Well the party pieces started from the period when we were accepting the Lighting MkII Simulator into service at Leconfield and we instructors did all the flying tests as requested by the Rediffon engineers...During the process of all this testing and juggling I happened to discover one particular circuit breaker in one of the numerous racks in the computer room...Its function was to control the feature of the fuel system that only permitted a limited amount of fuel for inverted flight, and this meant that after so many seconds of inverted flight (the number of seconds dependant on the throttles position), both engines would flameout.
Naturally, I popped the circuit breaker and discovered to my joy that you could fly inverted for as long as you liked and the engines didn't notice.
I need to set the scene here because you have to realise that there was NO visual presentation on the sim...it was ALL instrument flying. The canopy let light in as it was white but you could not see out:-
Anyway, my first party trick which took me a whole afternoon to learn (nothing was happening that afternoon...Sports afternoon or something), was to fly inverted in full reheat at 720 knots at 50 feet...I worked at it steadily (I was the only one there), everytime I crashed, I would have to get out and press the Sim Reset button and then get back in, start the engines and try again...Crash...Bugger!....out again, push the button, back in, start engines, full bore, wheels up, roll inverted, settle at 50 feet...steady...steady...Crash! Bugger!
Well I worked at it for hours and finally managed to actually master it...The control movement at that speed was practically zero...Just a slight change of pressure on the stick was all that was required.
So that was my first party piece and I showed it to a few people.
Some months later, I took it further and flew the whole of the final Lightning Simulator training exercise inverted...The exercise called "Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)" involved taking off from base (Leconfield) and climbing to 36,000 to fly a "Loiter Pattern" while watching the radar for bomber targets coming in at 56,000 feet. When they were spotted then you would vector and accelerate at 36,000 feet to come in behind them at around Mach 1.80...You would then use all that speed to make an energy climb up at them, arming the missiles and completing the attack pattern using the Pilot Attack Sight. When the Range Brackets lit, you would fire the missile and flop back downwards as the target was destroyed.
Then when you started the recovery to base you would discover that the weather was clamped in and you would have to divert to Coltishall or Wattisham or some such place...This would involve setting up an "Offset TACAN" position to fly to, that was 18 miles out on the ILS localiser and you would fly to and land at your diversion.
My party piece involved inverting just after lift off and remaining inverted for the whole exercise with the exception of the actual firing of the missile...For some reason, the missiles would not fire while you were inverted so I just pressed the fire button and held it down as I rolled from inverted through 360 degrees back to inverted...The missile went as I rolled. I normally rolled back to the right way up to fly the actual ILS approach...but I did fly even the ILS inverted a couple of times, with a rollout at about 500 feet for the landing.
Well it was all very academic and just Instrument Flying, but turning the right way was a bit of a challenge. I used to practice it by myself when there wasn't much happening...but it used to cause some merriment if any of the other chaps walked in and spotted what was going on at the Console outside:-
VMT for digging it out 
Everything falls into place now 
