James in a Harvard

[JamesPerrin]

The pain of turning 40 in January was heavily cushioned by my wife and family buying me a flight in a NA Harvard at Duxford. It all happened last weekend. My wife, daughter, mum and dad all travelled down to Peterborough as my uncle lives there and we new a decent hotel that would be good for baby toddler Islay. We stopped a couple of nights so we could spend the whole day at Duxford my flight being late morning.

I had a half hour flight (chocks up to chocks down) with I great pilot called Martin (IIRC). It's billed as a flying lesson and you do indeed get plenty of stick time, within a few minutes I was doing wing overs and chasing Jet2 airliners flying above us. I managed to stomach the aerobatics, barrel roll, aileron roll and half loop. Pulling just 2.5g in those manoeuvres gave me a real appreciation for anyone flying in combat. It was exhilarating, fantastic and over too soon.



My wife took a video of the take off but unfortunately a Dragon Rapide doing pleasure flights taxied past as I took off and she got rather blown about by it's wake! The resultant video is tad shaky to say the least. My family managed to enjoy the day and not get too bored going around the museum - my Uncle is ex-RAF and is a mine of information whether you want it or not

[DavidWomby]

Wow - you lucky man.

Almost worth being 40 for, eh?

David

[JohnRatzenberger]

Nice birthday present !!

[jssel]

Nice one James. A wonderful present for sure.

[PaulBradley]

40??!! Young 'uns these days......(shakes head...) Happy Birthday!

Very cool! We expect to see an Occidental Harvard done up in those colours by the time you turn 41....!

BTW, looks as if you had to "Fred Flintstone" the take off??!! I know you are tall.......

[Barry]

Lucky Boy! I can vaguely remember being 40...no Harvard ride though.

[shangos70]

Lucky man James, glad you had a great day.

[mattbacon]

What a great present. Super-cool. You should have taken Islay up in your lap -- give her the bug early!

Now, tell me what I should do for my 50th...? ;-P

bestest,
M.

[JamesPerrin]

What a great present. Super-cool. You should have taken Islay up in your lap -- give her the bug early!

Now, tell me what I should do for my 50th...? ;-P

Nurbergring in a GTO?

[RyanW655]

Did they let you keep the Harvard?

[T-21]

Well done James, I see it was the lovely Portugese AF one, and was it noisy ? danger is that you get the flying bug I have stopped due to time,age and expense. What a nice surprise from your wife and family.