Paignton Probus Club met for the first meeting of 2024 at The Paignton Club and was attended by 19 members with 6 apologies.
The meeting started with Trevor, the manager of Paignton Vista giving us a welcome back after the Christmas break.
Our past President Roy reports:- Today’s speaker was Chris Wiseman and his talk was titled “My flying experiences”.
Chris started with his days as an Air Cadet run through his school in Exeter when he was 13 years of age. This gave him the opportunity to fly in several different planes including a Chipmonk and a Nimrod.
After leaving school he planned to join the RAF but was turned down as he was colour blind.
He joined the Devon Ambulance service and was made Flight Controller to The Devon Air Ambulance service when it started in 1992 and worked in various positions with the NHS until retiring in 2019.
Chris was taught to fly by our Chairman, Chris Martin.
He had bad circulation problems so was unable to get his light aircraft pilots licence.
Since then he has fulfilled life ambitions of flying in a Spitfire and a Hurricane, he has flown with the blades air aerobatic team and with a Red Arrows pilot.
Chris’s talk was very much enjoyed by the members present , who provided him with some very interesting questions.
Chris showed photos he had taken of the very many aircraft he has experienced and some are shown below:
Think you know your aircraft? If anyone can identify all seven of these planes, let me know and I will give you a credit on this page. How’s that for an offer?
If you would like to add to add any information relative to this report, or obserervations from your own similar experiences, please write your comment in the “Leave a Reply” box below, add your email and name then click the “Reply” box
Paignton Probus Club 
Roy did a great job writing up Chris Wiseman’s talk.
However, (if it matters) it is slightly incorrect, in that Chris suffered a pulmonary thrombosis in 2017 which then saw him having to retire from the Ambulance Service in 2018-2019.
After regaining his health enough to pass a LAPL (Light Aircraft Pilots Licence) medical, he then began his pilots training (with me). When COVID-19 came along he still had 3 of the required 9 ground examinations to take, but couldn’t because of COVID, in the mean time the 6 examinations he had taken and passed ran out of time (even with a CAA permitted extension). Happy that he had achieved his aim to pilot an aircraft on his own, which he had done for 6.5 hours, being authorised by his instructor (me), Chris sadly then decided decided to cease his pilots training.
P.S. I chose to retire from flying and instructing in February 2020, just before COVID-19 affected the U.K. (I don’t know for sure if this also affected Chris Wiseman’s decision?). But I had handed his training over to another instructor by then, and then came along COVID-19!
Kind regards
Chris Martin – Chairman.