Cliff and I had an appointment in Eastbourne, an English resort city right on the South Downs. As always, we arranged to arrive early, so that a delayed or cancelled flight wouldn’t mean chaos. We flew from Málaga to Shoreham via Bordeaux in a single day, so we ended up with plenty of time to explore the area.

Beachy Head is made up of a 530 foot chalk cliff topped by gentle green hills, the highest such cliff in Britain. The name is derived from from Beuchef, Beautiful Headland, with the additional, unnecessary “Head” being added later. The chalk is an old seabed, the cliffs formed by continents colliding 50 million years ago. Ever since, the headland has been slowly crumbling back into the sea.

The location is notorious for shipwrecks and Trinity house claims that there has been a light shining down from the cliffs to guide the passing vessels since 1670. The first lighthouse was built in 1834 on Belle Tout hill which proved to be a mistake: the lighthouse was often rendered useless by the sea fog.

Beachy Head lighthouse was built at sea level, in fact actually in the sea, in 1902, which solved the problem. The Beachy Head Lighthouse has been automated and run remotely by Trinity House since 1983.

Beachy Head is famous for another reason: it has been known since the 1600s as a suicide spot, especially at night. Partially this is no doubt based on the reputation it now holds - the British Medical Journal explains that “would-be suicides show a tendency to emulate a successful method” and falling 500 feet is almost guaranteed to be lethal. There is also a certain simplicity and immediacy to simply dropping off the edge to almost certain death (especially at night, into the darkness).

http://www.forensicmed.co.uk/beachy_head.htm has an interesting analysis of suicides and “open verdicts” for deaths at Beachy Head, with a list of factors suggesting suicide.

• Suicide note
• Seen jumping / pushing off
• Behaving strangely at the cliff edge, asking for a ‘push-off’
• Taking a taxi direct to Beachy Head from a psychiatric hospital

The inclusion of “Male >45 yrs living alone” seemed a bit judgemental in light of the other entries, I thought!

Over the 24 year period of the study, covering 250 deaths, only 11 were accidental, “mostly due to people catching hold of their friends/partners whilst steadying themselves at the cliff edge”. If I’d known this, I would have stood a bit further away from my companion when we were walking there.

The BBC estimated that some 20 people commit suicide at Beachy Head each year but that figure has dropped dramatically as a result of evening patrols from Beachy Head to the car park at Birling Gap: the coastguard stated that they had only seven incidents in 2006.

At the beginning of 2007 I made a really useful list of things to practice when I’m, well, out of practice. And then I never looked it again. I’m once again going through a stretch of not-flying and somehow, this year, I’ve managed to feel particularly out of touch - as if every flight were a catch-up flight and I never got to a point of feeling in control.

So New Years Resolution Number 1 is to have a set time, once a month, where I do text-book studying, mental practicing and refresher reading. It may not seem like very much but it is more than I have been doing!

Resolution Number 2 is to redesign this blog. It needs shifting anyway as it is running on an old version of WordPress. I still like the idea of flying to all the islands but it really doesn’t seem realistic to do it in any sort of short-term time-frame, so I want to move the emphasis away from that. On the other hand, I quite liked writing about the places we’ve been (and from the stats, people do like seeing those posts) so I want to open it up a bit so the focus is split between flying and travelling rather than just flying.

Resolution Number 3 is to get caught up on posting my photography. I have a lot of photographs taken last year (and some taken the year before!) and I am simply going to inundate the Fear of Landing flickr account until I get them all uploaded. I’m not going to worry too much about sequence and timing although I will try to write a bit about the different places we’ve flown to.

Resolution Number 4 is to lose some weight so that I can do a new “pilot photograph” to replace the one I said was temporary until I lost weight - and have used for almost a year now.

Last year I resolved to post here once a week and I’d say I generally managed a post every ten days-ish, so I was close! Luckily, I didn’t put any other resolutions online so you can’t catch me out.

Happy New Year! I’m looking forward to the next one.

I’ve been meaning to post, I swear it! And I’ll make a specific New Year’s Resolution to do with this very website — it needs a redesign and a better focus. So expect to hear more from me in the new year.

And yes, Mom, I know I tell you that every year!

In the meantime, quite a cute holiday poem that I found on Jeremy Zawodny’s site:

‘Twas the flight before Christmas, and out on the ramp,
Not an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ.
The aircraft were fastened to their tiedowns with care,
In hopes that come morning, they all would be there.

Head over to his blog to see the whole thing. Merry Christmas!

As the plane begins its descent, you react to the pinging sound and put your seatbelt on, quickly finishing off your gin and tonic as the stewardess comes around to take your empty glass. An announcement comes through the speakers asking everyone to put their seatback upright and turn all electronic equipment off. You look out the window as the plane breaks through the cloud and see the Spice Girls holding out oversized plastic cups of Pepsi.

What, that doesn’t sound right? Just you wait, Ad-Air is on the case:

A unique advertising medium that targets airline passengers in their seats. Ad-Air reaches this highly desirable demographic and captive audience by placing advertisements of 20,000m2, approx 5 acres in size, flat on the ground alongside the flight paths in and out of the world’s busiest airports.

