Up-Up And Away…Aerobatic Stunt Flying In The West

Those amazing men in their flying machines. They go up, Tiddley up, up. They go down, Tiddley down, down. Now the female embodiment of that might well apply to Cornish-born Corinne Dennis, who gave an engaging talk down in the South West the other day, about her journey from learning to fly and building a plane virtually from scratch.

In the early days of flying, some pilots used their aircraft as part of a flying circus to entertain. Manoeuvers were flown for artistic reasons or to draw gasps from onlookers. Just looking up at these stunts would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Liskeard’s very own aviatrix, Dennis - now based in east Cornwall - was on hand to deliver the so-called Autumn Lecture this October about her experiences in becoming aerobatic pilot, flying in competitions and aerial displays, to building her own bi-plane, a ‘Pitts Special’, in a marathon project that took six years. It was no mean feat.

A packed hall at Trebullett, where previous lectures have been by given by the likes of Michael Eavis CBE, and co-creator of the Glastonbury Festival, heard her story of flying full throttle and some death-defying stunts.

Dennis was invited to speak after Ruth Burden from nearby Trecarrell Manor (where King Charles I had paid a visit back in 1644), after being heard interviewed on BBC Radio Cornwall. She did not disappoint and we heard about her taking up this extreme sport originally in Yorkshire as she was approaching her fortieth birthday on the suggestion of a friend.

Perhaps ironically for someone accomplished in performing risky aerobatic displays across the south west - from Falmouth (during the St Mawes Boat Show) to Weston-super-Mare and from Torquay to Torbay, Dennis revealed that she actually “couldn’t stomach fairground rides” in her youth.

After taking some flying lessons and making her first aerial manoeuvre - a roll - she described the buzz she got. It was to be the “beginning of a new and expensive addiction,” she said. Having entered a number of competitions over the following few years, admittedly coming in the bottom third of the rankings, she then bought a quarter share in a plane.

She told the audience: “Landing is the most difficult thing…more so than flying [stunts].” To her knowledge, at that time she was the only female flying aerobatic acts in competition across the whole country. “I never came across any negative feeling” from the men she competed against and gradually moved up in the rankings.

As she moved from flying competitions to flying air shows, corporate events, around regattas and wedding celebrations such as over Pentillie Castle through her ‘Twirlybatics’ business, she then acquired her own airplane that she described as the “birth of a very special Pitts.”

Aerobatic aircraft fall into two categories - specialist aerobatic, and aerobatic capable. Specialist designs such as the Pitts Special, the Extra 200 and 300, and the Sukhoi Su-26M and Sukhoi Su-29 aim for ultimate aerobatic performance. 

To build and renovate the partially built plane she spent some six years - from around 2009 to 2013, which involved a significant amount of engineering and metal work as well as installing an engine, putting the fabric covering around the fuselage to painting it. The latter involved spraying around sixty individual parts (three times!) and some twenty trips to the spray shop.

After all this intensive work Dennis was relieved to know the plane worked 10 hours of test flights. Having moved from Yorkshire to Somerset, she returned to Cornwall just before the end of all those tests and kept the plane at Bodmin Airfield, a designated ‘County Wildlife Site’ that Dennis also got involved with.

However, in building the plane she had not had an opportunity to fly it and had to get “back up to speed” and quickly. “I was terrified at the prospect of flying this plane,” she noted. Of her time building the plane, Dennis said: “I enjoyed that more than flying it.”

After a number of years flying she decided to hang up her flying boots and a career shift after a “scary” encounter over the skies of Gloucestershire dodging clouds that aerobatic bi-planes have to avoid, following a return from air show in Lincolnshire.  

As a keen cyclist, Dennis has since 1993 been running a business dedicated to producing high quality and stylish cycle clothing. And, more recently she has been keeping pet sheep and makes rugs in Cornwall in the Launceston area. 

“There were some scary moments [on that flight] and it was a distinct possibility that I might not make it… so I decided to call it a day”. Rather philosophically she added that “life moves in sections,” before taking questions from the floor.

For more information on Corinne Dennis and her performance cycle clothing business see: https://www.corinnedennis.co.uk/about-us