Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  Harald was already circling the Mustang, pausing beside the nose and reaching up to run his fingers across the spinner. Last year, Adam had commissioned Ralph to research the original paint scheme for our Mustang, and after some debate the pair of them had settled on leaving the fuselage and wings a bare metal silver. The rudder and the spinner were painted in bright red, while the panel on top of the long nose had been finished in matt green. The panel extended from the propeller to the front of the cockpit, shielding the pilot from the lethal effects of dazzle. In its very restraint, the colour scheme looked impressive, and I especially liked the way that most of the aircraft had stayed unpainted. A silver fish, I thought. Sleek. Agile. And almost impossible to catch.

  Dave joined Harald and the pair of them completed a circuit of the aeroplane before pausing again, this time to stoop beneath one wing and peer up into the wheel well. I hung back a little, fiddling with the zip on my flying suit, trying to ignore the churning in my stomach. Now that the time had arrived for me to actually fly the plane, every other consideration had fallen away. I’d forgiven Harald for barging into a very special Sunday and being so bossy. I no longer cared whether or not I was in the mood. It didn’t even bother me that I’d left most of Andrea’s wonderful roast and forgone a bottle of my favourite wine. All that mattered now was doing myself, and Adam, justice. The Mustang would ask everything of me. I was determined not to fail.

  Harald and Dave were back within earshot. As ever it was technical chatter, boys’ talk about some stage or other in Dave’s rebuild. Harald wanted to know how Dave had come up with the pipe runs in the wheel wells, the big bays beneath the wings they’d just been inspecting. I dimly remembered Dave once having a similar conversation with Adam. Adam’s grasp of technical detail had been sketchy, to say the least, but Harald was word-perfect, and I listened to the two men talking about B nuts, and sleeves, and the hydraulic advantages of right-angled bends. For this very reason, Harald had won Dave’s respect from the moment they first met, and they barely acknowledged my presence as I joined them beside the cockpit.

  They were talking about the dual conversion now, Adam’s decision to ask Dave to make room for another body in the cockpit. This had meant, amongst a million other things, extending the bubble canopy backwards.

  Harald was running his fingers along the groove where the retractable canopy seated on to the fuselage.

  ‘We had some problems,’ he said, ‘back in the States.’

  ‘You did?’ I’d rarely seen Dave so animated.

  ‘Yep, some guys said we’d foul up the airflow back over the rudder, especially when we rigged for landing. Thought so myself, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Harald threw him a grin. ‘The tail comes down easy, same as ever. Maybe you have to work a little harder keeping her in a straight line, but nothing fancy, no real heroics.’ Harald at last turned to me. ‘Dave’s been filling me in on the maintenance side. He was working on the engine last week and he found a bit of stem wear on a couple of the valves. He’s replaced the head and bank assemblies so there shouldn’t be a problem. Give her sixty-one inches boost and auto-rich for take-off. You’ll need three thousand r.p.m. on the dial. Climb is forty-six inches. Cruise, twenty-two hundred and thirty-two in auto-lean. Rein her that tight, and we’ll still be looking at two eighty true up at twelve thou.’

  Dave nodded in approval. I studied my nails. I’d been through scenes like this before, bludgeoned and bullied by men determined to show off their technical prowess. As a prelude to one of the most important take-offs in my flying career, it was deeply unpromising.

  Harald was looking at me, waiting for a response.

  ‘You copy that?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t. But twelve thousand feet sounds optimistic’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Above ten and a half thousand, you’re in airways.’

  The two men exchanged glances, and Dave, at least, had the grace to look rueful. I knew they couldn’t argue with the facts. One of the big attractions of the Isle of Wight for private pilots is the amount of unrestricted airspace. To be able to fly where you like, up to 10,500 feet, is pretty rare in the south of England but above this altitude a different set of rules applies. The major commercial north-south airway was no place for a Mustang with a first-time pilot at the controls.

