AI # 416 : C-17 to Empire Test Pilot School | Matt Doncaster *PART 2*

Throughout my career, I just happen to be in the right place at the right time through

circumstance or luck or fate or color what color would you like. The only reason I ended

on the C17 was because I was caught and aware of the G in the back seat of a hawk. You couldn't have made that up.

So that's why I went multi-engine, but about to, and that happened in 2003, 2008, I was actually all gearing up to leave the Air Force.

It was just my time. I'd extended for my C17 tour. I'd speak to the system and they said, well, you know, your time's up.

2008, 2008, 2009, I would have walked out the door, but come the middle of 2008. With a year to go, you start thinking about leaving and you start doing, you know, what am I going to do?

And to be briefly honest, I had absolutely no idea a global financial crash in 2008. It was a bit like, would you believe I didn't even know that the Berlin Wall had come down?

I don't recall where I was on the night the Berlin Wall came down. I don't know. That's very fast, yeah.

So there I was in 2008 going, oh, I'll just go to the airlines and balloons to me. The airlines were crumbling, sacking loads of people, laying people off, getting rid of airplanes.

You know, it was in a shocking state. No, there I was going, oh, I'll just do my ATPL exam and I'll get a job with an ABA or somebody again.

Everything will be fine. No, but circumstance crept up my inn. It wasn't because I became aware of the financial crash.

It was actually my wife had an accident in October of 2008, quite a bad accident in our married quarter in Boscombe Down, which is where I was at the time.

So we were living at Boscombe Down. I was commuting to Brise. So it's towards the end of my C-17 tour back end of 2008.

I'm thinking about leaving. I've got my last day on the squadron. That's all in the diary, et cetera, et cetera.

And then, in fact, I was doing my class to medical. So this is for general aviation.

I'm just in a doctor's surgery, some in a Boscombe on this particular morning.

And I put the phones on mute, walk out, and I turn it back on.

It lit up like a Christmas tree, message after message after message, voice mail, text messages, where are you, your wife's in hospital.

So I raced into Salisbury, and there's Jackie, and she's fundamentally, she's electrocuted herself with a faulty hairdryer.

Again, you couldn't make it up, but she'd taken her, the electrocution had fired her across the room and she'd banged her head on the wall.

So she'd taken a real nasty blow to the head. They thought it was concussion, but regardless of what they thought it was at that point,

forget about, you know, everything. It was all about looking after her.

But it became acutely aware pretty quickly. And by quickly, I mean over the next couple of weeks that this wasn't concussion, this was something else.

And they didn't really know what it was. She had all the scans and all this stuff, but fundamentally it was kind of bright.

The last thing I need to be doing right now with an unknown head injury, something going on with my wife.

The last thing I need to be doing is sitting down on the dining room table with, you know, civil license manuals, doing all the hard grafts and the exams and the flying and everything else to get a license to go and get a job, which, you know, at that point, there was a realization that the airlines weren't recreasing.

So I, I, I swept the Air Force and I said, look, you know, these are the circumstances I need to stay in.

And I thought about it and I thought, well, if I stay in a normal tour length being three years, I'll ask for four, which will be a, you know, a three year tour length plus a little bit, a bit extra.

I'll ask for four and they offered me two and I went beggars can't be choosers. I'll have it two years.

So they gave me a two year extension, which took me to in theory, summer of 11.

But then I said, well, I need a job that's going to keep me at home. So we had the my recorder, boss come down.

And, and I'd done a stint on a little, the reason we were at boss come down actually was because of my neck injury.

I did a little stint on the unit called Handling Squadron looking after air crew documentation.

So I looked after the Harriet docs down there. So I'd done a little bit of time down there.

So I did literally data mate and I said, other I need jobs going on Handling Squadron because I need I need something I need to stop.

I need to fly desk basically. I need to I'm Monday to Friday. I need to fly desk and I need to be at home and and he said, yeah, there is.

Right, let's make this happen.

And, and they did. So I went on to a desk actually that was looking after the Nimrod MRE 4, you know, the one that nearly was.

And I said, well, I don't know. Well, then if a Nimrod from there, but doesn't matter.

I mean, you've got a multi engine head on your shoulders now. So it's, it's all the same language. Don't worry about it.

And it's a listening watch anyway, because this thing is, you know, it's in trouble.

It's a type of state. It's a wood foot, et cetera, et cetera. It's a listening watch. And I went, okay. So, um, yeah.

So I did that for a very short period of time. So we're talking now. It's about December 08.

Come into the new year. January. The phone goes and I go.

And they go, hi, it's so and so. And it's, it's my poster. So this is the guy who's in charge of, you know, posting people, myself included.

And he said, um, what do you think about, uh, specialist air crew?

Now, specialist air crew, um, it's now called professional aviator, but specialist air crew was a invite only, to be honest.

You couldn't really ask for it. It was invite only. Um, it was a scheme whereby they identify people who have got experience and valuable experience.

Um, and they want to keep you in flying jobs as opposed to doing the traditional, I, the promotion to squadron aid again.

Do staff college come back, maybe do a flight command at all on a, on a, you know, squadron somewhere.

A spy to be promoted to wing commander, go and do another staff course. And then eventually you end up in star positions, you know, as groupcapped in their corridor and above.

So it, it divorces people from that promotion ladder.

But what it author does is it a yes, it keeps you in flying jobs or flying related jobs directly. So whether that be, um, you know, actually flying in a cockpit or doing a, you know, there's some sort of direct support activity.

Um, B, it also pays you as if you were getting promoted alongside your peers.

So when you hit, you know, 35 or 40, they sort of go, well, most of your compadre is of your generation are wing commanders.

And what I'm trying to say is it was an absolute no brainer for me to go, yes, I will have PA spine, especially to that group, PA spine.

Yes, please, because there were huge, huge financial implications, your pensions affected and all sorts of really good stuff goes on when you start being paid on the PA spine.

And fundamentally your entire income is pensionable. And I just went, well, in order to glean that pension, you have to do five years as PA spine.

Well, I'd asked for a four year extension. So it was a no brainer for me to go, well, an additional year, five years.

I asked for four in the first place, five years, the pension kicks in, you know, so I said, I'll have it, you know, simple.

Right. And I could just breathe again and go, right, I've got five years now of time to do something with.

Didn't know what it was at the time. Jackie was still very, very poorly.

So, so I just said to him, I was just doing my, my desk job.

And then about a week later, the phone goes again and they said, we need a cure fine, qualified flying instructor.

And I went, oh, here we go. They're going to post me away from Boscombe. They're going to sort of post me at the back to the Tukana or, you know, back to.

Well, at that point, I could call G, because in the summer of 08, I'd asked the system to re-evaluate my neck.

I'd done centrifuge training and got through a complete assessment. So I'd got my G limit back.

And I'd done that because I wouldn't have been able to do it having left the service. There's no way short of throwing a lot of money at it.

