blasting away the cobwebs

Well, I went flying again yesterday, in my own aeroplane. Yes, after nearly 3 months of work and waiting she is back in the air and boy does it feel good.

My flying was terrible and the test yielded a couple of very minor issues, but I don't think I've felt such a huge relief and sheer joy in a very, very long time. There's definitely something comforting to the soul about seeing the vast expanse of blue sky rolled out below you!

Now I can look forward to really getting back in the saddle and preparing to start competing again (the first competition of the season is at the end of March and I need some serious practice). I've managed to build up a pretty reasonable base level of fitness and strength again over the past few months, and I will continue working hard on improving it further, but at least I'm in a very good position to gain as much as I possibly can from my flying and training.

Essentially I think that physical fitness, whilst on the face of it, not obviously all that essential for a competition flyer, makes a huge difference to performance. There are some huge forces involved when flying competition aeros - my body experiences forces that can vary very rapidly between +6g and -4g and this is hugely tiring. That coupled with the extreme levels of concentration and focus required for the entire flight duration really does make for a sport that takes a huge amount out of you. Last year I was climbing out of the aeroplane after a 10minute sortie feeling like I'd just run a marathon - no exaggeration. There may not be all that many calories burned, but the mental exertion is greater than anything else I've ever experienced.

Thus, the fitter I am, the better I can cope with the demands I place on myself during a flight, and the more quickly I recover afterwards - which in turn means I can manage to undertake more meaningful training in a day (of course at the moment the real show-stopper here is actually finance, but fingers crossed that's going to change soon). My gym obsession may well come into its own!

From this point on you'll most likely find me somewhere between praying for good weather, beasting myself in the gym, at the climbing wall or out on the trails, or back up in the sky with the biggest grin on my face :-)

long time coming

The last thing I posted up here was a bit of a look at who I am – the person with whom you are sharing this relationship. I believe there is definitely a relationship between writer and reader, even if the two have never met and are never likely to, the relationship still exists. On here I share a great deal of myself at times – the real ‘who I am’ if you like. My last post described parts of my actual life that many of you may not have known about, but really, it’s in these late night outpourings that you get a closer glimpse of the type of person I really am.

I don’t mind sharing, I’ve always been keen to give of myself, whether it be as a shoulder to a friend in need, a listening ear to someone just needing to vent, or as a willing volunteer in a team out on a hillside somewhere in the middle of a dark, rainy night answering a call for help.

On these pages sometimes I give a little bit more of myself than I’m necessarily comfortable with, not that you, as the readers, would ever realise (unless I actually told you at the time). My writings aren’t always aimed to please or inform, sometimes they are simply a form of release for my over-active mind, my emotions or just a way of attempting to win the battle with insomnia. A few of these blog entries are entirely selfish in their writing, and yet I’m aware that sometimes it is these entries that many of you find the most moving or inspirational.

This blog has been running as a project of mine for a few years now. It started life as a means of staving off the boredom of days spent in an office with no work to do (at the time I was a field engineer and as such my actual ‘work’ was usually out on site somewhere). I never actually intended for any of my writings to necessarily become part of a public forum – they were just for me, as a means of maintaining the creativity that I’d had cultivated as a child. After a while it became apparent though, that people were actually reading what I was writing, and my approach changed. I suppose the ‘diary’ eventually became a real blog, with postings that were meant to be read and enjoyed.

I enjoy the blogging process immensely and find watching the ‘stats’ is a simple yet effective pleasure – I love seeing the numbers gradually change because each incremental increase means that something else that I’ve written or photographed or shared has been looked at by another human being. We all like to communicate and most of us like to share – it’s a big part of what makes us who we are. Every person that reads my blog or my Facebook or Twitter feed gains another fragmentary insight into me as a person, and as I’ve already stated, I do like to share.

So where is it that I’m going with all of this? Lately much of my time has been taken up with working on the biggest project of my life – one that I’ve alluded to in previous postings. My fight to become a top class aerobatic pilot has begun, and whilst I’m very much at the ‘beginner’ stage right now, I’m working hard to make sure that I will actually have the opportunity to push myself onward to bigger and bigger things. It isn’t easy.

The project at the moment is focused around the new website that I’m working on – the site that will be showcasing not just who I am and what I am trying to achieve for myself, but will also be aimed at sharing my inspiration, motivation and enthusiasm with as many other people as possible.

