Tag: General Aviation

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General Aviation Routine and Maintenance

Washing Day

Last Tuesday, Will took a friend out for a short flight around the Malvern Hills. The weather was spectacular, visibility was superb and the views were magnificent – apparently.

I was on the ground looking up enviously as they did a few circuits before landing. But I was there for a different reason and the perfect conditions couldn’t have worked out better.

We were back in the hangar on Saturday, but no flying for us – it was our turn to clean the plane.

At first glance, Charlie didn’t look too bad. After all, how much dirt is there at the altitudes we fly? Quite a bit as it happens! Either that, or the wheels kick up an awful lot of dust when they’re on the ground.

We’d booked Charlie until 1pm after which someone was taking him out for a spin. Allowing an hour to get there, we gave ourselves a good two hours for the task though even that, we thought, could be pushing it. It might be a small aircraft relatively speaking, but as Will pointed out later, there’s an awful lot of it!

We were over halfway to the airport and making good progress when Will suddenly blurted out something that I can’t repeat here. We’d left the keys at home in Will’s flight bag! We wouldn’t be able to get into the hangar, the cupboard with all the cleaning stuff in, or even the aircraft itself. Now what to do? We were coming up to a motorway exit and had to make the decision – do we go on, or go home and give up?

After a two-second frantic discussion we continued on, convincing ourselves that it wouldn’t be a wasted journey. To be honest, we didn’t really have much choice as we were in the middle lane with little chance of getting across to the exit. If nothing else, we’d have a nice coffee and cake at the airport restaurant and enjoy the views so all was not lost.

Less than twenty minutes later we parked up and ……… by an aligning of all the planets, good things coming our way and a phone call to our syndicate friend who lived locally, we actually managed to get in and on with the job!

Washing a car is one thing. Washing an aeroplane is on a completely different level! Cleaning equipment comprised nothing more than a bowl of hot water, washing-up liquid, window spray, various cloths and kitchen roll – that was about it.

It took us an hour and half to get Charlie gleaming, finishing well within the 1pm deadline. Time to get lunch!

A while later, we found out that the person who’d booked Charlie for the afternoon had cancelled at the last minute. I had mixed feelings. We’d already said that morning that we should have booked him out for the whole day so we could go flying afterwards. We would definitely have made the most of it.

On the other hand, Charlie would be there for another few hours before getting grubby again. Another few hours for people to admire our efforts! Especially those brilliantly clean windows which, I have to say, have never looked so sparkling!

Categories
Flights General Aviation Henstridge Routes Somerset weather

Being on schedule + Short flight = Longer lunch

According to the forecast a day or so before our planned flight, the weather, yet again, seemed to be conspiring against us. However, we woke up to a lovely sunny day which seemed to improve the further south you got. Luckily we’d planned to go south!

It seemed daft to drive an hour north for a 30 minute flight south as it would have taken about the same time if we’d just got in the car and headed straight there from home. But of course, the whole point was the flight itself; meeting Will’s parents for lunch was the added bonus. And unlike our last attempt, we actually got there in plenty of time and had a good couple of hours with them before heading back.

Since our flight to Popham, Will’s parents had moved house so the flight this time was to Henstridge Airfield in Somerset. Visibility en-route was perfect with a cloud base of 4,700 ft, and our route skirted Bristol Airport before going over the former RAF Hullavington (now a technology campus for Dyson UK) and past Chavenage House (otherwise known as Poldark’s home of ‘Trenwith’).

When we reached Henstridge, Will decided to take the opportunity for a touch-and-go. That was a first for me. We were then second in the queue for the landing and ended up going about 10 miles wide over Compton Abbas to follow the first plane in.

Henstridge Airfield is privately owned so of course, up to a point, they can make their own rules, but I found the list of rules regarding Covid precautions a little strict when most places were becoming more relaxed.

Again due to Covid restrictions, the cafe was limited to hot drinks from a self-service machine and some ready-plated cakes for sale. Fortunately we’d booked lunch at a local pub otherwise I would have been really disappointed.

The museum was closed too, although we were excited to hear a warning over the radio to “look out for the Tiger Moth to the right of the runway.” The Tiger Moth had attracted a small crowd and we were lucky enough to see it take off and do a few circuits.

