Buyer’s guide: D.H.82A Tiger Moth

Slow, demanding to fly well, a treat for the nostalgic. Words: Nick Bloom  Photographs: Darren Harbar

THE TIGER Moth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Maintenance devours time and money. You have to swing the propeller by hand to start the engine, with the attendant risks to life and limb. In flight, it’s slow (80 kt cruise), noisy, draughty, difficult to land and vulnerable to crosswinds. Unless the engine’s been recently overhauled, you tend to fly in a faint aroma of burnt oil. The aircraft bucks at every hint of turbulence. Your passenger feels trussed like a chicken in helmet, goggles and straps, and isolated in the separate cockpit. Even moving and refuelling the aircraft makes out-of-the-ordinary athletic demands (you lift the tailskid or elevator struts and push, like a giant wheelbarrow; to reach the tank you either climb a stepladder or the cowling—there’s

a footstep in the fuselage to help

you up).

Yet the Tiger Moth remains popular. More than that, quite a number of pilots who have tried a lot of different aeroplanes, people who can easily afford something more upmarket, say it’s their all-time favourite aircraft (and I bet some of them will write letters about this article).

What makes the Tiger Moth so desirable?

One somewhat perverse attraction is that the aircraft is so difficult to fly at all well. If you are an average 300-hour, middle-aged pilot, expect to spend five to ten hours with an instructor before reaching even basic proficiency. For the next thirty hours at least, every landing will be an adventure, and not without risk. The Tiger Moth will humiliate you more often than not, but just when you are exasperated and about to fall out of love, you will pull off a greaser and experience the magic sensation of touching the mainwheels and the tailskid simultaneously, and so gently that the transition from air to ground passes unnoticed, and you think you are still flying.

Even the most experienced Tiger Moth pilot cannot guarantee to land like this every time. The challenge of making a perfect landing stays with you as long as you fly Tiger Moths, adding spice to every flight.

The same principle applies to Tiger Moth aerobatics. Loops, barrel rolls and spins are relatively easy, but a fully-axial slow roll, Immelman turn, or fully-vertical stall turn without stopping the engine… well, they are something else.

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