We went up to the Isle of Anglesey, which is a fairly far
flung island off the coast of Wales, and
very shortly after our
arrival or my arrival
as a newly married wife,
they were looking for
a Red Arrow recruit or even recruits.
Well, of course, somebody put up two
arms, two legs and down we went to Gloucestershire
and joined the team.
I say I joined the team.
All I had to do was
introduce myself to eight other pilots
and at one of our socializing events,
a bonding event with the whole team, I was
heard to explain
my love and excitement about this flying business.
So one of the chaps that happened to be
in the simulator unit,
and he said, Well, would you like to come and try?
Well, of course I would.
So I had to go from the very basic to the horizon
and getting used to the way it moved as
one tilted this
or that lever or
rotated a knob and
just used a fair amount of imagination
in order to give maybe you could say a barrel roll,
which is this effect of flying through the air at great speed,
but coming out of that road
the right way up.
After about six sessions,
I really knew
I knew what I was doing and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Otherwise I wouldn't have gone back so many times.
And another feature they asked of me
was that
I should stand on the datum point,
which is where the air show was centered
and give crowd feedback.
So when they put their smoke on, for instance,
if they did it too early, there was smoke everywhere
and people, the crowd couldn't see the action. So
perhaps delay it a little and
extras like that helped them
produce the wow factor for the crowd without
blotting it out with a load of red, white and blue smoke.