A group of friends, including myself, used to run an aviation society back in the old days of Speke Airport. A solicitor called Thomas Wayman-Hales kept a Proctor in the hangar to which our clubhouse was attached. As he became older, he lost interest in the aircraft and offered it to us to use as we wished, provided we took care of the fuel and maintenance. We had a tame qualified engineer locally, who was happy to take care of things, and a couple of PPL holders who were friends of his.
We formed the Double-Alpha Flying Club (original eh?) and used the aircraft to go to airshows and just for tootling around the area on CAVOK days.
The biggest problem was finding spares for what was now becoming an old aircraft (first registered in 1946 and we are now in the early 60s). We heard that two aircraft were being broken up at Burnaston (the old grass airfield near Derby, which was the headquarters of Derby Airways, and is now the site of a Toyota factory).
We arranged to go over there one Sunday and pick up some spares. I had organised a lot of the detail, but couldn't travel because we needed space for the spares. The TAF was checked, and off they went. We waited for their return, but there was no sign of the aircraft. No phone in the clubhouse, but I knew a couple of the people in ATC, so I found a phone elsewhere and called to ask if they knew anything. They had received a flight plan, but no ETD. Another hour or more passed, and we were reaching a time when it would become dark, so I rang ATC again, who knew nothing more than last time, but said they would call Burnaston, to ask what was happening. It transpired that the aircraft had crashed on take-off from Burnaston, but fortunately, there were no injuries. The field at Burnaston resembled an upturned saucer, and it seems that they had bought a lot of spares, which had a cumulative effect on the weight and balance of the aircraft, which had failed to become airborne. I learned a lot about flying weight and balance from that!
BEFORE: