Religions > Atheism > Emma Parker-Bowles goes wing walking with Team Guinot near Cirencester
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
08 Dec 2007 07:29:30 PM |
| Object: |
Emma Parker-Bowles goes wing walking with Team Guinot near Cirencester |
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article3016027.ece
From The Sunday Times
December 9, 2007
Over the top and down into a death plunge
Ever considered being strapped to the wing of a biplane while it does
a loop the loop? Well don’t
Emma Parker-Bowles goes wing walking with Team Guinot near Cirencester
Emma Parker Bowles
I am strapped to a pole on top of the wing of an aircraft old enough
to be my grandfather, which is in a nosedive towards the earth 1,000ft
below. As I plunge towards the blurry green Gloucestershire field, my
body battered by the 3G force, the 150mph wind feels as though it is
trying to rip my head off.
My neck muscles are straining like a German shot putter’s and my jowls
are flapping about by my ears. Spit and snot are smeared across my
face, which is frozen in a terrified shriek – a bit like Edvard
Munch’s The Scream with flying goggles on.
Except I can’t scream, because I can’t breathe, and I am convinced
that the last thing to go through my mind before I die will be the
2,100rpm propeller inches from my feet.
For someone with a fear of heights, wing walking is not fun. In fact
it is the most horrible sensation I have experienced. As we get closer
and closer to the ground in this awful death plunge, I squeeze my eyes
closed and pray.
It seems a lifetime ago that I was warm and cosy in the charming
company of Vic Norman, the pilot, in a converted shed in
Gloucestershire. He has been doing this since 1987 – when he founded
AeroSuperBatics – and he is solely responsible for bringing back wing
walking after the Civil Aviation Authority banned it in 1933 for being
too dangerous. AeroSuperBatics worked out a way of maintaining safety
standards in biplanes and became the first company to be granted
permission for performers to climb out of the cockpit and onto the
wings.
Norman’s team of pilots, engineers and wing-walking babes now has four
Boeing Stearmans, the two-seater biplanes introduced by the Stearman
aircraft division of Boeing in Wichita, Kansas, in 1934.
“We fit them with bigger engines so that we get a better rate of
roll,” Norman says. “Stearmans are ideal for airshow work, as they fly
as low as 30ft and as high as 1,000ft.” Business is booming. Norman
and his team fly round the world, delighting the crowds from Nice to
China to Dubai; the season runs from May to November.
Early aviators did something similar almost 100 years ago. In the
early part of the century, flying was something you did only if you
were rich. But that changed after the first world war with an influx
of trained pilots who didn’t fancy going back to menial jobs.
With plenty of war-surplus biplanes cheaply available, these
entrepreneurial airmen began touring the country, bringing the thrill
of flying to people for whom the idea was as unattainable as space
travel is for us today.
They would fly to a town, circle it a few times and then put up a sign
and charge people for a joyride. The pilots cultivated an image of
louche rogues who kicked up a storm wherever they went. Sir Alan
Cobham, a member of the Royal Flying Corps and a pioneer of
long-distance aviation, decided that just flying about wasn’t getting
the crowd’s attention, so he decided to climb onto the wing
mid-flight. This proved something of a crowd-pleaser, and wing walking
was born.
Wing walkers were the equivalent of the stars of the television
programme Jackass today, each trying to outdo the other with ever more
daring stunts. They admitted that the point of their trade was to make
money from the crowds on the possibility of someone dying.
In America the same thing was happening, but there the pilots had a
novel take on the idea. Ethel Dare was the first woman to change
planes in the air. Pretty and petite, she was billed as the “Queen of
the Air” or the “Flying Witch” and had been a flying trapeze performer
with the Barnum & Bailey circus.
Dare was clearly a lunatic – one of her favourite tricks was standing
on the edge of a wing and suddenly falling backwards into space with
only a length of rope to save her, before climbing back, hand over
hand, to perform other stunts. Her speciality was the “iron jaw spin”,
when she dangled from the end of a rope by a special mouthpiece
clenched between her teeth and twirled in the plane’s prop wash. Dare
plunged to her death in 1933.
I was contemplating this salutary tale, and thinking that I would give
the iron jaw spin a miss, when Norman asked whether I would like to do
a loop the loop. And for some reason – perhaps because I was getting
carried away with potential nicknames (Emma the Eagle, the Flying
Angel) – I said yes. After a quick safety briefing it is time to put
my money where my big mouth is. I follow the wing-walking babe
Danielle Hughes, as elegant as a butterfly in her pink Lycra, into the
beautiful, still winter morning. I have taken the team’s advice to
“wrap up warm” so I look like an Arctic explorer as I waddle behind
Danielle towards the little aeroplane.
She explains the correct way to mount the flimsy-looking biplane – one
foot in the wrong place and I could go through the fabric-covered
wooden wings. She manoeuvres her way past the cockpit and up onto the
upper set of wings with balletic grace while I heave myself up behind
her with all the elegance of a fat person trying to get out of a
swimming pool.