You're going to get access to a centrifuge as a civilian. So I said, look, I'd just see what my neck can do.

And I'd done that in the previous summer. So it was on my, you know, on my, on my docs, my documents that, you know, right, you know, Matt can pull, you know, unrestricted G again.

So the phone goes and they say, we need a qualified flying instructor. I'm like, how crikey, you know, it's, you know, it's angle ceiling and a posters.

Yeah.

And I said, well, go, go, go on, go ahead. Well, it's actually up the hill as in a boss come down.

The airfield sits on top of the hill and it's up the hill and partest part school.

And I sort of went, what? And I knew of the job because the gut, the incumbents, the guy incumbent,

and they've got, was it me on the, in his married quarter, right? So I knew of the job.

And I sort of heard of it and they said, well, look, you're to kind of instruct you're a whole constructor.

And fast yet front line, you've done multi engine front line, you know, it doesn't get any better than that.

To go and do a, the standards, the, the, the keyify job at ETS.

I went downstairs to my boss, who was a former test pilot, helicopter test pilot, explained to him that they'd offered me the job and he just went by.

That was it. He said, off you go, mate, you know, you know, because they needed to, they needed me to start pretty quickly.

Yeah. And they also knew that I was, I was only kind of just, you know, had this listening watch over the, over the Nimrod down at Handling Squadron.

So I was, I was kind of disposable as far as handling the squadron was concerned. So up, I went up to the hill, top of the hill,

met the guy who was doing the job at the time, had a quick chat and I said, you know, I think I'm taking over from you.

And he goes, I'll bring him up to Brunei to go and fly for the Sultan. And I went, that's nice.

So that's why there was this urgency to, to get somebody in for continuity. So I started pretty much straight away.

And my core aircraft was, were, Tukano, Hawk, AlphaJets, initially. Now, obviously, I've flown the Hawk in the AlphaJet, sorry, the Tukano in the Hawk before.

So I drove myself up to Lenton News, got into the copy trainer, reloaded the checks, got into the simulator, got airborne.

Enough for them to say, yeah, brilliant, you know, you qualified, you know, you can go solo again, didn't need to go solo, but you've met solo standard.

Came back down to Boston down, then flew the Tukano's, the school Tukano's for the rest of my conversion and, and rest of it.

Did exactly the same with the Hawk, up at Valley, went up there, flew in the simulator, got myself current, came back, did more fly down to Boston down, and then did an AlphaJet conversion.

There was no simulator, or there was no simulator in the UK, the simulator was in Portugal.

So it's not like I got on a airplane and went down to Bezier, south of Lisbon.

We could forego the simulator, there was literally said, right, next time the school goes to the simulator, which at that time was, was the beginning of each year.

Run about sort of January, February time, you'll go with them next time around.

So we'll just, we'll just do all your simulator stuff airborne as much as we can.

You can't, you can't shut an engine down in the AlphaJet airborne, because it's got two.

So, um, so we could do, um, uh, engine shutdown, rely on that sort of stuff, certain things we couldn't do, but in the end, you've got a checklist.

And, and when you, this is the big learning point for me when I went to the school is you approach multi typing in a vastly different way than just flying one type of airplane.

So I knew the harrier inside out the hall, the Takano in isolation.

I knew those aircraft really, really well. I'd been through ground school.

I'd been through simulator training. I was flying it on a daily basis.

And, but when you are flying a Takano in the morning, having your lunch and then flying an AlphaJet in the afternoon.

Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a difference there.

And you can fall into so many different traps.

Um, and as the QFI as well, I was being trained to be a multi type QFI.

And that doesn't mean purely instructing on those airplanes, but it's also watching after these pitfalls.

So it's things like, and we're all human, the gear limit speed, the undercarriage limit speed on the, on our Takano was 145 knots on a hawk. It's 200.

So you can quite easily have somebody and, and I did quite easily have somebody downwind in the, in the visual.

In the, in the visual circuit in the Takano, and he says below 200 and you go, oh, he's running the hawk checks in his head, not the Takano checks.

Yeah. Because he just has to, yeah, maybe you flew the hawk in the morning.

And, and, and that's, that's, that's just one pitfall.

I mean, you know, I say there are countless others, but that would be, you know, quite a, quite an eyeate.

No, and somebody tries to do that. So you fly with your hand under the gear handle.

Or you just get a, please say below 1, 4, 5, yet brilliant, right?

And, you know, and, and that sort of thing. But, um, but, you know, certainly, multi-typing from my perspective, I hadn't really done it before.

I'd, not, certainly not to the degree I was, I was expected to do it at the school.

So I'd flown things like, you know, small single engine piston stuff on the side whilst at prize noughton, for instance.

But my, but the, you know, the meat of what I was doing was flying this in 17.

So there's little chance for things to creep in and get in the way.

You know, you operate C-17, multi-crew, all that sort of good stuff, and you're doing it 99.9% of your flying life.

That 0.1% happens to be a single engine piston, you know, at the flying club.

Less chance of, of, of, of falling over and, and running a wrong checklist, thought of a benefit.

Um, when you're flying three, four, as I was in the end, five types, um, and current on all those five.

So in due course, they converted me to the Andover.

So I was the last Air Force chap to convert to the Andover, before it went out of service.

So converted to the Andover.

Um, and when the Andover went out of service, we brought King Air in from RF Cranwell,

which was surplus to requirements.

It was, um, it was then the multi-engine trainer at Cranwell on 45 squadron.

Um, and we were trying to decide down at Boscom what to replace the Andover with.

Um, and as a stopgap, we had two years of King Air.

So I wrote the syllabus for the King Air Conversion, which we would ultimately use in house.

And then took that syllabus up to Cranwell and used it.

And, um, it all been written, uh, underwritten by my group captain, um, head of testing evaluation for the whole UK.

He, he, underwrote the, uh, the syllabus that I had written.

It took, it took quite a while to, to write the King Air syllabus, because I was just about to say the, the, the, when you convert to something like the C17 or the Harry or the Hawk.

Or any, any, you know, when you go to your conversion unit or your training unit, whatever.

You spend weeks in ground school and you spend a couple of weeks in the simulator, let's say, and you've learnt your checks.

And then you spend a few weeks building up and doing trip off the trip off the trip.

As an Abinitio Hawk pilot, I did, I think it was maybe seven or eight trips before I was sent sailor, but I'm an Abinitio pilot.

Now, when you've got people at test pilot schools.

So whether that be the, um, US Navy, US Air Force, uh, ETPS, the French, uh, school, um, or whatever, the major test pilot schools around the world.

Certainly the government sponsored ones.

That's pretty that way, the, oh, of which there are few.

You've got guys of extremely high caliber.

They've been selected for test pilot training in the first place and then they arrive at the school.

Um, they're probably single type guys, you know, the fast jet guys who would come in.

Would have at this time.

