Sambro Flying Super Hero Action Flyerz, Ironman

Product Information

Always cross a ridge at a 45° angle so that you can escape away from it in the event of being unable to clear the top due to turbulence or downdraughts.

Ask any microlight pilot what the biggest event of the year in the flying calendar is and they will undoubtedly answer Spamfield. It’s the one fly-in of the year that no self-respecting microlight flyer wants to miss. My turn. Full power, release brakes, I am trying to feel if the aeroplane is ready to fly, and I pull the flap-actuating Johnson bar to the 40° notch. I pulled one second too early! The 170 tries to fly but mushes and settles down again. She wasn’t ready! Slight bounce, and finally, we are flying. I stayed in ground-effect and slowly retracted the flaps to the first notch / 10°, and with a safe speed, I started to climb.It was time to see what that ‘turn’ was all about. The canyon feels tight, not much space to turn, is what I thought. We are flying on the updraught side of the canyon. “Are you ready?” asks CC, “Full power, full flaps, and turn. Minimum 45°, 60° is better, remain coordinated.” We’re at 60° bank angle in a perfectly coordinated turn, and CC removes his hands from the yoke showing me how effortless this manoeuvre is. Suddenly the canyon didn’t feel so tight anymore. We complete the turn ‘on a dime’, with plenty of space to spare. The next steps are to continue perfecting the three-pointers, try some wheelers and crosswind landings, and practice emergencies. Away from the capital, the south-east where our Auster is based, is Lithuania’s answer to the Lake District. You take off, turn south and immediately find yourself cruising over a glacial landscape, with miles of blue lined by pine forests. The only thing missing are the fells – Lithuania is a very flat country. In addition to the Fairchild, there are countless other decrepit aircraft, mainly DC-6s. Some are still intact, others are without propellers or engines – some minus wings.

We retreat to the tiny lounge in the Everts building. An employee introduces himself as Chris and serves us a hot coffee. Big John Moore organised the event for many years before handing over the reins to the Hampshire Microlight Flying Club and then finally, the man himself, Danial Subhani, for the last five years or so. Even with his reminder, I try to set the first notch of flaps too early, he tells me to wait. “Now,” he says, and I pull the Johnson bar, and the large fowler flaps of the 170 go down to 40°, increasing my rate of descent. “Hit your spot,” he reminds me, “Imagine you only have a 600-foot area to land in and remember to retract the flaps to force the aeroplane to land.” The ‘something like a Cub’ turned out to be an Auster Arrow, one of only six airworthy Arrows in the world. It had spent most of its life in Germany before moving to the Danish equivalent of Old Warden. The guy who was selling the aircraft – a retired factory director – swapped a pristine pre-war motorbike for it. I’ve often wondered if it was one of those MIG pilots who forced the Ryanair Boeing to divert to the Belarusian capital Minsk, just so that the arrest could be carried out on one of its passengers, the independent journalist Roman Protasevich?Only a few days earlier, on the snowy Airport Industrial Road at Fairbanks Airport, a not-too-large sign indicated which company is based there: Everts Air, along with its subsidiaries Everts Air Cargo and Everts Air Fuel. As soon as the sentence is spoken, we hear a suspicious noise in the freezing cold air: Rob is already approaching and we are not yet in the right place. The next day it’s actually already early morning, but it’s still dark, the sun hasn’t really risen yet. When we climb out of the Pilatus PC-12 at Galena Airfield, our nose hair freezes after just two breaths.