What I’m trying to achieve is nothing short of extraordinary, and I know that. In order to achieve something extraordinary you have to become extraordinary yourself, and in my mind anyone who has the desire to do so also has the capability – often all people need is a little bit of encouragement in order to start to achieve their potential. I’ve had a great deal of encouragement from a great number of people, many of whom I’ve not yet met. My humble beginnings (for I am not rich, in fact far from it – affording to fly is something I simply am not able to do, and yet somehow I make it happen…) are not something that I have ever allowed to hold me back – if I’ve wanted to do something I’ve found a way to work and make it happen. Anyone can do this, anyone can find ways to reach their potential and achieve their goals if they are willing to commit to what it takes – and this is what “The Aerobatic Project” is about. It’s not just about me, it’s not just about flying, it’s about a person becoming something, it’s about believing in yourself and making what some may say is ‘impossible’ actually something to fight for.

So yes, it has been a long time coming – the realisation that I’m capable of becoming somebody, that I have no reason not to believe in myself. The knowledge that one day I’ll be able to look back and know, that no matter what the outcome, the effort I put in was total, the way I fought was with passion and genuine commitment. Even if for some reason I don’t manage to reach the places I’m aiming for, I know I’ll be able to look back and feel truly proud because everything I did was everything I was capable of. There will be no regrets.

The website isn’t live yet – I’ll let you know when it is and you can all head over and lend your support through those lovely little statistical numbers. I’ll appreciate it more than you realise.

If any of you feel you’d like to offer any direct support, be it through sponsorship of the project (which is going to be a big battle), through taking photographs or assisting with the videos, introducing me to like-minded individuals and pilots, by offering articles (oh yes, I’ll be keen to feature more than just my own writings with this one), by sharing my links on your own sites or featuring the project in other media, or even just by saying hello and offering a kind word, then please drop me a line! I’m always super keen to receive feedback of any sort so please do let me know what you’re thinking, either in the comments box here, on the site when it goes live, or by contacting me through Twitter/Facebook/Youtube or via email: all my links are now here: http://about.me/lauren_richardson

Oh, and thank you for reading :)

L.x

aerobatics, the beginner’s perspective (part 1)

2011 has been a bit of a strange year for me all told. Several events have led to major changes in life, lifestyle and perspective – the most significant of course being our catastrophic house fire back in January. Nothing I’ve experienced works quite as effectively to focus the mind on what is actually important, than losing all your possessions (although I can’t say I recommend it to anyone). The events following the fire also served to change a few of my views on life – living in a borrowed caravan on my own driveway for instance, led to me realising that actually houses and home comforts, whilst being nice, aren’t actually really necessary. Being seven months on from the fire and having still not had all of the [frankly piffling amount of] insurance money we are owed has taught me that insurance companies are generally pretty damned useless and should not be relied upon (and also that having a nice comfy sofa to sit on is something we all tend to take for granted). The list goes on and on and on, but at the end of the day, no matter how negative the events of life, all of them can be used to have a positive effect on your perspective if you allow it. All of them.

So, here we go, perspective. It’s all too easy to get bogged down and focussed on little things and miss out on the bigger picture – losing perspective. This applies to pretty much any aspect of life (as well as life itself of course), and flying aerobatics is no exception. The biggest learning curve I am currently going through is very definitely one of perspective, or perhaps perspectives [plural]. Let me explain:

Flying itself is a fairly complex pastime to take up – you have all sorts of things to learn and think about and eventually you kind of have to do them all at the same time. The controlling the aeroplane bit is actually a relatively small part of what it is to fly – you have to navigate, talk to people on the radio, maintain heights and headings, listen to people on the radio, look out for other aeroplanes, keep track of how much fuel you’re using, keep an eye on how the engine is performing and a good number of other things, and all of that is just in straight and level flight. It sounds like a lot doesn’t it? When you’re first starting out learning to fly (actually, no matter how experienced you are this all still applies) it can all seem quite overwhelming, to the point where the big picture can end up blurred or lost as you fixate on perhaps just one or two things at a time – for instance concentrating on maintaining an altitude and spending far too much time looking at the altimeter and trying to make micro-adjustments can all to often mean you fail to spot that other aircraft heading toward you…

Learning to fly aerobatics is something that gives me immense amounts of satisfaction, primarily because it presents such huge challenges – learning how to handle a high performance aeroplane with precision and accuracy is enormously difficult and as a result incredibly rewarding. It can also be hugely frustrating at times, and sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down by this and lose sight of the sheer joy of it all.

I’ve always been a perfectionist in everything I’ve ever done, and to me mistakes are the enemy, things to be analysed and understood so that in future the causes can be resolved and the consequences eliminated. This is at once a really good way to approach aerobatic flying, and also a really bad one because I often end up fixated on what I’ve just done wrong in a manoeuvre in the middle of a sequence rather than focussing on what should be coming next (which as you can probably imagine then usually leads into a spiral of more and more mistakes and frustration). The big picture in this case is really quite simple – what does it look like? I need to be thinking “what is it looking like to the judges on the ground?”, and if I’ve screwed something up, “ok, what can I do to minimise the impact of my mistake on the rest of my sequence?”. I should NOT be thinking “bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, arse, that was shit…oh crap I can’t remember what’s next”.

