World's latest WW.I Pilot

[Mustang51]

On Saturday evening 25th, Bevan Dewes became the latest pilot of a WW.I aircraft. He flew the TVAL Pfalz D.III. He was over the moon about it and rightly so. For those of you who are unaware, Bevan is that young looking 'kid' that you see around all the shows with the TVAL guys and gals. Don't let that fool you. He is a highly experienced pilot and owner of the former "Royal Flight" Chippie that HRH Duke of Edinburgh undertook flying lessons - (featured in this years Ghosts calendar by Phil Makanna) . Bevan has appeared at Wings over Wairarapa and Wanaka with the Chippie and it is a fantastic achievement that Gene has allowed him to fly the Pfalz. Warbird aviation around the world needs guys (and gals) like Bevan to grow up through the ranks and to benefit from the advice and mentoring of the people currently flying these machines. He could not get a better teacher in the wiles of WW.I aircraft than Gene. Bevan described the Pfalz as ... "Basically a Tiger with two 'heavy weights',( my words), strapped to it and not great visibility". This is a great thing for the NZ warbird movement, (particularly the WW.I era), and I heartily congratulate him for the achievement and also applaud Gene for setting someone young and enthusiastic on the long path to become one of the ranks of the few to have such a privilege.

[Dave Homewood]

Bevan is a great guy, and it's great to see him moving into flying the WWI stuff. He deserves it. He's also a forum reader, so hopefully he'll read this thread and maybe post his own impressions of flying the Pfalz D.III

[baz62]

Well done Bevan! And TVAL!

[bevanid]

Thanks guys for the awesome comments! I have been a volunteer at The Vintage Aviator since I was 14, (6 years) doing all the jobs you would expect like cleaning the hangar floor cleaning aeroplanes, pushing planes around, and more lately I have become "master prop swinger". To be involved with a collection such as TVAL is such a huge privilege and something I certainly don't take for granted.

I have been flying the Cessna 180 as chase plane for TVAL for 3 years escorting the planes between Masterton and Omaka, and this year to Tauranga and Wanaka for the airshows. on Tuesday 21st I flew the C180 escorting 3 RAF SE5a's to wellington for the flypast over the Beehive for the 51st state opening of parliament, I had Gene with me helping with the radios through wellington airspace. On our return flight coming up the Hutt Valley Gene said, "you've got 1000hrs now and over 600hrs tail wheel and you've been working really hard, I will get you started in the Pfalz" It took me a moment to register what he said as I wasn't really expecting it. Of course he didn't have to ask twice!

On Saturday morning at 6:30am 2 of the other TVAL pilots and I Met at the C180 to start the mission to recover the Pfalz and Fokker D.VII from Omaka where they had been left after the Warbiards over Wanaka Airshow in April. On our return from a relatively uneventful trip across the straight. it was time to hit the classroom to do the ground course to renew our Low Level Display Authorisations (LLDA's). by the time we finished the day was nearly over and the other pilots went out for some formation flying and Gene and Andrew Vincent took me around the Pfalz D.III It is certainly a heavy aeroplane, Once I had been shown around it was time to Mount up and swing the old dear into life. The first thing that hits you is the very loud Exhaust of the Gipsy Queen just in front of your face. After a few minutes of warming up. I ran the engine up and all was well and the guys pulled the chocks and started to taxi out to the runway. the first thing I noticed taxiing out is the relative lack of visibility, compared to the tiger it is certainly worse but the steerable skid makes S turns very easy to clear the nose, the other thing I noticed pretty early on is that it certainly has a lot more inertia than the tiger and takes a lot longer to slow down when you want to stop. lining up on the runway and taking the throttle up to full power you needed a lot of left rudder to keep it straight, once airborne bringing the power back a bit and climb at 65 up to a few thousand feet. levelling off power back to 1750rpm and it give just over 80mph as the aircraft speeds up the left rudder is definitely tougher to hold. planting my heel on the floor fixed that issue pretty quick. Oh and there is no balance ball I discovered pretty quick that with the tiny wind screen if I was in balance my checks were evenly cold and when I got out of balance a bit one check was suddenly warmer than the other. I was warned not to put my head out the side or I would get a face full of exhaust. After a few turns I was pretty happy I could keep the aircraft in balance, the ailerons are quite heavy and the rudder pressure is quite high, turning to the right I didn't use right rudder as such, I just relaxed the left rudder a bit! in the air the visibility isn't fantastic with the top wing not far above the fuselage unlike the tiger it takes a lot of my visibility away, after about 15 mins of flying around getting the feel of the aeroplane it was tome to head back to the field for a couple of circuits, lowering the nose the aircraft is very slippery 110mph in no time! after getting the speed back a bit I joined over head and spotted the Fokker DR-1 in the circuit and joined behind. I slowed to 65mph and did a nice curved approach to keep the runway in sight, the visibility is certainly limited, coming over the fence bringing the power back I touched down in a nice smooth tail low wheeler, and let the tail settle on the ground, just a little bit of rudder required to keep it straight but nothing to major, after another circuit it was time to taxi back to the hangar. After shutting the aircraft down, I couldn't help but have a grin from ear to ear!