So we're talking 2009 and they've got a while ago now.

Would have maybe only flown tornado on the frontline.

You've got guys coming in from America who would have only been a 15 guys.

And by only, I don't think it's only a 15.

I mean, that's pretty much his, his only frontline type.

So they're very much single type guys.

The multi engine guys would have only flown say a Charlie 130.

Very rarely would you get a guy on the school as a student coming in to become a test pilot who had flown more than one operational type.

So, so with that in mind, you are, you're instilling this multi type, you know, ethos.

Um, the, and over, I was last, last got to convert to that.

Very short conversions is, is, is the key to everything we did.

We didn't have the time at all.

You didn't have the time to spend six weeks converting people to a to guy.

I literally had a ban a week.

So I would spend two days with them in the classroom as well as them doing other things as well.

You know, the other lectures going on.

But I'd have pretty much the meat of two days in the classroom to teach them to Carnot Grand School.

So this is the systems.

This is, right, hands up, who's flown a turbo prop before?

Funny old thing, not many hands go up, you know, apart from, you know, a few.

Because most people do or did training on, you know, little fast jet trainers.

But, uh, the odd hand would go and you go, okay, right, okay.

And my audience is, is, is not that, uh, that a fade with turbo props.

Okay.

So I'll focus on, you know, the, uh, the nuances of the, the to Carnot turbo prop as well as all of the, uh, the systems.

And I would, I would, I would go through all of those, those lectures over the course of about two days.

And then we would high-tail it up to Yorkshire.

So we'd just jump in higher cars and whatever.

High-tail it up or sometimes maybe getting the end over, to be honest, use that as a bit of a bus.

Um, and get flown up to Yorkshire where I booked simulators and we'd spend three, maybe four days.

Um, in the simulator to get everybody through.

And it's not only the pilots as well.

I stress here that there were flight test engineers on the course,

mustn't forget the FTEs.

They were, um, an integral part of the course.

And they're, that they're being trained to become experimental flight test engineers.

So they would be put in the simulator as well to get an idea of, you know,

what it's like to be an aeroplane.

Some of these guys hadn't hadn't flown before.

You know, they're engineers, but not, they'd never been able.

I mean, it was just how they stepped into that environment, hats off, to be honest.

Um, you know, more so in some regards than the pilots.

Um, so, um, so no, that's what we do.

So we do, uh, you know, a quick and dirty three or four days in the simulator.

And then we grow up, active, Oscar down.

And then we would have, and it wasn't just me.

I was, I wasn't the only Ticano instructor on the school.

Most of the staff, because, um, ultimately you're going to use the Ticano throughout the year for various exercises.

They were, they were Ticano qualified and Ticano instructors in their own right,

whether they'd been a cure fine, a previous existence through their military career,

or, or not.

It didn't really matter.

We had our own sort of in-house way of converting the tutors, the test pilot tutors,

to become instructors on aircraft in the school, if that makes sense.

So there was a, there was a whole rule book and a whole environment in which test and evaluation existed.

It's, it's changed beyond all recognition.

Um, in, in recent years, predominantly because of the, the military aviation authority stood up as a, as a result of the Nimrod disaster in Afghanistan,

and, um, uh, hadn't cave QC, and I'm certainly not, I've met him, and I'm not blaming him for this at all.

He wrote the report, um, on the Nimrod crash in Afghanistan, and highlighted a number of shortcomings across, um, across numerous support elements within the MOD as a whole.

So we're talking aviation tricer, that's pretty much it.

But it did hit the Air Force really, really quite badly, um, in, in many regards because, um, the, the rules had to subtly change,

risk and assessment of risk, management of risk changed a lot, pretty much overnight.

And test and evaluation flying, um, you know, I stress I am not a test pilot, but I've had a very privileged existence five years within the test and evaluation community,

um, flying and operating alongside some extremely learned and capable pilots and flight test engineers and grand tutors as well.

They were dynamists, mathematicians, the whole gambit back then, um, which get, which has given me such an insight into testing evaluation,

but test and evaluation and its management and its regulation grew over decades, you know, we're talking from the early days of Farnborough in the 40s,

and Pytes pilot school was formed, you know, early 40s.

So over that time, lessons are learned, lessons are identified, risk is managed, even experimental risk is managed,

and of course over time it's going to change, and it's going to become a very robust system.

And I believe to this day that we had an extremely robust system of risk management and, um, assessment,

and the way we did business on the school, the way we converted people to, to types in very short order, was, it was extremely highly supervised,

ultimately as the curifying the standards going to school, it was, you know, I was, like, there was an umbrella above me, you know,

yeah, super vitally umbrella above me, but, you know, it was my job to be looking after people's currencies and conversions to type,

and everything that comes with that, um, syllabus management, syllabus writing, I'll come back to the, to the King Air in a minute,

but just to give you that brief insight of how quickly we can convert people to, to aircraft,

even somebody who'd never flown a fast jet before, never flown a fast jet, he would get two trips with me,

or one of the Alpha Jet, or Hawk instructor, and he's spurred trip on the airplane, he's on his own,

with a flightist engineer student in the back seat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, to the outside world looking in, your reaction is exactly what we would get, we go, sorry, he tripped three,

and he's never flown a fast jet before, or surely, I mean, admittedly, we would do Takano conversion first in the year,

and then we would do the Hawk conversion, and then the Alpha Jet conversion would kind of come after that,

because, you know, you can't do it all at once, so we would prioritize, and we'd start with Takano,

which is fairly benign, and then the Hawk after that, and then the Alpha Jet.

But fundamentally, you get a, you know, a Hercules guy, who has been through training on Takano,

he's maybe flown, due to a bulldog back then, you know, early days, we're talking a long time again now,

you know, when he's flown a single engine piston, he's flown a turbo prop, he's flown a twin turbo prop,

maybe, you know, the King Air or the jet stream, perhaps, and then he's gone to the Hercules,

coming back in, he would fly the multi-engine stuff, so the Andeva,

and he'd fly the fast jets as well, because it's all about test techniques.

That's why we're converting these guys to these airplanes.

The tutors, who did the meat of the syllabus, I'm just there,

I was working my socks off for the first three months of the year, trying to get these conversions done,

and all the students through, and also bringing the tutors back into currency,

because not all the tutors flew all their types all the way through the year,

we block them into groups.

Yeah, so, you know, otherwise, we'd just spend our entire time doing checkrides.

And again, this is another sort of learned system over the decades of test pilot activity,

and test pilot training activity, is that you can group and clump groups of airplanes together.

So, the Takana, the Hawk and the Alpha Jet, all lived in the same group.

And if you did an instrument rating test, which was an annual test on,

let's say Hawk, that covered you for Alpha Jet and Takana as well.

In so much as, it then enabled you to go fly the Alpha Jet and the Takana in cloud,

because you've done an instrument rating test on the Hawk, because those three aircraft are classed as the same group.