Lunch was at The Virginia Ash, just 5 minutes drive from the airfield. It was our waitress’s first day there but she made a cracking job of it and we had a lovely couple of hours enjoying our Sunday Roast and putting the world to rights. It would have been nice to have had a glass of wine to go with it but that, of course, had to wait until we got home.

It had started to drizzle when we came out of the pub so we decided to head straight back to the airfield and set off for home. As we were saying our goodbyes, the guy in charge came out and advised us that the weather was coming in and that we should go – we weren’t sure if he just wanted to get rid of us so he could go home, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was being helpful!

Not exactly sure where this is, but it’s around Melksham Without and Pie Corner (great names!). Somewhere in Wiltshire anyway.

As we headed north, the weather deteriorated and we had to fly back at a lower altitude, at some points looking for holes in the clouds which we could fly through.

By the time we pulled up at home, it was dark, it was rainy and it was definitely not flying weather. The Henstridge man had been spot-on!

Categories
east midlands Festivals Flights General Aviation Routes

A Weekend Away

It’s never a guarantee that Charlie can be booked out for more than a day at a time unless you’re lucky enough to get two consecutive days falling on a week day and a weekend day (i.e., Friday and Saturday or Sunday and Monday). That’s the way the booking system works and anything different has to go through the syndicate committee. Give them their due, they normally look kindly on such requests unless there’s a good reason not to, and that’s how it was when we asked to take Charlie out over the bank holiday weekend.

As soon as we had the go-ahead for a three-day booking we were making arrangements to stay with friends over in Lincolnshire.

The flight to Wickenby Airfield took about an hour and forty minutes. According to Google Maps it would have taken about three and a quarter hours by road, though seeing all the traffic on the motorways, much of the time at a crawl or standstill, it probably would have taken far longer. Visibility was excellent though the cloud base was fairly low keeping us to an altitude of around 2000ft.

Rutland Water in the distance
Rutland Water

Flying above Rutland Water which, coincidentally, I’d visited about two weeks previously, I got to see how vast this body of water actually is. It’s the largest reservoir in England (by surface area) and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Protection Area and a Nature Conservation Review Site. I knew it covered a large area but didn’t really get a feel for its size until I saw it from the air.

An urban view from about 2000ft, with the waterway running around an industrial area and out towards The Wash
Boston, Lincs, with The Haven (tidal river) heading out to The Wash

As we flew further north-east, the towns and villages got more sparse and the land a lot flatter. The fields were a patchwork quilt of different colour blocks, interspersed with waterways and quiet roads. Rivers following straight lines with barely a meander, stretched for miles before eventually spilling out into The Wash (another impressive geological feature where salt marsh, mudflats and tidal inlets join the land to the sea and a three-sided coastline forms a bay around one of Britain’s broadest estuaries). It was all so different from the busy-ness of our local area. Wickenby airfield was very quiet with just one other aircraft parked up!

View of the mud flats and waterways alongside The Wash from about 2000ft
The waterways and mud flats along the coastline of The Wash

Our friends were magnificent hosts and on Saturday, Will took Stav up for a flight to Skegness. In the meantime, Jen and I went into Lincoln, little knowing that it was hosting a Steampunk Festival.

A group of people from the Steampunk Festival, dressed in colourful outfits
Fabulous outfits at the Steampunk Festival

The weather had turned out sunny and warm; the Steampunk outfits were impressive/beautiful/eccentric; I could have spent a fortune in the little independent shops on Steep Hill; and an extended lunch at Bar Unico followed by coffee at the Hilton overlooking the marina was a perfect way to end the day. Dinner that evening was home-made pizza cooked in a piping hot pizza oven in Stav and Jen’s garden. Cooking in that heat took no time at all and the pizzas tasted so much better than from a normal oven – authentic and truly delicious.

After a lazy Sunday morning, it was time to go back to Wickenby and home. The weather had returned to the same as Friday so again, we kept altitude at around 2000ft. We took a slightly different, though similar distance, route but with a tail-wind almost all the way back, we were back on the apron in around an hour and twenty minutes.

view from about 2000ft over the River Welland
Flying over the River Welland

We’ve since learnt that Stav has now made enquiries about flight training. Will has decided that we must get a pizza oven for the garden!

