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Before the flight I told him I wanted to do a victory roll over my house, Woodhall Oast, so we banked left and headed towards Sevenoaks, found the M25 and followed it to the M26 junction then over Sevenoaks and looked for the tower at Hadlow. I had mistakenly told him WO was East of this when in fact we are West. I spotted the Chaser Inn and the village church about 300 yards from my house and looked down on WO we then did a steep banked left turn which felt about 90 degrees but was probably nearer 50 degrees and flew back over WO having lost about 500 ft.
Pilot then said "I am giving you control and only use the tips of your thumb and forefinger on the ring". To prove it he raised his hands to show that they were not on the stick. We were now flying NE and I tried a few gentle movements left and right and about a quarter of an inch gave you a 5 degree bank instantaneously, the responsiveness of the controls was absolutely incredible.
I then tried fore and aft movement of the column, pushing it forward a quarter of an inch and it was like going over a humped back bridge when you leave your stomach behind. I then tried climbing and whilst slightly more sluggish to respond (probably because we were only running at just above tick over throttle) it reacted so precisely. We probably climbed fairly close to the ceiling and then I spotted Brands Hatch below with about 20 bikes out on a track day. Pilot said "bank left and circle the circuit" so I put into a fairly steep left bank and did a lap of the circuit anti-clockwise losing about 800 feet and gaining about 60 mph – brilliant!
Pilot then said that we had better head off for the victory roll so he allowed me to climb it back up to 2000 ft. and then he took charge again.
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