And again, from the outside world looking in, that was an alien concept to me when I went there as well.

It was all part of my learning experience of multi-typing, and the reasons behind it as well.

You just haven't got the time to spend doing three instrument rating tests for the sake of doing one fundamentally.

Can this guy fly safely on instruments? Yes, he can.

Is he Takana qualified? Is he Alpha Jet qualified? There are similarities there with regards cockpit layout.

Performance to a certain extent. And I mean, as in, there's no way on this Earth of Takana is going to get more than about 250 knots.

I've got 300 knots in a dive, but boy, I've boyded, I have to try.

And an Alpha Jet will do 300 knots and a half, kind of idea.

So I'm not talking about, you know, that, that sort of performance, but I'm talking about things like the instrument scan was very, very similar.

The cockpit layout and the general feel for the aeroplane, let's say, you know, very, very similar.

The Takano does not handle in the same way as an Andeva. So, hey, Preston, you know, that's what I'm talking about.

But the Andeva and the Chieftain and the Bassit would all kind of sit in that multi-engine group.

And then you've got the helicopters over to one side as well. I'm not, obviously, I'm not talking about the helicopter side of things, but there was, there was another guy in the school,

who was a QHI, qualified helicopter instructor. And he's doing exactly the same job as me, non-test pilot, qualified helicopter instructor, multi-typing.

He would fly and be current on the gazelle, the links, the Augusta 109.

But he would also go and dabble with other things as well. And he'd go do check rides with, with the rotary wing test squadron.

So he'd go into check rides on, say, the Seeking and that sort of thing.

As I would do, around the testing evaluation community as well.

So we also had a job outside the school, which enabled us to go and do check rides on pilots who were working in industry.

So these are test pilots up at St. Walton, working at BA Systems, Charlie, the QHI.

He would go off to Yovlton, Yovl, so he'd go down to Westlands, and he'd do check rides down there on the test pilots who are out there doing the job for real.

Because our ultimate boss, this group captain, group captain testing evaluation, was the regulator prior to the military aviation authority standing up after the numatroch.

So that's why things changed. But we had a group captain boss, we had a group captain chief test pilot as well, but the CTP chief test pilot.

He was in charge of all M-O-D military, effectively, military test evaluation within the military.

Group captain T&E was his umbrella, which also overlapped onto the likes of Westlands, BA Systems, Marshalls at Cambridge.

You know, these companies that do testing evaluation on military airplanes.

So that was the construct. But then, unfortunately, when they, and I say unfortunately, because I think it was, it was, it was unfortunate, hence the word.

But after the MAA stood up, the, the looking in bit, so the outside looking in to test evaluation, they sort of went, well, hang on a minute, you know, the appetite for risk sort of subtly changed.

Without a shadower down when the MAA stood up, some would argue rightly so, some would argue possibly less so.

I think ultimately risk management was there prior to the MAA. Of course it was, we had rules, we had regulations, you know, if you, if you did something and broke the rules, well, you know, you, you, you took the consequences.

Absolutely. And I'm not saying that prior to the MAA standing up, everybody was buzzing the tower.

That's, that's not what I'm talking about. It's, it was just the, the testing evaluation community and the construct and its own rules and regulations.

If you, if you've got limited experience of that, it's very easy to look at it and go, that doesn't look like a frontline squadron.

Well, of course it doesn't look like a frontline squadron because frontline squadrons are operating completely different role, single type, everybody's qualified on those, on those single types.

And a squadron, a frontline squadron, or even a training squadron in a military environment is, is solely focused on flying that one airplane in whatever role that is.

When you've got testing evaluation, not only are people by, by dint of what they're doing flying more than one type, they're also doing experimental flying.

At ETS, there was never any experimental flying going on. The syllabus, the syllabus of training and getting test techniques taught to the student test pilots.

And, and, and, and flight test engineers was very prescriptive. But those techniques are the building blocks. I mean, they're all in here.

Fixing training money. You know, it, it's, it's all in there. And I, you know, go off and I'll look in there and go, OK, so, you know, how, how, how does one test, not that I'm, not that I'm doing it, but I have interest.

How does one test for a particular aerodynamic characteristic of an airplane? And, and that's what, and that's what they've been taught to do by dint of all the exercises in that manual. So, it's, it's a different type of risk.

And we would, we would live and the aircraft would operate within the release to service, which is basically the rulebook. It says, right, you know, don't go faster than this. Don't fly higher than this. Don't pour more G than this.

It's the, it's, it's the manual that comes with an airplane. And it's called the release to service. We would find within the release to service because that's how, pretty much everybody operates airplanes, you know, in the military environment.

If you want to look at experimental, well, experimental flying has defined that release to service. Those, those parameters in the first place. So you, so you, this is, this is where people, you know, talk about, you know, pushing the envelope. Well, the envelope is exactly that.

The flight envelope. These parameters that test pilots have gone to and gone, oh, no, no, right. Beyond here, it's unsafe. Do you know what? We'll bring it back to here and operate within, within these parameters.

So this is a buffer before it gets dangerous. So risk is managed.

And sure enough, you know, if you fly outside the release to service, funny things can happen. I, you know, I, I went, I stepped outside the release to service in the Harry.

And, and completely wasn't on purpose. It was, it was, I flew there, a plane in such a way that it started to do something quite weird.

So I stopped what I was doing and hey, I said, it stopped being weird. And when I landed, I went, hey, I did this. It was rapid rolling. And I stepped outside the wrapping rolling limits.

As I said, it was on purpose. It was just, I, I just, I did it at the time.

And sure enough, the aircraft behaved. And I was acutely aware of the aircraft kind of not feeling, whoa, that's a bit odd. So I stopped rolling and it, and it was fine.

Got back on the ground. And one of my learned flight commanders went, uh, just get your crew manual. Let's have a look at rapid rolling limits and sure enough, you know, I come in with the limit.

But let's, for sake of argument, say you would rapid roll. So rapid roll is, is full application available on, you know, just whack. You just hit stop when you just, you know, off it goes.

And it rolls really rapidly. Hence the name. Um, but you can only do it. I can't remember the exact figure. But let's say you could only do it to 360 degrees. So, you know, one complete roll.

And that's your limit. I did two and, and, and kind of halfway through the second.

It, it, it, it, it, it started to, it started to your, basically the aircraft started your, um, which is, um, not where you need to be.

But I sensed it. Like, you know, literally through the seat of my pants, I could, I could go, oh, I've gone a bit sideways. I stopped rolling.

And that was it. And, and, and that's a classic example of, you know, somebody has gone out. I'm sure they're way back when with a harrier. I'm gone. Right.

We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna define their rapid rolling limit today.

So we'll start with the 360, then we'll go to 20 or whatever it is. And, and, and somebody will define it and God, do you know what?

Stapest houses up to 360 beyond that. Don't do it. Right, right there in the book, moving on next, next parameter.

