Running On Empty Poem by David Wood

Running On Empty



The instructor said we'd better get back quick
I shouted back what's the big rush
If I'd had known I would have felt a bit sick
And probably in a bit of a flush

He took the controls and throttled back
The first time I'd seen him looked shocked
So I thought I'd give him bit of slack
'Cos on landing the propeller stopped

Saturday, November 26, 2022
Topic(s) of this poem: flying
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
Remembering days as an Air Cadet as I'm now stuck indoors due to the rain, when we landed a DH Chipmunk almost out of fuel, I still have the photo to remind me. Then they let me loose on a Hawker Hunter flight simulator at RAF Chivenor, where setting a course for North Wales, I would have reduced the height of Mt Snowden and demolished the restaurant there had it been for real! The RAF taught me to fly but I left the Air Cadets when I was 19 and started flying at Biggen Hill, the wartime fighter base, with private flying clubs. I remember flying a Cessna 152, Beagle Pup and a Tiger Moth bi-plane with the Tiger Club, a vintage training aircraft which was my favourite aircraft to fly as it was so basic and with its open cockpit, open to the elements. It has no radio to contact air traffic control, no brakes, and few instruments and the propeller had to be swung by hand to start it, and with only a tail skid not a tail wheel, you had to take off and land on the grass alongside the runway, but it was pure true flying. All flying came to an end when I was only 22 after a move to Somerset, but every time I see a light aircraft fly overhead it brings back fond memories.
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