Page 51 - Demo

47The good news was that I started another 21 days on rate 1s. The bad news was that RAF St Mawgan, who theoretically owned me, was not paying my allowances and so I was fairly short of cash. I found digs somewhere near the airport and settled in with the family. A nice breakfast and evening meal each day and the company of another lodger. The only socialising we did was going stock car racing once a week which was fun. The other problem was that Rufus had hurt his back and wasbedridden. Obviously, he could not check me out and clear me to fly. However, he had a mate at RAF Chivenor who could do it. And so I drove down to Chivenor somewhat nervously. The QFI explained that we had to operate inside of the Hunters who were using the runway and that he would do the take off. Thus, the one thing that I had got wrong before, I was not going to have to do. My log book shows that we flew for 20 minutes but I can only remember coming in to land and bouncing on the grass. I was just about to open the throttle and go round again when he said yes that was fine. I kept the throttle closed and we landed a bit firmly and that was that. Each day after that I drove over to Rufus%u2019s house with a load of authorisation sheets which he signed. Until he came back to work, I was effectively the boss of the Air Experience Flight and organised the cadets to fly and so forth. Another holding officer came but couldn%u2019t fly until he was checked out and so he also did the administration work. I did fly with him in the back seat a few times,so he got a bit of hands on but no landings or take offs. I stayed at Exeter until October and was then sent to RAF Strubby for a refresher course on the Varsity. The Course at Strubby was fine. Mike Blee who had also got a holding on a different Air Experience Flight, and I had almost as many hours on the Varsity as our instructors and so it was very relaxed. One day they asked us if we would be prepared to go to Berlin. I had been to Berlin before on the Oakington Course. Some students went to RAF Wildenrath but the lucky few got to Berlin where we spent the week-