CONFESSIONS OF A SURVEY PILOT

摘要

I left pilot training at Hamble aged 22 with a frozen ATPL, the magnificent total of 263 flying hours - but no job as BA had laid us off for three years. Unsurprisingly the airlines were not fighting each other for me during the recession of the 1970s so I took a job as an air survey pilot with one of the UK's leading mapping companies, now sadly defunct. Today survey is carried out mainly by satellite, or high-flying Lear Jets and Turbo Commanders using GPS and autopilot, but then it was a distinctly manual, human process that had evolved from photo reconnaissance in WW2. The company operated a DH Dragon Rapide biplane, several DC3s - and two DH Doves which I was to fly. G-ARDE was a Mk. 6 built in 1959, and G-ARHX was a Mk. 8, one of the last to be built in 1964.