Next weekend I’m heading to Leicester to be judged in my first aerobatic competition. This will be the first time anyone will have told me what my flying looks like – the first time anyone will have told me their perspective on my big picture. I’m excited.

Recently I’ve been doing some fairly complex flying, learning manoeuvres and sequences that are far beyond any that will be expected of me in the beginner’s (or basic) category. Hopefully this will mean that I’ll have a good chance of not screwing things up too badly. In the next category up (the Standard category), the sequences are about 10 manoeuvres long, including one that is “Known” and one or two “Unknown” that are given to you on the day to be learned and memorised. Next year I will be entering the Standard category and hoping to do quite well, but right now the single, 5 manoeuvre “Known” sequence of the Beginner’s class is feeling daunting enough…

The 2011 Beginner’s Known Sequence, the Beginner’s Perspective

The diagram above is the sequence I will be flying, with some of my ‘notes to self’ included. Allow me to attempt to explain:

1. The whole thing will start at an altitude we’ve worked out taking into account all the height gains and losses of the manoeuvres to come. We’ll be flying parallel to some form of line feature (probably the airfield runway at Leicester) – this will be what I use to make sure we’re not changing heading during the manoeuvres. Three distinct wing rocks (dipping one wing to one side) then herald the start of the sequence – the first wing rock being just before we start to dive to gain airspeed, the final two being carried out during the dive. At approximately 160mph we will pull to straight and level for a moment or two before we pull into the first manoeuvre: the Loop.
   
   Pulling sharply at first to begin the climb, I’ll be looking out to each wingtip to make sure we’re pulling up straight. I’ll relax the pressure a tiny bit and allow the aeroplane to pull upwards through the vertical, pulling slightly harder to gain the second, slower part of the circle. At this point I’ll be looking up through the canopy watching the horizon come into view. I’ll be making sure our wings are level as I’m also really relaxing the pressure to allow her to float gently over the top and begin her descent. We’ll drop gracefully downwards through the vertical, gaining speed, tracking parallel to our line feature. A sharper pull out during the fast bottom section will bring us back to straight and level flight after we’ve hopefully drawn a perfect circle.
   
2. Next, the Half Cuban (half Cuban 8) starts exactly the same as the simple loop we just flew. I’ll pull until we’re floating over the top, but then, just as begin our descent I’ll push the stick forward and arrest our loop so that we’re end up flying downwards at 45degrees, inverted. At this point, I’ll have been looking at the sighting frame (a piece of metalwork that lets us judge angles against the horizon) on the left wing to know where to stop, and looking up through the canopy I will see the ground below us with our line feature running parallel to us. We’ll pause at this descent attitude for a moment before a sharp roll to the left will swap our horizon back to normality (blue up, green down) and we pause again, now in a 45degree [upright] descent. After another pause we’ll pull back to straight and level flight and will hopefully now be flying in the exact opposite direction to which we started (still watching that line feature).
   
   
   
3. Next, we have yet another looping manoeuvre, but this time with a twist (quite literally). The Quarter Clover starts just the same as our other loops have, still making sure we’re not going all egg shaped by pulling too hard over the top, but this time as we’re pulling through and diving downwards, I’ll start a slow roll to the left, very carefully watching my line feature – I will be stopping the roll when we are at a 90degree angle (perpendicular) to this feature, at the same time still pulling out of the loop. This is a difficult one to explain, but basically we should have done a loop, but ended up flying out on a different (90degree) heading – we’ll be flying towards the [runway] line feature at the end of this, once again perfectly straight and level.
   
4. We’ll be coming out of the last manoeuvre quite fast, which is good because the next part of the sequence is the energy sapping and somewhat intimidating Stall Turn. A very sharp pull back on the stick will see us pulling about 5g until I arrest the movement with the sighting frame showing me that we are flying vertically upwards. Its important that we are actually vertical and not slightly over on our back here (an accidental inverted spin is very easy to get into in this one). Taking a look at both wing tips, I need to make sure we aren’t yawing (nose dropping to one side) or rolling off heading – as the aircraft slows I’ll be needing to input a bit of right rudder to stop the yaw, and some right aileron to stop us rolling left due to the engine torque effect (this becomes greater the slower we are flying). Flying straight up means we slow down pretty quickly, and just before our wings stall I’ll kick in full left rudder to make the aeroplane seemingly pivot around the left wingtip. Well, this is the plan – if I get the speed wrong it’ll look a bit weird. Immediately after I’ve kicked the rudder left, I’ll need to push in full right aileron to stop us rolling in the turn, and push the elevator forward. Once we’re round, I have to make sure we fly a perfectly vertical down line for a few seconds (the ground will start coming up to meet us pretty fast as we accelerate), before pulling out sharply to straight and level again. The pull will be quite high ‘g’ again and I’ll need to make sure I’m using my core muscles to make sure I don’t grey out too badly. We should also end up heading straight away from our reference feature.
   
