Just before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Steve Carver and his teammates at Global Stars were on a mission to display at Wings India 2020
7 July 2020
Sydney Camm, designer of the Hawker Hurricane, once complained that ‘air is very cantankerous stuff’. However, looking out on the wing along the beautifully clean, uncluttered leading edge of this 787 Dreamliner, Mr Grumpy would have little to complain about. It’s an easterly departure from Runway 27 Right at London Heathrow, approaching rotation with a picture but very little sound. The wingtips rise noticeably, lift overcomes weight and the leading edge takes on the most elegant of curves. The 787 is indisputably an engineering miracle.
As the world came to terms with COVID-19, and Friday 6 March became Saturday 7 March somewhere east of the Greenwich meridian, we were en route for our Indian adventure.
Thanks to Boeing’s engineers getting their sums right, the 8.5 hour journey across Northern Europe, Russia and beyond to Hyderabad is nothing like the feat of endurance it used to be. We arrive relatively refreshed, drop off our bags and grab a couple of hours sleep before heading to Begumpet Airfield to open the containers in preparation for Wings India 2020.
Some aerobatic teams would probably take a day or two off, sight-see, and do touristy things before getting down to business. However, that’s not what the Global Stars do. We clear customs, hope air side passes have been printed – and we get straight down to business.
There’s always a faint whiff of tension as the seals on the shipping containers are cut away and the doors are opened. Taking in the overall picture inside the container, we look for any obvious signs of damage, check tension in the straps to see if anything might have moved, and if it has, we make a note for next time. This is even more important for this event as we are shipping two aircraft per container, and a new Extra 330 from Walter’s factory will set you back a cool third of a million, which explains the comment about ‘the tension’.
Three years ago in China, at the World Formation Aerobatic Championships, we saw the result of two Extras having moved around in a container which had borne the brunt of a tropical storm en route from Australia. In fact, more than one of us suddenly found that we’d got a piece of dust or something in our eye… heartbreaking!
No such problems on arrival this time, though. Within the hour, three aeroplanes, tools and spares are laid out in the assembly area. We begin with two to an aeroplane – pilot and engineer.
Chris, aka ‘Junior’, assists Mark Jefferies with the 330, Arunas from Lithuania helps Chris Burkett with his 300S, while I and the 260 are kept out of trouble by Neil.
By sunset, on our first day in India for more than a year, we are pleased with ourselves because we have wings resting on all three aeroplanes. This meant only one thing, it was time to get back to the hotel for a ‘black-un’, which is a blokey Northern colloquial term for a beer before dressing for an evening meal.
The food at the Vivanta Hotel in Begumpet is second to none. Furthermore, as hot food goes it comes with the added advantage of being served on warm plates, which means that by the time it reaches your table it’s still warm – and edible. This is largely down to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which suggests that hot things are more likely to cool down than warm up. In some hotels we visit, food intended to be served hot is barely warm and often inedible by the time it reaches you on a cold plate.
Sunday is the first proper full day assembling the Extras and by midday we’re nearly ready to fly two of them. Steve has a minor brake issue but the team has various options with which to solve the problem, including shipping parts. This can lead to a feeling of optimism rapidly followed by disappointment… So, long story short, parts are swapped left to right to mitigate the inconvenience and eventually all is well. Meanwhile, Chris and Mark have a ‘shake down and pairs’ flight as our new home in the shape of four gazebos joined end to end is assembled out on the ramp. Back in 2016 a storm cell developed nearby and outflow from it blew these very same gazebos over the fence and into the public enclosure. Who knows? Perhaps Sydney Camm was right after all, air can be very cantankerous!
Monday, and our body clocks are aligning to Hyderabad’s ‘zeitgebers’ or daily time givers.
A briefing at 1030 with airport officials guides us through the increased threats the airport faces as it hosts this mini Farnborough-like trade show. As the Global Stars are the headline act, we have come armed with CAP403, our country’s guide to airshow administration and best practice to avoid being the headliner on evening news bulletins. After a certain amount of numerical analysis we learn that the increased threat is 39%. We go on to learn that this is a mere trifle and is therefore an acceptable risk. Good, because we’ve come a very long way and Junior had to leave a roofing job only half-done. “Sorry mate, back in two weeks, just off to India with an aerobatic team.” Really. Pull the other one!
