Well, I did it. Alone, I walked up to a helicopter, flew about a bit and landed. I've done my first solo flight. And all I can report is that taking a helicopter out on your own for the first time is pretty humdrum compared with the first mad, gleeful, nerve-shredding, headlong dash into freedom of the newly qualified car driver.
My first solo drive in a car was in my Dad's Astra estate and the rush of exhilaration and excitement was mixed with raw fear and incredulity that I, a short Brummie teenager, could possibly be doing anything so responsible, so grown-up as driving about in a car all by myself. By comparison, when the big day came for my first solo flight, I loped up to the helicopter, twirling the keys on my fingers, fired it up with all the pizzazz of a workman cranking a cement mixer, had a natter to the bloke in the tower who gave me permission to cross the road and then lifted up, fluttered about over some fields, and came back. There was no rush of emotion, no wonderment. I might as well have been nipping down the shops in a diesel hatchback to pick up some bread.
I was disappointed. Operating a helicopter is pretty fiddly and something I'd always thought to be rather cool. Taking off and doing it all on my own would render me, I had anticipated, so flushed with success and pride that I would emerge from the cockpit a cross between a blood-soaked Roman gladiator and Einstein. In the event, I returned, parked up, walked back to the hangar and put the kettle on. And it was the same on my second flight. I began to wonder if a more exciting hobby was called for: collecting spoons, or cycling. And then I went for my third solo.
The routine was the same; I fired it up, waited for permission to cross the active runway and bugger off into the wide blue yonder, and then, permission granted, duly hovered across the airfield and buggered off. As I reached the optimum climbing speed I let the helicopter's nose rise up from an aggressive, accelerative attitude into one in which it could use some of its significant power to pull up into the sky. And soon I settled into a level cruise, heading towards the Welsh Hills. And for the first time, I sat back and thought about what I was doing.
Wow, here was me, little Richard Hammond flying a helicopter. All alone. Just me and the sky and the machine and.... SHIT! I confess that I made a sort of yelping noise at this point. I worried that I would run out of fuel, that the engine would stop, that the rotors would fall off, that I would forget how to steer the thing, that it would catch fire, that a huge eagle would smash its way into the cockpit and eat me. I did eventually land, and engaged in some head-scratching. All became clear. On my first few flights my brain was entirely occupied with the business of flying the helicopter, but by the third flight, some of it had slotted into place as routine and so a portion of brain-power was freed up. And I used it to consider, objectively, what I was doing. And I shat myself.
Which got me wondering... was I safer on the first few flights, when every synapse in my head was devoted to the business of flying, or am I safer now when I hop in and out of the thing now with barely a second thought? And, more to the point, would cars be safer if they were harder to drive? I know I've done it; arrived all of a sudden at a roundabout to find that just as the girls in the red bikinis scored a great beach volley goal against the girls in the yellow bikinis and a fight looked inevitable, the car in front had stopped, I hadn't... and a crash happened. If our minds were fully occupied with the business of operating the vehicle we were travelling in, we wouldn't daydream about food or girls in bikinis, and so we wouldn't crash into the car in front. We would concentrate.
It's not often I do theories in this magazine - I generally leave that to the other two - but here is my theory anyway: I propose a device that randomly and occasionally swaps the controls around. The steering wheel might suddenly operate the other way, the throttle and brake pedals might be switched. Annoying, but it would keep the driver on their toes and stop their mind from wandering. Alternatively, as a technique for curing those first-time driver nerves, a small crocodile might be hidden in the glovebox, lid only loosely shut. The new driver, once made aware that there is a small, but cross and hungry reptile secreted in the car, would not have any spare brain capacity for worrying about crashing into things or the responsibility of being on the road alone. They would concentrate on driving the car without getting a crocodile in their lap, and they would be a lot safer for doing so. Er, I think.
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