So this is, this is the, these are the skills that the test pilots are instilled with.

Um, and we would fly within the release of service, but occasionally we would go outside of that. We would, but not to experimental level.

We would go into that buffer zone. So we did things like, um, Tukano spinning, um, with the students.

Um, now I didn't, I didn't sit in the, in the airplane, uh, for this exercise because, um, the students would sit with a, with a test pilot tutor in the airplane.

Um, I would be on telemetry.

So the risk management now is that you've got an aircraft that both Tukano's, both our hawks and a number of the alpha jets were kitted out with TM telemetry.

So this is the aircraft talking to a ground station where there's a safety pilot who is sat in a nice, warm, comfortable, not very noisy environment with screens in front of them with all the parameters that the jet is feeding down to the ground station.

So that in the cold light of day, if what they're about to do doesn't go according to plan, safety pilot can step in and quite often I'd, I'd sit as the safety pilot for the Tukano spinning exercise.

And, uh, and, and do that job because you're in that buffer zone. You're outside release of service, but you're, there is a risk you can go into.

The sort of, you know, where, where somebody hasn't been the chances are you're not going to do that because again, it's, it's quite prescriptive exercise. It's a very prescriptive exercise, actually, to be honest.

Um, because of its nature.

And, and that was one example that, you know, we would do, um, uh, just try to get it to spin in a different way than the two prescribed more to maybe three actually thinking about it prescribed ways of spinning it.

As a, uh, as a training airplane in the, in the Air Force at the time, so you could spin it erect, you could spin it inverted and you could spin it erect the power on as well, um, up to up to a limit.

So fundamentally three different spins that was it, but we went through a whole raft of what happens if you're in the spin and you put a load of either one in what happens if you reverse the rudder halfway through the spin kind of way.

So you're trying to, you're trying to kind of, you know, see what the aircraft's going to do.

Um, and, um, and react accordingly.

Um, and that was, that was quite a, I've been told I didn't sit through it, obviously a safety pilot.

Um, quite, you know, some of those spins could be quite interesting.

Um, and we also, we couldn't spin our Alpha Jet, but we could, we went to France, um, went down to the French school near Marseille.

And, uh, and, and we could spin those there, there, there's had a modification on them.

Um, they had little strakes under the nose, which gave it a little bit more directional stability such that they could spin.

Uh, and I did sit through that exercise.

And my goodness me, um, you don't want to spin an Alpha Jet in a hurry, um, which is, which is why we didn't, we didn't even academically spin the Alpha Jet.

You can academically spin a hawk.

We would obviously academically spin by academically.

I mean, you know, as a learning exercise, but we didn't go anywhere near the spin in the Alpha Jet.

Yeah, it was. So there was a deal done, um, between, uh, ETPS and, and SARB.

Um, I don't know the exact, you know, conversations that went on, but the agreement came in and, um, yeah, absolutely.

Of the course, I, I never went, um, you know, money was, you know, it's tight to this day.

So there was no need for me to go anywhere near Grippin, um, or anywhere near Sweden for that.

You know, not even as an interested party, you know, I, it was just kind of, no, we can't afford the etiquette out, you know, because, you know, you're not bringing anything to the party.

You're not part of this exercise.

So, um, but no, absolutely.

The whole course, um, and, and a number of tutors.

It's kind of a very few tutors who were Grippin qualified.

I think I'm right in saying there were maybe three or four total who were also Grippin tutors.

And the school would, uh, you know, it would, it would deploy to, uh, to Sweden and go and fly, fly the Grippin.

Um, which I'm told is, you know, a pretty darn cool airplane to be honest.

Um, yeah, and I, I read only yesterday, the Canadians are thinking of binning the F-35 contract and, you know, multiple numbers of Grippin.

Um, so I think Grippin has, um, is, is perhaps, you know, sort of, you know, living to see it today.

I think it's, you know, it's, it's, it was capable when the guys were flying it.

I can't remember the, the exact model number they feel, the, you know, the letter.

No, I can't remember the model number they flew.

Um, but it was, it was certainly, they'd all come back and go, oh yeah, it was a nice airplane.

Yeah.

Did you enjoy your time on the school?

And did you have a favorite aircraft you flew there?

I did. I, I thoroughly enjoyed my time.

It took me a, a long time to learn, um, what my role actually entailed in so much as, you know, the multi-time thing and becoming,

and becoming proficient enough to not, not to think about it.

But certainly be able to sort of do a Takano, sortie in the morning, maybe bounce straight into a multi-engine, you know, test ride, you know, over lunchtime with heavy aircraft test next door.

Say in the, the chieftain or, you know, maybe in the passage or something like that.

And then at the end of the day come back and, you know, do a, do an alpha jet trip or something like that.

Um, to be able to bounce between the three with, and also juggle things like syllabus writing.

So let's go back to that King Air syllabus very briefly, you know, I, I had to, I had to devise that syllabus.

I had to type, compress a week's long conversion.

The cramwell, as in 45 squadron, you know, lived and died by.

I had to kind of get right by cherry pick the bits out of that to smash it into.

Guess what? We'll, we'll do a grounds, I'd have had to write all the ground school stuff.

I plagiarized an awful lot that was given to me from cramwell.

But obviously I've got to try and compress it into two days, not two weeks.

So compressing it down, um, going up to cramwell getting in the simulator and, uh, and then getting the, you know, getting the guys converted.

Because we did all our in the after myself and a civilian colleague were converted to the King Air up a cramwell.

We did all the further, um, conversions in house down the possible down.

Um, so it took quite a while to sort of get to grips with the multi typing such that I didn't feel.

Walking into a room like a buffoon going, okay, right, I don't want to fall into the trap and put in the gear down.

200 knots in a tecane, for instance.

Um, not that people thought I was walking through the door and I was at the food.

I wouldn't have been there had they not thought, yeah, guess what?

You know, Matt can do the job.

But equally, you know, I'm, I'm rubbing shoulders with some very, very capable and experienced test pilots.

And it was an absolute privilege to be in the same crew room that alone the same airplane as some of those guys in my time.

So for that, I am eternally grateful.

And I learned an awful lot from some of those guys.

Um, even, you know, I was, I was fortunate enough to do a few trips in the half of the school had a half for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have it anymore.

It just went.

Uh, um, old.

I think somebody inducted me out of board, but, but either way.

Um, and I, I happen to mention that I was going to fly in a two seats a bit fire with, sorry, I just dropped that one in.

Um, with a mate of mine, um, down at, um, if I did, they weren't as good with at the time.

This is, uh, formerly known as Bulby, the Bulby Academy.

We're based up, um, Oxford Shoei, Campbell, that sort of area.

Um, and a mate of mine.

Um, Russ Eatwell, and I will drop Russ's name in there.

Um, it was, was part of that, uh, that academy.

Finally, Spitfire.

