Stalking a Stork

What with all the distractions, the weekend really was rather a holiday for Doru.

A nice grassy pasture, another horse and goats for company, humans to make a fuss of him, pleasant weather: really Doru's needs were well provided for.

Meanwhile I am easily distracted.

I will run outside if an interesting aeroplane flies overhead. There is a small boy still active inside.

Saturday afternoon began with a Spitfire flying over. That was worth leaving the house to see.

Doru grazed on.

Then I was offered a flight in M & L's private aeroplane with M as instructor, an opportunity too good to refuse.

It's not the first time that I've flown in a small aeroplane. Many years ago I trained as a glider pilot, going on to complete around three hundred solo flights. I completed some twenty hours of training in powered aeroplanes too.

That came to an end when I started to suffer from vertigo. Problems with balance really aren't a good thing for a pilot. Hence that whole episode of life was thrust behind me, and an unlikely alternative course led to working horses in Transylvania.

I was thrilled to find that I could fly again, albeit under supervision, and do so confidently and untroubled by past problems. Indeed I'd not forgotten how to manoevre a small aeroplane (though, like riding a bicycle, the kernel of skill remains within).

This seems like that start of a time of unanticipated growth, as welcome as it is surprising. Flying, driving borrowed cars, taking Doru away by trailer, learning healing techniques from Larynn: each helps me to outgrow the clinging tentacles from past life. This is all so exciting, like being fully alive again at last. Darkness is being excised.

The second photo shows the historic Storch aeroplane that M & L's neighbours flew across.

The Storch is a truly classic old aeroplane. It is also very rare. This example was restored painstakingly at great cost, and is finished to an absolutely superb standard - better even than when it left the factory seven decades ago.

The great trick that this machine can perform sounds quite simple. It can land and take off from very short strips. I've seen eighty feet quoted for the landing run, and two hunded and fifty feet to take off. In a stiff breeze the Storch can rise vertically and hover above a spot on the ground.

In a pre-helicopter era such machines were decidedly useful to the military. Rommel had one for his personal use, and another rescued Mussolini from a very tight spot.

The Storch is cleverly engineered. I won't deviate into a lecture on aerodynamics (that's just a bit remote from horses!), however the technically minded will note the slats in front of the wing leading edge, and the gap between the wing and the Handley Page flaps beyond. Together these things mean that this aeroplane generates a lot of lift at very slow speed.

Nearby Doru grazed on.

Meanwhile I was thrilled to take a close look at this machine and see it demonstrated skillfully.

And then I did go for a nice sedate ride with Doru, over the fields and past the woods, where we relaxed beyond the grasp of technology more complex than a saddler's craft.

Comments

[horseideology]

How Amazing!! good for you! :D

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Really it was a once in a lifetime experience.