5. Assuming I haven’t screwed everything up, the final manoeuvre in the sequence is one that I regularly manage to fluff up in isolation, although oddly when I’m not over analysing what I’m trying to do, my Slow (aileron) roll technique is often pretty much spot on. I guess the trick is to just fly this one and not think about it too much!
   
   This type of roll isn’t as simple as you might think – unlike a ‘ballistic’ style of roll, you can’t just pull the nose up, whack the stick to the left and let the aeroplane do it’s thing in a nice ballistic zero-g arc (this is the simplest type of roll and one of the first things you learn when you start flying aerobatics). No, this type of roll requires that you remain straight and level and just roll round the longitudinal (nose to tail) axis of the aeroplane, which means that you need to use the rudder to offset the differing amounts and directions of lift that the wings are giving you at the different points of the roll…yeah, I’m struggling to explain this…
   
   Ok, try to picture an aeroplane as it’s momentarily flying in a ‘knife-edge’ attitude – say with the right wing pointing vertically up and the left wing down toward the ground. At this attitude the wings aren’t producing lift, and in fact the most lift is being produced across the fuselage of the plane (yeah, that one was a revelation to me too). At this point the weight of the engine will be pulling the nose of the aeroplane downwards because of the reduction in lift. The way to stop the nose dropping earthwards (which will actually be to your left as you sit in the plane), is by putting in some right rudder. Of course as the roll progresses, the wings are constantly changing angle, and as such the elevator and rudder inputs also need to change to maintain that straight line…so yeah, it’s one of those things that feels utterly impossible until it clicks and starts to just work by instinct – I still tend to balls these up when I’m trying them in isolation and thinking too much!

So there we have it, that was the sequence I’ll be flying next weekend. Hopefully I won’t get too bogged down by details, and perfectionism, or fear or stress, and will be able to simply enjoy the dream of flight. Wish me luck. 

top tips on how to eat more healthily when you’re away from home

Following a set of discussions with a friend of mine who commutes to London for work every week (i.e. he stays during the week), I thought I’d try to pool some of the ideas and techniques I developed for eating [at least relatively] healthily when I was working away from home alot.

(There may also be more to come on this subject in the future.)

Planning

• Firstly, and obviously, think about what you’re eating, generally – does your diet consist primarily of convenience snacks and fatty foods? Can you simply eat healthier things?
• Think about and plan when you are going to eat each day (this may not always be possible, but you should try to stick to a well thought out and consistent regime as much as you can).
• Set yourself a guideline as to which meal is going to be the main meal of the day (classic example: if you expect that one day you will have to skip lunch, plan to make your main meal in the evening, or if you think you will have to work late, perhaps consider making lunch your main source of sustenance for the day and have a simple snack in the evening).
• If it does look like you will need to skip lunch on a particular day, think about taking in a ‘packed lunch’ bought or prepared the day before, that way you won’t actually need to skip the meal entirely – this should help you to resist the urge to ‘binge’ later on, or snack on chocolate or crisps from a vending machine.
• Think about where you will be getting your food from each day – if you have this planned out in advance, you will be far less likely to just grab something horrendous from the first convenient fast food store or chip shop.
• Plan the general outline of your meals (by that I mean roughly what and how much of particular types of food like sandwiches, pieces of fruit, snack bars etc).

Food

• Find places that sell healthier types of ‘convenience’ food – a good example is the chain ‘EAT’ – alot of the food they sell actually isn’t too bad.
• Try to minimise the amount of heavily processed and ‘calorie rich’ food you consume. Generally avoiding fairly obvious items like chocolate, cakes and crisps is ALWAYS a good idea.
• Substitute ‘healthier options’ for those calorie rich items you are now avoiding – fruit is an especially good choice.
• At lunch, don’t have soup AND a sandwich, have one OR the other (this also means don’t have two sandwiches – a sandwich AND a sandwich).
• Packed lunches are your friend as they stop you going out and just buying whatever you fancy at the time, which for those who lack a degree of self-discipline, is a sure way to end up buying and eating too much, even if what you’re having isn’t necessarily unhealthy.
• Go to a supermarket and buy the basic ingredients to prepare your own meals.
• A quick, easy and healthy option for an evening meal you can prepare in a hotel room is pre-flavoured cous cous (just add boiling water), plus some cooked meat or chicken to add in.
• Pot Noodles are BAD.