  Feeling a little better, I followed Harald up on to the wing. Before I strapped myself to my parachute and harnessed up, he wanted to talk me through the controls. I stepped carefully over the combing around the front cockpit and settled myself into the bucket seat. Wherever possible, Adam had wanted to maintain the original military feel of the aircraft - an obvious attraction for our overseas veterans - and with one or two modifications Dave had left everything the way the Americans had designed it. There was no padding, no upholstery, no fancy touches. Under my feet, the floor was of plain wood, with steel scuff plates beneath the rudder pedals, and the instrument panel still had the heavy yellow band that separated the key blind-flying instruments from the other dials that registered r.p.m., and oil pressure, and all the other read-outs from the engine.

  I flexed my arms sideways and wriggled my bottom into the seat. Ralph had always told me how spoilt the Mustang pilots had been for space, and now - on the verge of flying the thing - I knew exactly what he meant. Harald was beside me, squatting on the wing. About a hundred metres away, beyond the Touchdown Cafe, I could see Andrea talking to the driver of a blue BMW.

  ‘Wing flap lever… carb air controls… rudder trim tab… aileron trim tabs… throttle quadrant… friction nut… prop control… landing gear handle…’ I followed Harald’s hand up the left side of the cockpit. When he got to the end, I made him repeat it all over again, then a third time while I followed his hand with mine, back and forth, up and down, touch for touch. He reached across and we did the same down the starboard side of the cockpit, my right hand memorising the shape of each control while I kept my eyes fixed on the instruments, just the way Adam had taught me on the Moth and the Harvard.

  After a while, at my insistence, Harald would name a particular control and I’d find it, my eyes shut this time, totally blind. We played this game until I was touch-perfect. With Dave back in the hangar, Harald was infinitely more patient and I think my thoroughness, my determination not to cut corners, must have impressed him, because at the end of it he gave me a little peck on the cheek.

  ‘You did fine,’ he said softly, ‘just fine. Sorry if I frightened you before.’

  ‘You didn’t frighten me.’ It was my turn to smile. ‘Bored, yes. Not frightened.’

  Dave came out with the parachutes. We jumped down and struggled into the harnesses, taking it in turns to check for adjustments. Andrea was back with her camera and she insisted on taking a shot of the two of us with the Mustang in the background. Harald hated having his photo taken - I’d noticed this before - and Andrea had used up half the reel before he consented to put his arm round me. Close to, he felt stiff and a little bit embarrassed, though when I told him to relax, he laughed.

  ‘That’s my line, Ellie,’ he said, shepherding me back towards the aircraft.

  Harald stood on the wing again while I strapped in. Once the harness was tight and he’d checked it, he did a final walk-round, paying special attention to the control surfaces, the big flaps and ailerons on the main wing and then the smaller elevators on the tailplane. From up in the cockpit, I tried to follow his progress but the shoulder straps constrained me and I couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like in combat. Just looking ahead was enough of a problem. With the fuselage resting on the tail wheel, and the long, long nose stretching away to the propeller, I hadn’t a clue what lay in front of us. The smell was familiar, though, from my trips with Adam. It was a curious smell, the scent of the happiest bits of my marriage, a gleefully abandoned mix of hot oil, sweat and all the nervous anticipation that goes with a 1,500 horsepower Merlin engine and that
wonderfully blunt defiance of gravity.

  I felt the aircraft sink a little as Harald and Dave clambered up to the rear cockpit. Like Adam, that first time he took me up in the Moth, Harald was insisting that I ride in the front. Not only would this offer me a seat in the dress circle but it would give me my first taste of going through the start-up procedures. Only from the front could the engine be primed and fired.

  Harald was making himself comfortable behind me while Dave checked his harness. Seconds later, I was listening to Harald’s voice in my earphones.

  ‘I’m gonna talk you through the pre-start,’ he said, ‘just the way they did it during the war. Pretend you’re a rookie out of elementary training. No need to memorise anything. We’ll go through it again later.’

  I muttered assent and followed him as he took me through the checks. Battery on. Flaps up. Carb heat to Cold Air. Aileron trim zero degrees. Elevator trim zero degrees. Rudder trim six degrees right. The list went on and on and as my hands flew round the cockpit I couldn’t help thinking about Adam. He used to do this too. The same mantra. The same invocation. Mixture. Prop. Throttle. Gear. Oh Lord, be good to us. Finally, Harald broke off.