I am certainly very lucky to be involved with such an experienced and encouraging group of people. I'm looking forward to getting some more time up in the Pfalz an I look forward to seeing where it leads!

[johnnyfalcon]

Flying the C180 is a treat in itself, but to be trusted with these icons...! Well done!

[vs]

Congratulations! Great job

[baz62]

Very interesting read Bevan. You are proof postiive if you want to get into something like this you have to start at the bottom and do the less attractive jobs first and work your butt off! Well done.

[Dave Homewood]

Bloody marvellous!

[noooby]

Well done that man! I'm insanely jealous

[suthg]

Grinning from ear to ear, great stuff!! The rudder certainly looks a bit minimal and high too, missing some prop wash while taxiing. Very interesting reading - and thanks for the photos - keep it up Bevan.

[Deleted]

Bravo Bevan, congratulations and keep up the good - and hard - work!

[Barnsey]

Congrats Bevan.

[dazz]

Bloody well done to all concerned! Great to see the next generation in training.

[bevanid]

Thanks everyone for the kind works. It certainly hasn't been 5 minutes work getting there but, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Over the last 6 years of being around the aeroplanes and pilots I have learnt a hell of a lot about operating these planes and some of the tricks to each type, and helping the engineers with the maintenance has also given be more of an understanding of what is required to make these old girls tick.

I have had so many amazing adventures with TVAL including filming Documentaries, a Movie, air 2 air photography, plenty of airshows and weekend flying, plus many more... Not to mention the amazing people I have met!

This certainly wouldn't have been possible with out the huge support I have had from Gene and the Whole TVAL team and of course my very patient and supportive parents..

Look forward to seeing what is around the corner


I'm having a few issues uploading photos at the moment, eventually I will put up some more photos of my TVAL adventures over the last few years.

[scrooge]

Well done Bevan

[flyjoe180]

Gidday Bevan. It's awesome to see you enjoying your flying so much and getting into these vintage aircraft. I think back to when you were starting out at that Woodbourne course, you've done a great job with your hard work and perseverance. I take some pride in saying that I had the pleasure of having had a tiny input into your great career so far. Long may it last, well done young chap. Onwards and upwards!

[Deleted]

Well done Bevan ... very pleased for you, hopefully next time I photograph the Pfalz it will be you at the controls

[Brett]

There is a four page write-up on Bevan in the latest (October 2015) issue of Flugzeug Classic.
It's in German, though.

[bevanid]

The article came out pretty well thanks to Gerhard Schmid! he did a great job of it. It was very unexpected to have that article written. I have the English translation if anyone is interested?

