Miles Messenger, Magister and Falcon

Three rare and beautiful machines based at Old Warden. By Nick Bloom.

PETER HOLLOWAY HAS a passion. He is so in love with Miles aeroplanes that he owns three: a Messenger, a Magister and a Falcon.

      When I met Peter at Old Warden, where the aircraft are based, he asked in what order I wanted to fly his collection, and I elected to begin with the Magister.

      This is a beautiful aeroplane. Like all three of his Miles aircraft, it has sweetly tapered wings with rounded tips. The Magister’s fuselage is a gently curved sculpture in steamed plywood. The trouser-and-spats undercarriage adds to the Art Deco streamlining.

      The fuselage is deep, seating you high above the wing, which gives a good view out, but according to Peter this makes the Magister rather dangerous to sideslip because the slab-sided rear blanks off the elevator.

      I was pleased to find straps on the rudder pedals, because they implied that this was an aeroplane intended for aerobatics. The windscreens, on the other hand, had an inadequate Tiger Moth look about them and Peter confirmed that I would need to wear goggles over my glasses. (The rear cockpit is a lot less draughty than a Tiger’s.)

      The controls fell easily to hand, and there were no complications inside the cockpit, except the differential brakes.

      These appea