  ‘OK,’ he murmured. ‘So now you light the fire.’

  I heard him calling, ‘Clear prop,’ and I saw Dave raise his thumb. On Harald’s cue, my finger found the priming pump and then the starter switch. The big four-bladed propeller began to turn very slowly, no coughs, no splutters, no smoke. I’d been here before, with the Moth and the Harvard. Probably underprimed, I thought.

  Harald came through on the intercom.

  ‘Fuel and mags are on,’ he said. ‘Fuel pressure’s good so try a coupla extra seconds priming. Watch out for flooding, though.’

  He called, ‘Clear prop’ again, and I went through the start-up procedure for a second time. The propeller began to revolve, rocking the aircraft on its undercarriage. Suddenly there was a puff of smoke, and then another, and then the engine burst into life and the propeller blurred in front of me. Harald guided me to the lever beneath the throttle quadrant. I moved it from Idle Cut-Off to Rich and then settled deeper into my seat, scanning the instruments, shutting away the ghost of Adam. The oil pressure began to rise; r.p.m. flickered a fraction over 900, then slowly increased to 1,300.

  ‘Ready to taxi?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said. ‘Just take care of my baby.’

  I heard Harald talking to the tower. They gave him permission to taxi and I watched Dave ducking beneath the wing to pull the chocks away. The throaty beat of the engine rose, then Harald released the brakes and we began to move forward, bumping off the ridged concrete on to the cropped grass. Andrea was standing beside Dave. She had both hands over her ears and when I waved she grinned back, shouting something I couldn’t hear.

  Harald’s voice again, giving me control.

  ‘I’ll talk you through,’ he said. ‘You set?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘OK, first off, just check the brakes.’

  I did what I was told. The lightest pressure on the tips of the rudder pedals brought the Mustang to a near-halt.

  ‘Gently.’ I could hear the smile in Harald’s voice. ‘Now push the stick forward. That unlocks the tail wheel. You’re steering with the brakes, just like always.’

  I eased the control stick forward through the neutral position and I felt the wheel lock disengage. The technique was just like the Harvard and the thought comforted me. Harald was right. I was no different, in essence, to the hundreds of young Americans who’d trodden exactly the same path, graduating from a biplane, through the sturdy old Harvard, to this sleek thoroughbred. They, like me, would doubtless have been sweating, though in their case the immediate future was infinitely bleaker. No matter what happened over the next hour or so, at least I’d never have to face an Me 109.

  We were abreast of the control tower now, and behind the tinted glass I could see a couple of figures silhouetted against the light. One raised a hand and I abandoned the throttle long enough to wave back. There was nothing around us and I began to weave the aircraft left and right, scrolling big fat S shapes across the grass. With so much engine in front of me it was the only way to be sure about hidden obstacles.

  I loosened my grip on the control stick and flexed my fingers. I was wearing skintight leather gloves, a lovely deep-green colour and deliciously sensitive. The gloves had been a Christmas present from Adam, years back, and I’d treasured them ever since.

  ‘Ts and Ps?’ It was Harald again.

  Ts and Ps stands for temperatures and pressures. I quickly scanned the instruments, knowing how vital it was to keep an eye on the oil and coolant temperatures.

  ‘Oil’s fifty-five degrees,’ I sang out. ‘Coolant eighty.’ Harald, of course, had a perfectly good set of duplicate instruments in the back but that wasn’t the point. This was a pupil-teacher relationship and it was my job to come up with the right answers. ‘Oil pressure’s seventy-five p.s.i.,’ I went on. ‘Hydraulic pressure a thousand.’

  ‘Rad flap open?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘Fuel?’

  ‘Left tank boost pump on.’

  ‘OK, stop at the holding point.’

  I leaned out of the canopy, feeling the hot breath of the exhaust against my cheek. The holding point was down the far end of the airfield, twenty metres or so from the threshold of the marked grass strip. As we zigzagged towards it, I realised that I was beginning to enjoy myself.