[bevanid]

I have also just returned from the trip of a life time to the UK, I went over in early July with Gene Demarco to put the Snipe and Albatros back together that we had sent over. As one would expect the ship was delayed a few days making their arrival at Old Warden, the home of the Shuttleworth slightly later than planned. luckily we had other things to do to keep occupied mean time. we popped over to Duxford for the weekend and watched the flying legends show. 'Warbird heaven' is about the only way to describe it. just amazing. It was pretty impressive to see 11 spitfires flying together the is something else. my highlights would have to be the Flying Bull's P-38 and the Airbus Group's BF109-G what amazing aeroplanes! a thoroughly enjoyable weekend,

It wasn't long before it was back to business helping the Sky Sports team to put the WW1 aircraft together. thankfully we didn't have any snags and the aircraft went together easily. Gene and I drove down to Stow Marie an original WW1 airfield in Essex that had been a farm up until only a few years ago, when it was rediscovered and is now slowly being brought back to its former glory with a huge effort by The WW1 Aviation Heritage Trust. Most of the original buildings are there except for the hangars which there are temporary ones at the moment and more authentic hangars will be build in the near future. The place is amazing the history is phenomenal. at that point one of TVAL's reproduction BE2e's there along with a couple of other replicas and other GA planes.

Back at Old Warden again and the Snipe and Albatros were ready for test flying of which went flawlessly. After checking a couple of the Shuttleworth pilots out in the aircraft and flying a few shows at Old Warden it was time for Gene to head back home and I stayed on in the UK for what was only supposed to be another 3 weeks. just enough time to Spend some time with John Romain at Duxford (but that's another story) and have a bit more involvement with Stow Maries.

Jean Munn the Chief Engineer at Shuttleworth fairied both the Snipe and Albatros 40 mins down to their new home at Stow ready for their first appearance at one of their fly-in weekends. If which I was fortunate enough to be invited to fly at.

After an early start on the morning of the 15th August I headed off from Duxford and drove down to Stow to have a good look over the BE2 as it hadn't flown for a few months and awaited the arrival of Jean who was coming in the Cub from Old Warden so we could get all 3 aircraft prepped for was planned to be a nice day of flying but unfortunately the sea breeze picked up and just happens to be 45 degrees off runway direction at 15 knots and we decided it wasn't worth flying, so we ended up just running the planes up which kept everyone happy. at the conclusion of the day Jean and I set off in the cub back to Old Warden for one of their evening shows which was absolutely fantastic, they have an amazing setup there!.

Sunday morning we headed back to Stow on a fantastically still crisp morning, we knew we were in for a good day! we arrived at about 10am and again pulled the planes out prepped them. with the wind almost non-existent I saddled up in the BE2 for my first solo flight in England. and what an amazing experience it was to be flying from an original WW1 airfield in a WW1 plane on the centenary being the same age as the lads were 100 years ago. It really couldn't get much better. With this in the back of my mind I got airborne climbing out to the east towards the coast to about 1000ft and took a moment just to look around at the lovely rolling countryside and noted no to many good forced landing spots, so stayed close to the airfield just in case. After flying around for about 10 mins I was comfortable with the plane and the surrounding and descended down to do a couple of circuits. The BE2 is lovely to fly very stable and managed to do 3 lovely 3 point landings, (no idea how).

The next flight was to be an Air 2 Air photo shoot with Andy Rouse, a renowned wild life photographer. We planned to get airborne and initially do photos of the BE2 and then be joined by Jean in the Albatros, all went very smoothly and Andy got some absolutely amazing photos! (I wish I could share them).

Our last flight of the day was again with the BE2 and the Albatros, and we had a go at a bit of a dogfight scenario, and as you could imagine flying a BE2 you are quite literally a sitting duck. I was very surprised just how much this was the case. you literally have no options apart rom to slow down and turn on a dime. putting it bluntly I would hate to go to war flying a BE2 when there are Albatros around. Makes you feel a bit sorry for the poor lads 100 years ago out over the front, although I suppose it was better than being stuck in the trenches.

It was a great privilege to be invited to fly at Stow Maries. It was one of the major highlights of what turned out to be 3 months in the UK. Thanks very much to Gene and The WW1 Aviation Heritage trust for the opportunity to be involved.

This was just one part of my adventure, possibly more to come on the UK trip

Here a couple of photos by Haw Hopkins