Is it a bird…?
Roger Guttridge talks to Robert Lloyd-Evans, possibly Dorset’s most adventurous septuagenarian
Published in November ’17
It was a sunny Sunday in the spring of 2014 and Robert Lloyd-Evans was enjoying the views along the Dorset coast from his Robin 2160 stunt trainer plane. Somewhere above the Lulworth firing ranges, he smelt burning and the plane’s electrical system suddenly failed. He had no working instruments, no radio contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) and no transponder to tell them his position. The wing-flaps were also not working. Robert considered making an emergency landing at Dorset Gliding Club’s airstrip near Wool, but once he had satisfied himself that the aircraft was not about to burst into flames, he decided to head for Bournemouth International Airport. With no working instruments, he used his mobile phone to inform ATC of his predicament and his need to make an emergency landing. ‘I couldn’t hear them because of the engine noise – I just hoped they could hear me,’ he says.
Robert with his Robin stunt trainer at Bournemouth Airport in 2007
As he approached the airport, he spotted a Ryanair 737 passenger jet approaching the runway. He phoned ATC again to say he would slot in at a safe distance behind it. ‘It can be dangerous as the powerful vortices can tip you upside down,’ he says, ‘but if you come in at an angle above the glide path, you would normally be safe. I kept my head.’ Later investigation revealed that the exhaust muffler shroud had disintegrated, leading to a wiring burnout.
It was a cool piece of flying by any standards but especially for a man of 71, as he was then. But then Robert Lloyd-Evans has aviation fuel running through his veins. His father, Dudley Lloyd Evans (unlike his son, he didn’t use the hyphen), was an official World War 1 ‘flying ace’ with eight confirmed ‘kills’ and twelve claimed. He was one of very few pilots who served in the RAF in both world wars and was decorated three times
for gallantry.
Dudley, who trained Spitfire pilots during World War 2, was acutely aware of the dangers of flying and discouraged his two sons from joining the RAF. Which is perhaps why Robert’s adventurous spirit initially came out at ground level – or even below sea level, as his scuba-diving dates back to his student days at Trinity College, Cambridge. More than half a century later, he travels to exotic destinations to scuba-dive including Indonesia, the Galapagos, the shark-infested Coco Islands off Costa Rica and Shaab Rumi in the Red Sea, where he explored the underwater village where sub-aqua explorer Jacques Cousteau lived for a month. In the 1990s he filmed the Studland Bay Wreck and a two-minute piece was shown on
the BBC.
Robert with the Antonov 2 biplane he flew in Russia
Robert was in his sixties before he was introduced to ‘masters’ swimming – competitive swimming for adult age groups. As the son of a Welshman, he was eligible to register for Wales and soon after, broke Welsh records for the 60-64 years age group. He has since held records for the 65-69 and 70-74 categories and, since officially entering the 75-79 age group on 1 January 2017, he has already set several more Welsh and South West English records, all of them in breaststroke or 1500m freestyle. He has also won numerous medals in British and Welsh Championships. Perhaps most impressively, he was a member of the six-man Septuagenarians that became the first team of over-70 swimmers to complete a Channel relay in 2015.
Academically, Robert studied natural sciences at Cambridge and gained a PhD in theoretical chemistry before embarking on independent research in mathematical physics. He then re-trained in computers and joined the electronics company, Plessey, which brought him to Poole
in 1981.
In the course of his career, Robert has written a number of scientific papers and a couple of telecommunications textbooks with the inviting titles Wide Area Networks Performance (published in 1996) and The Quality of Service in 3G Networks (2002). Wide Area was used to train BT engineers, while one reviewer described Quality of Service as the ‘best cure for insomnia I’ve come across’. ‘It did actually have some good reviews as well!’ Robert stresses.
More recently, Robert wrote a science fiction novel, Arvath’s Fourth Law, after the plot came to him in a dream. He has also developed his own theory of the origin of the universe and plans to make a second attempt to have it published in the science magazine Nature. ‘I’m saying that the Big Bang theory is a lot of rubbish,’ he says. ‘The theory is based very much on pure mathematics.’
Robert (left) with fellow Poole medallists Karen Yendole and the author at the 2013 British Masters Swimming Championships in Plymouth
Robert’s aerial adventures began with hang-gliding on the Marlborough Downs and continued with the Wessex Hang-Gliding Club after his move to Poole, before he learned to fly light aircraft with Bournemouth Flying Club. As if this were not sufficiently adventurous, in 1994 he signed up for stunt training in Russia, flying Yak-52 trainer planes from a 1930s grass airstrip founded by Stalin near Smolensk. The following year, Robert spent a week at a Lithuanian Air Force base, home of former members of the Soviet Piston Engine Aerobatics Team. On his first day, it was too wet and windy to fly following two weeks of sunshine and the pilots blamed him for bringing the weather from England. His punishment: to drink ‘lots and lots of vodka. The next morning, the weather was beautifully clear again but I had such a bad hangover I could barely walk, let alone fly,’ he says. ‘I did some aerobatics but the quality wasn’t good. They were quite forgiving and my aerobatics improved after that.’ Robert bought his red and white two-seat stunt trainer plane in 2000 and keeps it at Bournemouth Airport.
But why, in his 75th year, does he do all these things? ‘I have time on my hands and am fortunate enough to be in good health and to have decent finances,’ he says. ‘And I have inherited my father’s sense of adventure.’