Heading out onto the ramp the pilots meet with our engineers and prepare for the first of three formation flights. This first is simply a case of holding hands, nothing too cheeky as we haven’t flown regularly for a couple of months. Mark’s leading is good, so Chris and Steve have a fair chance of hanging on, which they clearly do on this first outing. At the end of this first three-ship, we’re confident that the sequence will be fairly well polished by the first show day on Thursday. After a busy day, it is definitely time for bed and sleep…
As we drop back into tried and tested routines, things become easier. The minibus leaves at 0900 sharp. We pass familiar street markets with livestock and wares, see riches and poverty sitting cheek by jowl. In fact, a bundle of rags lying on the pavement is a person… We do a round trip to the airfield twice daily, narrowly missing a variety of motorised threats that come in all shapes and sizes, mostly on two or sometimes three wheels but occasionally on foot.
Day four and we’re starting to find a routine that works for us at the airfield. One of us will pop up to the tower to discuss requirements for the day – how many flights, who’ll fly and at what time. Begumpet doesn’t have scheduled traffic but has several flying schools and a flight training academy on site. There are also ad hoc arrivals and departures to work around, anything from a C172 to a Citation jet or Embraer Legacy.
“The aeroplanes respond as if they are actually tired, fed up and in need of a siesta…”
Last time we were here in 2016, the temperature hit 45°C and energy management became a major concern for us in sequence design. Today it’s just a balmy 36°C! Begumpet Airport is some 1,800ft above sea level, so factoring in the temperature and density altitude rockets up. This shows up as a very noticeable loss of performance as the engine, airframe and propeller are fighting for air. The aeroplanes respond as though they are ‘tired, fed up and in need of a siesta’.
The team has in mind a series of manoeuvres, including energy gainers such as gentle, floaty half Cubans in between those that are more dramatic and crowd pleasing, but more costly in terms of energy management. For energy, think bank accounts, bank balances and accessibility. Take a snapshot of an aeroplane in flight and it has three kinds of energy – speed, height and chemical energy in the form of fuel.
The first two, speed and height, are in a ‘current account’, are easily accessible, and you can do what you like with them immediately. Fuel in the tank is like money in a ‘deposit account’. The rate at which you can get your hands on it is known as power available: 180hp in a Pitts S1S and a smidgen over 300hp in one of our Extras. The question is all about spending. Do you fly a bit too fast, pull back too hard, or use the smoke too much? If you’ve a tendency towards any of these then you’ll run out of height, interesting options – and eventually run aground!
The team is used to long days. We fly in formation twice and Mark trials some new locally made pyros after sunset. It’s fair to say, they’re still a work in progress.
Back in our hotel rooms there is of course one other bedtime puzzle to solve: turning off the bedroom lights! It’s day four and none of us are any the wiser. How hard can it be? When you’re tired and bleary eyed the rows of buttons on either side of the bed and the ones by the door become an enigma. Logic is pointless, because as one light goes off another one comes on. Giving up on the ones within easy reach, you resort to the master switch by the door. Fumbling your way back to bed across the room in the dark you stub a toe on the mini bar, collide with the swivel chair and let out a little whimper. Tomorrow is the final practice day, so a good night’s sleep is called for.
Hyderabad is just a little over 17° north of the equator and is a long way inland, consequently visitors to this metropolitan district of just under 10 million people have the flavour of life on a subcontinent. It gets very hot here!
This all-important wind and weather pattern is not at all like the British maritime climate that we all know and love. So what makes it go? The days start warm with a high overcast and by lunchtime this gives way and the convection gets going. The sky then clears briefly before towering cumulus start their shift and are looming over us by mid-afternoon. Some of these dark Cu look ominous. We might only feel a few drops of rain, but we’ve had reports of heavy downpours of biblical proportions less than an hour’s drive away.
Intense heat triggers bird activity and during practice we’ve had a few close encounters with Black Kites, cousins of the ones we know only too well in Ahmedabad, just north of where we are. They’re very inquisitive, and when a column of warm rising air lends a hand they’ll come and have a peek. Thankfully, they do it all the time and always manage to duck! Birds have an SOP, which is to descend…
We’re mindful of the wind as during an aerobatic display we’re performing on, or more accurately in, a moving stage. The Global Stars takes pride being near to the centre of the crowd throughout a display, not just in between turn-round figures. Straight lines are minimised. The formation is always pitching or rolling or both. If the wind is, say, left to right at 20kt then the show goes with it like a toy balloon unless we do something to prevent it. Tricky thing here is that the wind on the ground is always a brisk easterly. Up at cloud base, just above our display height, it’s a south or south-westerly!
Understandably, wind, weather and temperature are never far from our minds. It’s our working environment and the difference between performing somewhere once only, or alternatively making the right impression, and being asked to come back next year. To this end Mark has done a great job of positioning during practice, as well as today, the first of the four show days. Chris and Steve have worked on ways of improving their section of opposition manoeuvres so that they cross in front of the VIP area no matter whatever tricks the wind has in store for them. Rejoins with Mark have been scrutinised so that they seem effortless. Engineers, Neil, Junior and Arunas are quick to refuel the aircraft and top up smoke oil, so that the whole enterprise is now very slick indeed! It’s now Thursday and lunchtime.