Yeah, it was like the Spitfire, Gilda, Gio, Golf, India, Lima, Delta, Alpha, registration, two seats.

And, uh, and for my 40th, my lovely wife gave me a bit of money to go and fly for half an hour with Russ in a Spitfire.

And when I mentioned this to Dave Southwood, who it was an absolute legend.

There still is. I mean, Dave, Dave, I think it's 147 types in his logbook.

Um, I believe that's pretty much sort of, you know, in the post-war period.

I think that's pretty much like number two on the ladder of number of types.

I mean, he's right up there.

And, and I mentioned this in the crewman, Dave, Dave was involved with Warbird flying from late 80s, 90s.

Um, in fact, the test pilot TV series was his course.

It took it, they, they, they filmed his course going through it.

Um, and I mentioned this to Dave and he just goes, well, you need some Harvard time.

And I went, well, that'd be nice, but, you know, why, you know, in my naivety and he goes, well, you'll appreciate this Spitfire more.

If you've flown, you know, a little bit of Harvard because, you know, be heavy, tail dragger.

It's the view out the front, mate. That's the key.

Anybody can fly a Spitfire, but handling it on the ground and the, and the whole, you know, tail down, tail dragger.

You literally can't see anything out the front because the engine's in the way.

You know, he said, let's go do some Harvard flying front and back seat.

So you can get a real look, see out the front of, of how little you can actually see over the world.

And, and he taught me, um, some really, I never done it before.

I was, I was tail dragger qualified, but in things like a Super Cub.

Okay. Yeah. That ain't no Harvard, you know, the Harvard is a completely different beast.

Um, and he taught me, um, a number of techniques and a number of things to do.

And again, this is indicative of, of, um, of people with this level of experience.

You know, we haven't even shut the canopy. And he's shouting to me, I'm in the back seat and he's shouting to me.

He goes, right, Matt, you, um, he said, right, see where the horizon cuts the canopy, you know, from where you're sat.

And he's not, he's not describing where it's cutting the air fryer, because he's sat in the front.

I'm sitting in the back seat and thinking, well, he just gets right from where you're sat.

Where does the horizon cut the canopy? Remember that because guess what? That's your landing attitude.

And I went, oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Something is, it sounds really, really straightforward.

But actually, if you don't think about it, it's too late when you're trying to go, oh, well, not all that I think attitude is, you know, and then you hit the tailwheel first or, you know, embarrassed, obviously, embarrassed yourself some other way.

Um, and this is the level of sort of skill and expertise that these guys have.

And Dave, you know, he gave me a huge insight into into into into big aircraft, big tail, drag types and stuff like that.

And then when I did fly with the rest of the Spitfire, it made so much more sense. I wasn't just sat there.

Oh, Dave also said, you know, by the way, um, it's not a nice experience.

And he goes, it is so noisy in a Spitfire. He said outside, it's a delight inside.

It's like being sat in a bag of spanners in a machine on spin cycle. He said it's, it's a cacophony.

And he wasn't wrong, you know, but that, you know, your senses are bombarded, maybe by the noise. There's no real vibration.

You know, these things, you know, they run like Swiss clocks. They're absolutely, you know, incredible engines.

But it was, it was, it was, and I was in the back seat of the Spit, let alone the front, you know, and it was noisy enough in the back.

And I just went, oh, yeah, he's right. But it also meant that I could go instead of spending 10 minutes going crying.

I could almost, I could dismiss it. So you could go right, you know, and get on with enjoying the rest of the flight.

And actually, you know, enjoying flying the airplane and handling the airplane.

So, so no, you know, they, they're sorts of insights and, and moments of, you know, joy, to be honest, you know,

coming, continuous turning approaches onto the grass strip and I hovered at Boscombe Down with Dave Southwood.

I mean, you know, it's just phenomenal. So, so no, I, there was immense change during my time on the school.

I can't really put percentage figures on it, but to begin with, I spent the vast majority of my time flying.

And there was very little desk work, to be honest. I was responsible for updating things like the, the school flying audiobook as Charlie, the QHI was as well.

And we would set to pretty much every year and do a, do an analytical kind of right what's changed, what needs amending, you know, and incorporate amendments into one big amendment, if you like.

But that would take quite a while. So, there was a fair amount of sort of, you know, paperwork, but not all the time.

It was spaced out throughout the year. Yeah. By the end of my time, most of my job was, was paperwork.

It was, and I think indicative of changing the rule book from the very, very bust one I was talking about, the one that took decades to define,

certainly going to a, well, we've now got an MAA military aviation authority, almost like a sort of a, with, to a certain extent, back then, a one-size-fits-all approach, right?

You know, ETS, you need to operate like a frontline squadron, you need to, you can't buy nature of the beast, you know, we are, we're different.

Yeah, but you can't be, you've got to, you've got to do this, you've got to do it this way.

And it generated an awful lot of paperwork. As we, as we were trying to rewrite rules and write them in such a way,

almost in a new language under the auspices of the MAA, it was, yeah, that was, that was there, you know, a step change.

That was a huge change in my role.

And it was also decreed that I couldn't wear multiple hats. I was wearing a hat as the ETS-QFI, day job, QFI.

Doing stuff on the school, converting people to airplanes, doing check rides on staff and students are like, in the school.

So ETS-QFI, I was also bossing down fast jet stanival. So stanival stands for standards and evaluation.

So I was working for CTP at this point, chief test pilot.

So if I was doing an instrument rating test on heavy aircraft test squadron next door, or fast jet test squadron next door, I was operating as bossing down stanival.

I was also operating as group captain T&E's stanival for the wider testing community I've talked about when I go up to one, I'll find the backseat of the typhoon every year, with their test pilot up there, who was also their instrument rating examiner.

But with wearing group captain T&E's hat, I would check him out as safe to do his job.

So there's all these sorts of things that was absolutely in no way. I could wear two hats at the same time. It just didn't work like that.

So yes, I was wearing multiple hats, but never at the same time. And when you walk through the door to go and do a check ride, guess what? Everybody knows which hat I'm wearing.

By dint of the fact that I'm on heavy aircraft test squadron, and I'm here to go and do a Chicano instrument rating test for one of their test pilots.

That wasn't that wasn't that wasn't deemed acceptable in this sort of new world, you know, so so I lost the couple of hats.

And and I lost the group captain T&E hat primarily because group captain T&E's role was was was got real.

He still existed, but his his role was taken on by the MAA. And he was absorbed into Abbey Wood over near Bristol, for instance.

So as soon as that happened, you know, the testing that I was doing on his behalf stopped, you know, he was taken on by somebody else.

So huge amounts of change. And you know, and I ended up doing less flying and way more kind of, you know, paperwork and management and that sort of thing.

But you know, it thinks change, you know, you know, I don't I don't begrudge anybody.

I don't think you would change your time probably.

No, not at all. No, not at all.

