TIGERFLY - Background information

He was so pleased with the result that he decided it would be even more interesting to actually do it. So, after putting his idea to a group of us one rainy day at Booker, we came up with some cash and a substantial loan from a bank. The next thing was to find a suitable aircraft. Rumours of Tigers on the market were followed up and we looked at a few. The best one we found was G-BHLT(152k) which was then based at Enstone. We negotiated the price and asked that it should be delivered to us at Booker. Came the day and we were waiting with the cheque. The aeroplane duly arrived, but unfortunately came to rest upside down(123k) in the middle of the airfield .

From this incident we discovered an awful lot about Tiger Moths, as we then dismantled it, moved it to a place of restoration and then spent several months rebuilding.

At the end of all this, the aircraft was deemed airworthy again, but we were not able to get her to fly hands off - she had an unfortunate tendency to drop a wing and was generally not too nice to fly. (We subsequently discovered that one of the lower mainplane spars was split)

The hunt was back on and due to a chance conversation at the Air Britain / Chipmunk fly-in at Wroughton, we discovered a gentleman with not one, but three Tiger Moths for sale, two at Carlisle and one at Compton Abbas.

The one at Compton Abbas sounded right: It was the right price and already had a Public Transport C of A.

So one beautiful summer evening four of us decamped to Compton Abbas to test fly G-ANMV. It was the sort of evening which makes Tiger flying a real pleasure; perfect blue sky, visibility unlimited - from overhead Compton Abbas we could clearly see the Isle of Purbeck and the English Channel beyond. The aircraft performed beautifully, flew hands off, engine ran smoothly - there did seem to be a tendency for it to turn upside down a lot (but that was caused by instability of the pilots).

Money changed hands and on the 11th July 1986 we became the proud owners of one 1940 vintage DH82a Tiger Moth.

MV was collected by us and flown to Redhill to be fitted with wireless (a requirement of the AOC) and ten days later we finally had MV back at Booker and we started learning how to fly properly.

Commercial operation of Tigerfly started in August 1986. We sold joyrides for £25.00 for 15 minutes (or £27.50 to include aerobatics). Unfortunately since then the price has more than doubled, but the aeroplane now pays for itself and we make a small profit - not enough to give up our jobs though!

The downside of operating commercially is that we don't have enough time when we can fly for fun, although we do try to make time to go to the Moth Club Rally at Woburn each August, and we did take it to Switzerland for a long weekend in 1993 and 1995, where we visited the Old Timers Meet at Ecuvillens and made a lot of new friends.

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