Recently I toyed with writing some futuristic fiction but you know, I couldn’t make stuff like this up. They’ve already done this with a 5 acre sign up in Dubai, winning the Guinness World Record for the largest banner ad in the world. Passengers, they tell us, are a captive audience, with nothing to do but stare out the window. Why not give them something to see?
This is the future, coming soon to an airport near you. Maybe it’ll increase the popularity of the smaller airfields? It sure gives me yet another reason to want to avoid commercial flights - what a way to ruin the landscape!

I didn’t do the flight to Blackpool this time so I got to take photographs. The sun was just starting to come down and we got gorgeous views of the coast and the tower and the Pleasure Beach. It is a bit odd to see a roller coaster on final approach. As we turned from base leg to final, I’m pretty sure I saw Cliff aim for it for a brief moment. :)

On days like this I want to have flown more than I want to fly. A single take-off and landing will bring me to a total of three this week, which means I can remain current until February with no further action on my part — useful over the winter months.

I keep putting it off.  But I could fly, why not prioritize it?

My confidence is lacking, I’ve been running behind the plane for the last few flights. The obvious fix for this is to fly more … but it takes the pleasure out of flying when you are fighting to keep up. I feel stressed and frightened rather than excited and adventurous. It becomes a chore.

My partner tries to be supportive but God knows he wins no awards for patience. He helps me through the basics but it’s with sulkiness and difficulty both sides. The moment he makes an imperfect statement, I’m right there going for the throat, finally able to get my own back for his (justified) sniping. The whole thing ends up a negative experience.

I want to fly. But I wish I’d flown more before I needed to fly…

These are just too good to be true! A quick search trying to find the original source failed miserably. US Air Force, RAF, Quantas, you name it …. lots of institutions are blamed for these but nothing actually traces back. There’s no reason to believe any of these are real. Nevertheless, I laughed. Lots.

Enjoy:

Maintenance complaints submitted by pilots and the replies from the maintenance crews. “Squawks” are
problem listings that pilots generally leave for maintenance crews.

Problem: “Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.”
Solution: “Almost replaced left inside main tire.”

Problem: “Test flight OK, except autoland very rough.”
Solution: “Autoland not installed on this aircraft.”

Problem #1: “#2 Propeller seeping prop fluid.”
Solution #1: “#2 Propeller seepage normal.”
Problem #2: “#1, #3, and #4 propellers lack normal seepage.”

Problem: “The autopilot doesn’t.”
Signed off: “IT DOES NOW.”

Problem: “Something loose in cockpit.”
Solution: “Something tightened in cockpit.”

Problem: “Evidence of hydraulic leak on right main landing gear.”
Solution: “Evidence removed.”

Problem: “Number three engine missing.”
Solution: “Engine found on right wing after brief search.”

Problem: “DME volume unbelievably loud.”
Solution: “Volume set to more believable level.”

Problem: Dead bugs on windshield.
Solution: Live bugs on order.

Problem: Autopilot in altitude hold mode produces a 200 fpm descent.
Solution: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

Problem: IFF inoperative.
Solution: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.

Problem: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
Solution: That’s what they’re there for.

I have really learned a lot from doing the articles for the small mag that’s been taking my aviation pieces on a monthly basis. “Don’t describe the article in content and length before you’ve actually written it” is a biggie, who would have thought I would so often get it wrong? And not even in a predictable way: this one is 500 words too short and I have nothing at all to add to it, meanwhile that one is 1500 words too long and I can’t find anything to cut out except a stray word here and there.

I’ve landed myself in it two or three times now but I think I’ve learned my lesson, finally.

I’ve also confirmed what I always suspected, which is that having a deadline makes a phenomenal difference to me. Not just “I get things done” but that I even bother to start them. It’s depressing how much I need someone else to be tapping their foot at me, waiting, before I actually bother to get out of bed. Even so, it’s taken me six months to realise that having a hard and fast date for delivery is critical. The editor of the magazine is pretty laid-back and tells me to deliver stuff to her as soon as I have it finished.

After two episodes of “it’s critical now, haven’t you finished anything yet?” I’ve finally set myself a deadline, informing her of it and that if she has not received anything by that date, she should assume I’ve been run over by a marshal and write me out of future issues. This seems to be a frightening enough concept to spur me into motion and I am now delivering articles on a regular basis, which is good all around.

I’ve rediscovered the important of random scribbling done at the time. I’ve found a lot of content by going through old posts where I was simply chatting away, telling people what I’ve done and more importantly, how I felt about it. A lot of it is tripe, of course, but some of it is perfect and so vivid compared to my pale recollections. I know that means I should write more now, so that a future me can be grateful for my diligence. I’m not quite that organised.

Yet. :)

Today I received my first fan mail from a Piper Flyer reader, as it finally occurred to me that I could include my email address in my by-line. It was very exciting. I opened the email and read it slowly, trying to savour the moment.

He wrote that he had read my article in the November issue and wanted to know if I could possibly introduce him to my mother.

*sigh*

This is just a stunning landing you can watch on youtube: Look, ma! No wheels!

Yes, I know, I owe you all a post. Soon, I promise. :)