Five Thousand Hours, and Still Learning

People Who Understand Machines — No. 1

There is a version of flying that has nothing to do with getting somewhere.

The North American T-6 Texan first flew in 1935. By the end of the Second World War it had trained more Allied pilots than any other aircraft in history. Loud, physical, and completely unforgiving of inattention, it was the machine that separated the people who could fly from the people who only thought they could. Most of the young men who climbed into a Spitfire or a Mustang for the first time had learned their craft in a T-6. The aircraft made them ready. Or it made clear, very quickly, that they were not.

Robin van Meeuwen owns one. He flies it for reasons that have nothing to do with nostalgia.

He also flies a PC-12, a professional turboprop that carries him across the work of running a business. He has logged 5,000 hours. He has owned three aircraft across sixteen years. By most measures he has nothing left to prove in the air.

He would tell you that is precisely the wrong way to think about it.

Robin became part of the Esmont story before we ever spoke. His wife bought him one of our Artifact pieces for his birthday, a frame carrying a fragment of a historic aircraft. He was one of the first people to own an Esmont eyepiece. We became friends afterwards, the way people do when they recognise something familiar in each other. Later we flew together in the T-6. Aerobatics. The real thing.

Robin wore the Mustang Matte Silver on his very next flight — pictured here in the cockpit of his T-6, helmet on and ready for take-off. Mustang Matte Silver.

This is the first in a series of conversations with people who have a particular relationship with machines, with precision, and with the long view. It was always going to start with Robin.

We asked him a few questions. Not the technical version.

When did you know flying was going to be a permanent part of your life?

The obsession has been in my heart since I was a young boy. But the decision came in 1998, when I moved to the UK. I had this urge to get my pilot's licence so I could be free to get off the island whenever I wanted. Just the feeling of getting into a car and going somewhere, except in the air.

I was setting up my business at the time, so I had to delay it for six years. I spent weekends and evenings learning the material and logging training hours. It took longer than I wanted. But the things worth having usually do.

You fly the PC-12 and the T-6. Completely different machines. What does each one give you that the other cannot?

I have owned the PC-12 for sixteen years now. It is my third aircraft. The first was a Piper Saratoga, chosen because I wanted room for the family. Then a Piper Meridian, the obvious upgrade, a lovely PT6 engine and a pressurised cabin so we could climb above the weather. The PC-12 is a bigger version of that idea. Better payload, more range. It suits every mission my business asks of it. It is comfortable and it is a real professional aircraft.

The T-6 gives a completely different experience. It takes you back to absolute basics. No autopilot. Everything analogue, only the GPS and transponder are digital. The raw experience is something that puts a big smile on your face. The smell. The noise. The seat-of-the-pants feeling. It is not an aircraft you fly around in for comfort. It is the sheer experience that makes it special.

You do aerobatics in the T-6. Most pilots never go there. What made you want to, and what did it change?

If you own a T-6, you have to be able to push the flying envelope to a different level. Being able to perform aerobatics is essential to the aircraft.

I had twenty years of flying experience before I was taught aerobatics. And it opened up a whole new dimension. Being able to throw an aircraft into those manoeuvres is demanding and it is deeply rewarding. Twenty years in, and there was still a door I hadn't walked through.

The T-6 trained the pilots who went to war. When you are in it, do you think about that?

Every time I get into the cockpit.

Performing fighter-like manoeuvres in the T-6 brings back the feeling of what those young men went through, training to go and fight the enemy in the Second World War. I have 5,000 hours of experience. Those men were sent up and expected to fly after fifteen. If they couldn't, they were taken off the programme. They never became pilots.

Fifteen hours. That is the pressure they were under. I think about how brave they had to be, flying these tricky, complex aircraft with almost no experience behind them. You feel it in the machine. It is the same machine.

What does a bad pilot do that a good pilot does not? Not technically. Mindset.

Ego.

There is a fine balance between ego and confidence. The bad kind of ego is when you think you know everything and have everything under control. With flying, that is never the case. Never.

You learn every day. You must always respect the aircraft and respect the weather. The moment you believe you have mastered it is the moment you have stopped being good at it.

Aviation keeps machines flying for decades. Your T-6 is around 80 years old and still flying. Why do you think aviation thinks that way when most industries don't?

Owning an old aircraft like the T-6 means owning a piece of aviation history. There is a great deal of passion, and a great deal of money, that goes into keeping these machines flying.

Some people do it with vintage cars. Others with aircraft. I am extremely proud to own one, to maintain it, and to fly it.

"You are not really the owner of something like this. You are the custodian of it."

It was flying before you and the work you put in means it will be flying after you.

What do you know now that you wish someone had told you at the beginning?

That you never stop learning.

And that the obsession only keeps growing.