Ivan bounces back

Having won fame with the Europa then enjoyed less success with the Liberty XL2, the great aircraft designer has a new project under way

- Tim Cooper

Learning my aviation by running a company in Africa meant that I entirely missed out on all the British flying folklore−especially our living history. So, having returned from afar, I am now fortunate enough to discover and take delight in the things and people that are usually taken for granted. I relish meeting the real aviation characters. How blessed we are with these.

When a lanky Yorkshireman of indeterminate age bounded at me−yes, at me−and shook me vigorously by the hand, I realised I was in the presence of one of these characters. Actually, let me correct that. I was in the presence of a living legend. What’s more, this was the very man who ruined an expatriate African friend’s marriage. His first words were “we shouldn’t have done that!” He looked rueful, a schoolboy who’d soused his conker in vinegar and had been discovered.

It was at Church Fenton, a former RAF training base in Yorkshire that has been imaginatively renamed Leeds East. I had been sitting on the grass outside the deserted Control Tower soaking up the sun when a couple of hundred yards away one of the vast doors of an old RAF hangar lurchingly slid half-open. With mounting curiosity I watched as a diminutive, bright yellow aeroplane came hurtling out of the hangar. Looking like some manic radio-controlled scale model, it proceeded to hither and thither up and down the taxiway−stopping, then starting, then stopping again. Finally, with a blast of power, it rocked back on its heels, hesitated, then sprang forward, went back to the hangar, and disappeared into the dark interior. Curious , I thought to myself, and I got back to idling in the sun.