![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/micro-trike.co.uk\/images\/mehari1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nVictor was hoping to do a dual cross-country to Belv\u00e8s but wouldn’t know if it was on until Francis, the instructor, arrived. In the meantime, we chatted to Jacques who had already got one of the Hurricanes out of the hangar and was almost ready for a flight. The club has two training Hurricanes, one with an enclosed body (car\u00e9nage) and one without. The former is out of commission due to a damaged prop blade so only the completely open aircraft is currently available. Here are a couple of pics of it outside the club’s main hangar. Note the 4 blade Arplast pusher prop.<\/p>\n Francis arrived shortly after Jacques had taken off and confirmed that Victor and he would be heading off to Belv\u00e8s on his return, which wasn’t a long wait. I took a video of Jacques taking off and landing when he got back, together with a clip of Victor’s take off which I’ll edit and post as soon as I can.<\/p>\n On Victor’s return after an hour or so, it was my turn. I’d chatted with Francis, who speaks very good English, about my position and what I had to do to acquire my French licence. I said that I also thought I needed a couple of hours or so to get current as it’s been over a year since I’ve flown properly as PIC. He said, OK, let’s take off, turn left and right to avoid neighbouring gites, climb out to 750 metres or so and you can do a few steep turns to get a feel for the aircraft. So that’s what we did, and it was a great feeling to be back in the air again.<\/p>\n Then we did a few power off and power on stalls, climbing and descending turns and a fair bit more general handling. The only bit of the syllabus that I think we didn’t cover in quite a brief time really, was unusual attitudes! Francis then suggested flying back to the airfield, which I found for myself, for a landing but that I wasn’t to land. What I had to do instead was fly the length of the runway skimming the grass at flare height, a task which I found ‘interesting’ to say the least because at that height, my mind is programmed to land. It was made even harder because in the direction we were using, 33, the runway slopes upwards, so you’re not even flying straight and level but in fact, ascending. Tricky, but I did it albeit with a brief touch at the upper end.<\/p>\n We did several more circuits and on one Francis asked if I was happy to cut the engine on downwind. I said of course, and it didn’t occur to me that although I’d expected a familiarisation flight to get me current again, Francis had been subtly testing me all the time, and this was a kind of practice engine failure. It went off like clockwork, and after a final circuit we taxied in and parked up back at the hangar. I then received the excellent surprise that I mentioned in the title of the post, which was that Francis complimented me on my flying and said that he was very happy to sign the papers for my French ULM licence straight away! I was delighted, of course, because I hadn’t gone to Castillonnes today with any expectations other than getting back behind the controls and back up in the air. So to come away with my French ‘brevet’ was a great result, and it means that I can now start to make positive plans to get the X-Air fully rigged and across to Galinat. And that will mean that the final piece of the jig-saw for my life in France that I’ve been missing ever since I’ve been here, will at last fall into place \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Victor can’t fly tomorrow so we went to the airfield today instead. Victor’s beautifully restored Citroen M\u00e9hari is due for its CT (2-year roadworthiness test) on Monday so we went in that so it could have a run and Victor could ensure that there are no problems that might prevent it passing. It’s more original … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4859"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4889,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions\/4889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n