British Aerobatic Academy

28 May 2016

This weekend I had the chance to fly with and shoot some aircraft at The British Aerobatic Academy

I have flown with Adrian, owner of the school, a number of times and this weekend was a training flight for my upcoming first beginner aerobatic competition.

If you ever want to learn or experience aerobatics get in touch with Adrian. The knowledge, approach and delivery of lessons is superb and you'll learn new skills from the minute you take off to the minute you land. In fact, it doesn't stop there as you'll be given a full debrief on the flight and how you performed when you get back to the clubhouse!

Adrian says of the school - 'The British Aerobatic Academy is the only aerobatic flying school academy in the UK and we are probably the best in the world. We have a wide range of world class expertise that we can use for critiqued sessions and training camps. Adrian Willis is our chief instructor, currently competing at Advanced level in Britain and having well over 1,000 hours on Extra aircraft. We teach competition aerobatics at all levels, display flying and formation training'

Flying this weekend and for the competition flight will be in G-EEEK, an Extra 200 aircraft which is one of the world’s most uncompromising competition aerobatic aircraft which is capable of flying all known aerobatic manoeuvres, and many unknown aerobatic manoeuvres!

The Extra 200 is highly manoeuvrable with full span ailerons giving it a 360° per second rate of roll. The aircraft is certified to +-10G and has an ultimate strength of +-23G which is far more than the human body can stand.

The Extra 200 is a powerful and capable aircraft, unlike many other aircraft, little time will be wasted climbing to height, it gets there very quickly! The most significant and most striking quality is it’s extreme responsiveness and agility. It has a symmetrical wing with no washout or dihedral and flies equally well inverted or erect!

Put simply this is a truly remarkable aircraft to fly and is still my favourite GA aircraft.

To see a recent video of training in the Extra 200 click here

So back to the photos above...

Adrian has a few airplanes and whilst the Extra 200 was out on another training flight (he's always flying with students!) I managed to get the beautiful looking Cessna 140, G-HALJ on the apron for some images.

The Cessna 140 is single-engine, two-seat, conventional landing gear (tailwheel), light general aviation aircraft that were first produced in 1946 which is when G-HALJ was made! Immediately following the end of World War II. Production ended in 1951, and was succeeded in 1959 by the Cessna 150, a similar two-seat trainer which introduced tricycle gear. Combined production of both aircraft was 7,664 units in five years. 

There was no particular brief for this but just looking at the aircraft it wasn't hard to get some great looking images. The aircraft for me has that classic airliner look of the 1920's. Maybe its the paint scheme reminding me of the classic Junkers or the Ford Tri-Motor Airliners. Albeit one  passenger and one pilot is the max in this!

Thanks for reading.

Anthony

To see more aviation images from my collection click here