fair share of them. They could be lazy and many of them were a bit less than accurate with the truth. I remember much later in the course telling Smiley that the weather was suitable for a navex and so we would do that rather than the next sortie on the syllabus. The students had to prepare several maps so we could go where the weather allowed. This meant marking out the route, putting on still air headings and times and anything else relevant. Smiley