However, it’s not until she has strapped me to the rig and shown me
the emergency release catch that the magnitude of what I am about to
do hits me.
As she gives me a jaunty thumbs-up (I have earplugs in and can hear
only the sound of my Darth Vader-like breathing) and prepares to
dismount, I grab her. “Don’t go,” I squeak. “Are you sure you’ve done
it up properly? It feels a bit wobbly.” I am so terrified I think I
might cry.
Then Norman fires up the plane. The propeller is whizzing by my legs
like a giant food mixer, and the vibrations through the plane make it
feel as though I am sitting on an industrial washing machine on spin
cycle.
We set off across the bumpy field, and I think of the elephants – I am
doing this to raise awareness for the Elephant Nature Foundation in
Thailand (see tinyurl.com/3afa4b for more details). This takes my mind
off things until the plane takes off.
It is freezing up there. My forehead feels like I have butted a block
of ice – better than any Botox – and the wind takes my breath away so
I have to turn my head to the side and gulp mouthfuls of air like a
fish out of water.
Because Norman can’t see me, I have to stretch my arms like Kate
Winslet on the bow of the Titanic and give him the thumbs-up so he
knows I am okay. But I don’t feel okay: my senses are overloaded and
the adrenaline is giving me a headache.
It’s like riding a motorbike at 200mph in the sky and is really rather
unpleasant. Then we start to climb, higher and higher, and at 1,000ft
I stop feeling scared and start enjoying myself, taking in for the
first time the stunning views of the Gloucestershire countryside.
But then with a jolt I suddenly realise why we are climbing so high.
“Oh no, oh please God, no.” Norman is getting ready to do a loop the
loop.
It is the anticipation I can’t stand, and bracing myself in the rig
and waiting for the plunge into the loop is far and away the most
frightening experience of my life. It is almost a relief when we
plummet into the nosedive. Almost.
Just before my heart stops beating for ever, and with an incredible
surge of G-force, we pull out of the dive and head towards the
heavens. And then everything slows right down and, as my whole world
is turned upside down, I experience an incredible moment of serenity
as though I am being held in the arms of the angels.
This feeling lasts only briefly, and then I feel incredibly,
overwhelmingly sick. It seems hours before Norman brings the plane
down but in fact it is only seconds.
As we bump across the field after landing, I am slumped in the harness
as though dead, limp as a rag doll and dribbling on my chest.
My body is shaking, and when Norman releases me from the harness, my
legs give way. So much for Emma the Eagle.
Am I pleased I did it? Yes. Would I do it again? Not even if you
offered me Brad Pitt glazed in honey clutching a million pounds.
Those magnificent men (and women)
The history of wing walking stretches back to 1920s America, where it
was a highly popular spectator sport.
During airshows, daredevils would perform acrobatic tricks as the
plane they were on swooped at low altitudes. Some wing walkers even
crossed over, mid-air, to other aircraft.
As the sport grew, performers increasingly sought to outdo each other,
which resulted in a number of accidents and fatalities, including the
death of the first female wing walker, Ethel Dare. This led, in 1936,
to a ruling by the US government that made it illegal to wing walk at
altitudes below 1,500ft, in effect killing the sport for spectators.
In the UK, wing walking was revived by Vic Norman, when he founded
AeroSuperBatics in 1987. Norman had to gain a special dispensation
from the Civil Aviation Authority in order to allow his performers
into the air; they now operate by a strict set of safety guidelines.
Walkers must be professionally trained before taking part, assuming
they first pass stringent physical tests. They must wear a safety
harness connecting them to the plane, and when they are atop the wings
they must be strapped into a safety rig.
The planes, which fly at up to 160mph, are not allowed to fly lower
than 30ft, although they will soar as high as 1,000ft to perform
loops, where riders experience forces as great as 3.5G.
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| User: "Denis Loubet" |
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| Title: Re: Emma Parker-Bowles goes wing walking with Team Guinot near Cirencester |
08 Dec 2007 11:16:24 PM |
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"stoney" <stoney@the.net> wrote in message
news:e2hml3pn46h4tm5srpq2kda7ot7m6lh3al@4ax.com...
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article3016027.ece
From The Sunday Times
December 9, 2007
Over the top and down into a death plunge
Ever considered being strapped to the wing of a biplane while it does
a loop the loop? Well don't
Having skydived, I can understand that.
--
Denis Loubet
dloubet@io.com
http//www.io.com/~dloubet
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Emma Parker-Bowles goes wing walking with Team Guinot near Cirencester |
22 Dec 2007 07:38:40 PM |
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On Sat, 8 Dec 2007 23:16:24 -0600, "Denis Loubet" <dloubet@io.com>
wrote:
"stoney" <stoney@the.net> wrote in message
news:e2hml3pn46h4tm5srpq2kda7ot7m6lh3al@4ax.com...
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article3016027.ece
From The Sunday Times
December 9, 2007
Over the top and down into a death plunge
Ever considered being strapped to the wing of a biplane while it does
a loop the loop? Well don't
Having skydived, I can understand that.
Topsy-turvey
.
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