Categories
General Aviation weather

The calm before the storm

Whoever booked Charlie out today has been blessed.  The weather has been absolutely perfect for flying.  What a change from the rest of the week which has been grey, miserable, wet and generally rubbish (putting it politely)!  As for last Sunday, according to all weather forecasts, the devil of all storms was to come on that day, and when had we booked Charlie out?  Sunday of course! 

Restricted bookings had been lifted so we’d booked Charlie for the whole day with the intention of going to Welshpool, but that was before we saw the weather forecast. By the Saturday afternoon, we knew we’d have to change plans.  It didn’t bode well – low cloud, low visibility, heavy rain and gusts averaging 40mph were all on the cards.

Early on the Sunday morning we were up, scanning the day’s weather forecast, the local Meteorological Aerodrome Report (METAR) and the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF) just in case anything had changed.  Having done that, the choice was between driving to the airport and making a decision when we got there, or cancelling altogether and mooching around the house wondering if we should have gone after all.  After a quick breakfast, we were in the car and on the motorway. 

The weather forecast, once we got to the airport, hadn’t changed much but we realised that as long as we were back on the ground by midday, we’d avoid what was to come.  By 10.30am the wheels were up and we were heading east, in the opposite direction of the weather front.

Cotswold Airport (formerly RAF Kemble)

Our decision to go up was well justified.  We could see for miles, cloud base was high, there was very little wind and the skies were unusually quiet of traffic – the forecast had obviously put a lot of people off.

An hour later we were back on the ground.  We pushed Charlie back into the hangar, finished the paperwork and got in the car to head back home.  Ten minutes later the heavens opened.  The predicted weather had arrived…..

Categories
Planning

Where next?

We’ve been enviously watching the comings and goings of Charlie on Flight Radar over the past few weeks, but we’ve been in Tier 3 and that’s not likely to change so we’re not going anywhere. That’s the consequence of living in a different area to the airport.

However, there’s nothing like planning for the future and when the 59th edition of the Pooley’s UK Flight Guide arrived fresh off the press, we were like kids pouring over the toy section of the Argos catalogue, mentally ticking off where we’d like to go first.

Pooley's Guide binder and book

With nearly 1000 aerodromes available ranging from huge international airports to tiny air strips, it seems there’s nowhere in the UK out of bounds.

Yes, we can meet up with friends, no matter where in the UK they live
Yes, we can take mum to her cousins’ without spending hours in the car
Yes, we can see all those wonderful sights on our “would love to visit” list

But hold on a minute!

A casual read of some of the pages in the guide started to set off alarm bells and so I took a closer look. As I turned over the pages, certain comments leapt out as if they were written in red ink and highlighted in neon yellow: “Danger areas nearby”, “Powerlines on approach”, “To avoid overflying … [with suggested instructions]”, “Steeply rising ground”, “Undulating runway”, “Railway line on short final”, “Possibility of [insert relevant word here] crossing the runway”, and so on. On top of that, Will has said he’d rather not land on grass and I’m sure he’s not too keen on competing with a load of commercial traffic either.

Bearing all of this in mind and with information provided by the guide, I decided to compile a list of criteria for our next few flights. Here it is:

  1. The page describing the airfield must not include any sections with the heading “Cautions” or “Warnings“
  2. The section for each airfield headed “Remarks” must not contain the word “risk”, or any sentences starting with “A public road crosses …” or “Look out for …”
  3. The airfield map must not feature any buildings labelled “passenger terminal” or “cargo”
  4. The runway must be level, smooth and made of asphalt
  5. There must be no possibility of meeting up with flocks of Greylag Geese or any other type of bird. The same goes for gliders, parachutists and hot-air balloons
  6. Animals of any kind, pedestrians, cyclists or general road traffic must not be allowed anywhere near the runway
  7. Because I always like to break with coffee and at least a snack, if not a full-blown lunch, there must be a cafe or restaurant on-site or within walking distance (unless we’re going on to somewhere else)
  8. Fuel must be available as Charlie is only small and can’t carry a huge amount. Otherwise there must be somewhere to fill up en-route which meets the above criteria

So where does that leave us?

Taking all of the above points into consideration, I think we have a choice of about zero airfields to choose from, or perhaps two really obscure ones if I look hard enough. <sigh> Guess I’m going to have to revisit the list and think again!