It's given me, you know, my, my, my total existence and as an aviator, mainly through ETS.

That's where my, my number of types that I've flown shot through the roof because I was flying stuff that would visit the school.

We'd get aircraft in and helicopters for that matter as well.

I flew a fair amount. I've, you know, did a thorough amount of helicopter time, not only with Charlie, but with them with visiting helicopters as well.

We'd, we'd get different aircraft types in for the students to evaluate.

And we'd give them a scenario and say, right, let's say, for instance, classic scenario.

All right, Ticano has, it's come apart somewhere. Okay, it's hopefully it's grounded.

The Royal Air Force and the MOD in general now hasn't got a basic trainer.

They are considering stopgapping it with something. Oh, and by the way, we've got a Yak 50.

That's available. The load of Yak 50s in a shed somewhere, right? They're available.

Right, students put a test program together to see if the Yak 50 could be a sensible and appropriate stopgap for a period of time whilst Ticano was being fixed.

That's, that in the round. That's sort of scenario.

And then the students would go and devise a little test program, you know, so they'd go and fly the Yak 50 that would visit the school for about an hour or so.

And they get an hour on the airplane and they go and, you know, then write a report for their tutor saying, right, his, his problem.

Here's the airplane. These are my thoughts. Bump, you know, recommend or not recommend it has a suit, all the replacement, et cetera, et cetera.

And they obviously they get graded on that report. So it was called a call of a qualitative evaluation, call of Alan.

We did call of Alan's all the way through. Yeah. So I got my hands on extra 300 Yak 50 fights the 300 helicopter didn't quite get my hands on the Dakota that would come.

The DC three would come down from Eric Lantique back in those days from Coventry.

Never quite got my hands on that, but a whole raft of other airplanes hunter.

What else did I fly? I flown a tornado with Dave, again with Dave Southwood.

Absolutely.

It was the hybrid. Do you remember the name of the, it was cool. It was TR. It was the, it was a tornado F.

Oh, it was a kinetic one.

Yeah, that's the one.

I think it was an F2 and then it had just literally gone down the experimental route for various, you know, systems and bits and bulbs.

But yeah, I flew in the back seat of TR with Dave and we did a fly pass with the Battle of Britain dining in night.

You know, again, you just get over there.

How lucky was I to be in the right place, right time to do that, for instance.

Boy, boy, that thing can shift.

That's off to the tornado boys. I think it was probably the fastest I'd been in a, in a fast jet at low level.

The blog's bought it now, isn't it?

The American business guy. He's doing it up in America.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah, it's, yeah.

So, um, so no, it was, um, it was, it was a great time.

Um, lots of change, but yeah, it meant, you know, I'm now, I'm now starting with 52 types in my logbook.

Not qualified on all of those, but qualified on, you know, nearly half of those actually qualified on.

By, you know, but some, some of them, you know, I'll never get my hands on again, but it's because of,

um, because of my time at ETS, um, SR 360, uh, used to fly in Buffalo, New York State, um,

a completely called Cal span. There was a, they had a SR 360 with an F 16 radium on the front,

and a webcam, um, strapped underneath.

And then in the back, there was a pseudo fast jet cockpit.

So this was for human machine interface, HMI studies.

So you could sit a fast jet guy in fast jet gear in a, in an ejection seat, not live,

but you, you're building that, that fast jet cockpit around him in the back of a SR 360 twin turbo pro,

performer, you know, regional airline type thing, right?

And, and he can, you know, switch switches and manipulate not only the Westcam, but the radar as well.

So he's getting a full, you know, there's an integrated cockpit there.

You don't have to fly in a 16 to do it.

You've got an F 16 effectively cockpit in the back seat, one of these things that, you know,

not even half the cost, you know, a small percentage of the cost.

Got my hands on the 360, for instance.

You know, I don't think, I don't think Cal span have even got it anymore.

You know, it's, I think it started out as they've moved on.

You know, so that's in a lot of experience.

Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.

You know, I've just, I, I thank my lucky stars.

Absolutely.

What is it?

Yeah, so, yeah, the news is we, we launched Harriet to life into the public domain on the 15th of December,

which is exactly 15 years to the day from when Harriet, GR7, GR9, the, the Harriet 2,

I'm going to speak multilingual now.

So, fundamentally, they're all Harriet, GR9s when they went out of service,

but Harriet, GR7, GR9 was the Harriet 2, as in second generation,

Harriet, that the, that the Air Force and the Navy flew to our own, flew.

Use, US equivalent, AV8B.

There's the Matador with the Spanish Navy and obviously the Italians have also got there,

AV8B as well.

So, so the second generation, Harriet, was a thing.

They're still flying out in the States.

They're still flying in Spain.

They're still flying in Italy, arguably.

And I will argue, anybody, we should still be flying them now.

Because, okay, they'd probably be going out of service now.

But if it's good enough for the Americans, why wasn't it good enough for us?

And the GR9, when it went out of service, was really, you know, a completely different base.

I never flew the GR9, I flew the GR7, but by all accounts, the GR9 was another step changing capability

and was cut short in its prime.

So, Harriet, a life is a project that is going to, and I'm not even going to say attempting,

we are going to get a GR7 running and taxing again.

We'll never fly it because it wouldn't be impossible to fly a GR7,

but pretty darn close to it from a number, from a number of levels.

One, all the aircraft got sold in 2010 to the US Marine Corps,

and were shipped off unceremoniously to the Boneyard, mainly Davis Montham in the States,

and then robbed the parts, and then they crushed the airframes.

They took all the bits off them, and then they crushed the airframes disposed of them.

The last one, I think, was disposed a couple of years back.

So, very, very sad state of affairs, however, a number did remain in the UK,

and the one that we are working on ended up in private ownership.

It was actually involved in an airborne incident in 2001, which deemed it unfliable.

It was some, there's a lot of carbon fiber in a GR7, and you can't really inspect carbon fiber.

If it's been damaged in any way, you can repair carbon fiber,

but if you damage it, you can't really assess in the same way as you can with metal.

Whether it will be fit to fly again.

2001, it was involved in an airborne incident that did damage the airframe.

It never flew again. It ended up in a hangout.

It never flew again, and it was disposed off.

It was sold to a company near Ripswitch, and it ended up in private ownership,

and it remained there for the last, oh, about, current owners had it for about 10 years, 19 years now.

He's a very private man.

You can only see this airplane from the sky.

You can't see it from a road, you can't see it from, you know, if you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't.

So, and he's trying to say his house at the moment, and he,

he's a state agent who took a load of photographs in one of which had this area sat on his front lawn,

and it hit the internet two years ago.

And it sort of went semi-viral at that point.

You know, crack it, right?

You know, it piloted this amazing house, and you get a hurry for free.

Well, it's not part of the house, though.

But I saw this on Facebook and commented, because the aircraft,

Registration, Zulu, Golf, Pfizer, and I,

tell number 80, had my name on it back in 2000.