After a morning of press and media interviews, and our first show for Wings India 2020, we’re back on the ground, looking a bit sweaty, so back to the hotel for a shower and a quick bite. The light switches are still proving, shall we say, challenging, by the way. One job, he had one…!
Just as we’re about to walk to our aeroplanes for the afternoon show an Ops vehicle rolls up and several familiar faces from Monday’s risk assessment meeting appear. The afternoon show is off as a result of the virus.
For the next three days, until Sunday afternoon, we’ll perform for those who have business on site, exhibitors, sales and media peeps, air traffic controllers, G4S security operatives, a wide variety of other ancillary staff and the odd one or two who managed to scale the perimeter fence. This is a disappointment to us as we enjoyed a great reception back in 2016. Instead, we’ll continue to improve the performance and use it as a training opportunity.
A pattern emerges. We arrive at the airfield in the morning, plan to fly three times throughout the day only to find our afternoon show is cancelled at very short notice. And it usually happens JUST as we’re getting changed into flying gear!
Meantime our performances are well received by the press, invited guests and many of the exhibitors at this, the largest aviation gathering in Asia.
We’re flying a sequence of around 15 minutes starting with a departure in Vic formation off Runway 09. Quick change to ‘stud 1’ our discrete frequency, which we’re not going to divulge, then it’s a smoke check and arm the pyros! All this before we’re halfway downwind to run in at low speed for a fan break using coloured wingtip smoke. Mark is on white engine smoke. Chris and Steve each set off a dozen orange and green wingtip smokes to make the colours of our host nation’s national flag. Mark also carries green and orange smokes, hits the vertical, to torque roll in an orgy of green and orange before rejoining the formation for the main part of the show.
The sequence is textbook Global Stars, no long gaps while the formation turns around, and there’s always something exciting happening at the datum. We’ve had no problems with energy, never had to bin a figure because of the density altitude, though the temperature has been up around 38°C.
Our last figure, the Indian Break, is from a three-quarter loop that bursts into smoke on the down line. Chris and Steve break right and left through 90°, while Mark rolls smartly through 180° to exit on the B axis. A stream landing follows. The pilots quickly unstrap and remove headsets while taxying back in, shutting down in unison, facing our audience. Canopies open together and three pilots give a wave back to a very hospitable and appreciative gathering: Thank you!
There are now 20 minutes of selfies and media before the team retire to the gazebo, flake out for a while before moving onto the next task.
By late afternoon all the aircraft are fuelled, smoked and equipped with pyros for the evening show which starts at around 1845. We are extremely pleased to see word has got out about the pyrotechnics, something of a novelty in India, and many city dwellers come outside to watch the show. By 1800 there’s quite a gathering around our small working area. Lots of questions, the inevitable selfies, and a sense of anticipation.
Taxying out with LEDs shining bright all adds to that feeling, so we begin with some figures using smoke only. Then as the light level drops, the team runs in and lights up the sky for miles around. These pyros burn at a speed and intensity that we haven’t seen before. Imagine trying to formate with someone arc welding a few feet away? Peripheral vision is minimal! Your entire world is a small, well-lit section of the lead aircraft. No exaggeration, there’s nothing out there, only the familiar reference of a wing-root divided at the trailing edge and the aim is to be able to see a small portion of the top and bottom of the wing simultaneously. Keep it like that with small control inputs and you’re in the right place. We also fly a little further apart than normal to avoid sparks from the leader’s pyros, thus preserving the paint job and vinyl. This has consequences for anything other than straight and level because larger power changes are inevitable in turns as the turning radii of each aircraft differs just a little bit more from its neighbour than it usually does.
After three pyro shows it is fair to say the people of Begumpet are hooked! On Sunday, the last show day, our afternoon and evening performances are cancelled as the organisers start to wind the event down. We make good use of this time and reconvene in the area where the assembly began just over a week ago.
By late afternoon on Sunday we’re ready for wing lifts on all three aeroplanes. Strapping down in the shipping containers takes longer as we must be sure that nothing moves in the six or seven weeks that these containers are at the mercy of the high seas and handlers. Lunchtime on Monday, with containers sealed, we head back to the hotel to eat and pack. Next, the BA online checking-in process. We are relieved to see that the flight scheduled to leave Hyderabad’s main airport at 0720 tomorrow is still on…
While all of this has been happening, the world has been changing. In the meantime, the Global Stars will continue. Thanks to everyone who supports and is interested in us. Oh, and by the way, we sussed the bedroom lights in the end…