  Earlier, before driving across to the hangar, Harald and I had confirmed the wind with the tower. This afternoon, as Harald had promised, it was nearly perfect, a gentle five knots a couple of degrees off due west. The runway at Sandown runs 05/23, a heading which gave us a whisper of crosswind but nothing to worry about. Cross-winds can be a problem for all aircraft, but in a taildragger like the Mustang, they can actually help. The Mustang swings to the left on take-off, a consequence of the clockwise rotation of the prop, so firm pressure on the right rudder pedal, slightly diluted to take account of the cross-wind, should do the trick.

  We reached the holding point and I turned the Mustang into wind. Before take-off we always do an engine run-up, and today was no exception. I quickly checked the instruments again, following Harald’s quiet instructions. For the second time in five minutes it occurred to me that there was something almost religious about our little duet, a pattern of prompt and response that wouldn’t have been out of place in a church service. The Old Church at St Lawrence, I thought. The stone wall, and the wooden gate, and the jumble of ancient headstones beyond.

  ‘Ts and Ps?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fuel?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘R.p.m.?’

  ‘Thirteen hundred set.’

  ‘Prop lever?’

  ‘Fully forward.’

  ‘Feet on brakes?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Canopy closed?’

  ‘Give me a moment.’

  I wound the canopy forward and locked it shut, softening the cackle of the engine. The workload was heavier now and I was glad. No time for nerves. No time for fretting about what might go wrong.

  ‘OK,’ I heard Harald say, ‘stick hard back. Now open the throttle. We’re looking for thirty inches’ boost.’

  Inches are a measure of air pressure. Thirty inches happens to be the ambient - or atmospheric - pressure. For take-off, with the engine on full power, we’d need twice this, the extra pressure forcing the fuel into the hungry Merlin.

  My left hand eased the throttle forward. The beat of the engine quickened and I felt the tail twitching around behind me. The r.p.m. climbed to 2,300 and I pushed a little harder on the brakes. Unrestrained, the aircraft would be off.

  ‘Mags?’

  I reached for the mag switches and cut them, one after the other, watching for the drop as I did so. Magnetos are a key link in the ignition chain. Without at least one, the engine won’t fire. I watched the needle sink on each of the mag
dials. Left mag 50 r.p.m. drop, on again. Right mag 70 r.p.m. drop, on again. Exercise the prop; 2,300 to 2,000 r.p.m., twice.

  ‘Good.’ I had Harald’s approval. ‘Throttle back to idle.’

  The r.p.m. dropped to 800 and I opened the canopy again. One last lungful of God’s good air. Then we’ll go for it. With the engine idling, I thought I could hear birdsong. I looked sideways, down the line of the runway. Half a mile away, beside the cluster of parked aircraft in front of the tower, I saw a splash of yellow. Andrea was waiting. She’d have her camera raised, and maybe an admirer or two in tow, and later - sitting on the kitchen table back at Mapledurcombe -she’d doubtless tell me about her afternoon’s adventures. The image made me smile and I felt a sudden gust of affection, totally unexpected. This one was for her too. Not just for Adam.

  Harald was calling for departure. The tower replied with an affirmative. We were to climb to five hundred feet, make a right turn out. No conflicting traffic. I closed my eyes a moment. I’d flown from this strip dozens and dozens of times, but never this tense, never this aware, never with this absolute sense of focus. In my earphones, there was a new noise, slightly tinny, and for a moment I thought we had a mechanical problem, then I realised it was Harald. He was whistling. I bent my head, trying to make out the tune, and abruptly he stopped.

  ‘ “Battle Hymn of the Republic”,’ he murmured. ‘In case you were wondering.’

  I grinned and thought of telling him to stick to the day job, but already he was running through the final check list. Twenty-degree flap. Mixture auto-rich. Cooling doors open. Hydraulic pressure 1,000 p.s.i. Harness tight and locked. Hood closed.

  I reached up for the canopy one last time and wound it forward.