It was the only aircraft I ever flew in all my time and all my types that had my name on the side.

And the only reason it had my name on the side, I was very cheeky.

We were on board HMS illustrious doing Operation Palace Sierra Leone in 2000.

And I'd had a glass or three of Ryoka in the ward room,

and I cycled up to Django, the junior engineering officer.

And I went, how does one get an, you know, one's name on the side of an airplane?

I just, you know, because it's not the sort of thing you ask your fellow pilots,

because, you know, he looked like a bit of a, you know,

a bit of a skit, but anyway, I said to Django, I said, you know, how does one do it?

He just goes, he will, he talked to me.

And I'll have a chat with Sango, senior engineering officer,

and, you know, as long as the boss is happy, you know, you know, fine.

Next day, my name's on the side, and that was it.

And I flew it, so I flew 509 a few times.

So I'd flown it before, you know, back out, you know, Germany and Colismor.

And I did fly, flyer off the boat a number of times.

And I flew on an operational sortie as part of our palace.

So, um, yeah, I saw this photograph on Facebook and just went,

that's my jet, like, you know, my jet, obviously, I'm very calm.

I used to do a hat, and I equipped, you know, oh, at least I know where my jet is.

Thinking nothing of it.

And the response from not the owner of the owner's wife,

who is on Facebook, he's not, she is.

Basically, I said, Matt, you're welcome to visit any time.

And anyway, it snowballed from there.

I visited, I took the family across to see it.

My son sat in it.

And this is two years ago now.

And we got chatting and one thing led to another.

And I put the fuelers out for engineers.

And I said, well, look, you know, we can have a look at, you know,

trying to do something with this.

Whether it's preservation or restoring it to some sort of running order.

It's got an engine in it.

We've got the paperwork for the end.

And the owner was over the moon.

And he was just like, can you really do that?

Well, if we don't try, you know, so 18 months ago,

I did exactly that.

I started putting the fuelers out to try and get some engineering

interest, get some engineers to look at the aeroplane

and ascertain whether it's feasible.

And they deemed it as being feasible.

Whether we use original parts, if we can possibly get them,

or re-reverse engineer parts from other airframes,

other aircraft types.

So, you know, electrics is electrics is electrics in a way.

We're not seeking airworthiness because we'll never be able to fly it again

because it was deemed unfliable back in 2001.

So we're not pursuing airworthiness, which means we can reverse

engineer and produce bespoke bits in house, et cetera, et cetera.

So from a project perspective, as long as we can get our hands

on the bits that really matter, because obviously being a harrier,

it's very, very unique with nozzles and all this sort of stuff.

You know, God, I have the nozzles.

The nozzles definitely have to move.

And the mechanism for that doesn't exist in the aeroplane

at the moment, it was all robbed.

But it's not to say that we can't either source an alternative

or make it or whatever.

So we've got a list of systems that we're going to bring back to life.

And we're not seeking full functionality.

We are seeking partial functionality just enough to get the engine

safely started, limited fuel system, limited electrics,

because we don't need it all, limited hydraulics,

because we don't need it all when we're not doing flight controls.

That's something.

So from the outside, it will look absolutely 100% like a GR7 did

when they're in service.

Inside, yeah, they're going to be some differences, you know,

but we are going to do our level best to make it, you know,

the cockpit will look identical.

Some switches will work some won't.

The ones that, you know, the ones that need to work well,

et cetera, et cetera.

So that's where we're at.

But yeah, we launched, you know, I got the website done right.

It was down to the wire, but I got it out on the 15th of December,

exactly 15 years to the day.

And I think that was a really important date to hit.

We've got the website out.

So it's it's Harry to Life.co.uk

And we've got plenty of plans in place to move the aircraft

to a suitable location.

We don't know where yet.

We've scoped a number of locations.

If anybody's got any bright ideas for somewhere in the middle of England,

somewhere, which also allows public access, public access is key to the project.

Yeah.

We can't do this without public support.

There is a love for the airplane.

We've got just shy of 1500 followers on Facebook since the 15th of December.

Which I think is not a bad number to have, to be honest.

Less than one X.

It doesn't seem to be much interest on X, Twitter, whatever.

But Facebook is where we're living in the social media space

since the ground will develop.

And we're looking to do our own YouTube channel as well,

doing shorts about the airplane and the project as it progresses.

70 engineers, all bar, two or three are all X-harriers.

And they are literally itching to get going.

They are...

Jumping like they're having...

They're digging out their toolkits and their overalls.

They're putting pictures on the WhatsApp group of,

you know, I found this and I found that.

All this sort of stuff, you know, guess what?

If it's not pinned down, you know, an engineer will have it in his shed.

Oh yeah.

So yeah, we are as a team, you know, we're rapidly approaching,

sort of, you know, 100 strong, which is, which is, again,

an incredible number of people who have already said,

look, we're going to give up, you know, time and weekends.

But it's overwhelming, but it's incredible.

Yeah, we'll put link all that in the description below, Matt.

But are you going to have some sort of, like, I don't know,

like a GoFundMe or a donation page where people can, you know,

let's say they're over in America or over in New York

and help support this project?

Yeah, absolutely.

We are on the costume of getting a bank account.

Some would say, well, why have we got a bank account already?

And that sort of stuff, you know, but, you know, fundamentally,

we want to get the word out.

Again, what we didn't want to do is go sort of half cocked

and say, we need, we need all this money for a move

and a hangarage and XYZ and parts and this and the other.

In real terms, we haven't even left the owners front lawn yet.

We are going to do a merchandise line.

So T-shirts, mugs, you know, all manner of stuff, actually.

We've got an extremely capable and experienced creative director

who's worked with many BMW Wimbledon,

you know, Bentley rolls, I mean, all major brands.

And he's got some outstanding ideas for merchandise.

So that will go into the mix as well.

So yeah, in due course, we will have that merchandise set up

and running for the bank account.

And then we will do specific fund, you know,

go fund me type exercises for things like the move.

When we actually come to move the airplane,

that will be an expense where hangarage fees,

if we need to build a shelter, then obviously that will be an expense.

Running costs, hangarage in the round again, you know,

we will need support.

We've got, we've got some quite interesting signs and fires

with regards, potential sponsorship.

But that will only sort of progress once we are,

once we're actually in a new location.

So, you know, all the pieces of the jigs are on the table.

That's weird that way.

They haven't all come together.

Some have, some haven't.

So the whole picture is definitely there.

It's just all kind of, it's, it's, it just needs, you know,

put it together, simple as that.

Yeah. That will be all linked in the description.

And yeah, watch this space,

because I've drawn on like the socials by this time I'll be out.

So, Matt, thank you very much for coming on.

It's always a pleasure.

I'm sure we will have you back on eventually.

So, cheers, Matt.

Thanks, mate.

All the best.

Thanks so much.