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The post Gregs Trip to France appeared first on Two Two Fly.

“It makes the Channel crossing a bit longer. Does that matter to you?”

I had to think about that one. Channel crossings are still a big deal to me, but I was going to be flying with a pilot who was on his twelfth trip across just this year. Surely there wasn’t much that could surprise him? Flying straight out of North Weald, we would be coasting out over Folkstone, instead of Dover. In his Dynamic, the whole trip would be a lot quicker than in my beloved Skyranger.

“No problem!”

It’s that time of year, isn’t it? The summer has really kicked in, and everyone realises these long days won’t last forever, so perhaps it’s a good time to clock up some long-distance travel. And for those of us in the London TMA, that has got to mean a hop across to France. It takes the same time as going cross-country and feels significantly different at the other end. There’s just the little matter of the water crossing….

I was hoping to do all the radio calls, but unfortunately a hiccup with the avionics meant we could hardly talk to each other and North Weald tower declared me to be unreadable. That meant I sat asking a million questions in my head as we flew out. I did wonder when the pilot, another John, suggested it could just be his cunning plan to keep me quiet!

No surprises that we weren’t the only ones doing the crossing, and I spoke to a Stoke pilot who was one of two aircraft that flew over the next day. Luke has clocked up 80 hours and lots of UK airfields in the year since he got his licence, so France seemed the next obvious choice. “You have just got to go for it,” he told me. He found the forms the most onerous part of the trip, but he had Gary, a Le Touquet regular, to guide him. The trip wasn’t nearly as challenging as he had thought it would be, “so I will definitely be back.”

They climbed to 5500 ft after coasting out at around 3000 ft, but John was happy to do our crossing at around 3500 ft. “I suppose that’s a height I feel comfortable at,” he says. It’s hard not to notice that jagged Skydemon glide path that you get over water, and know that in the middle there, you ain’t gonna glide clear. “And the life jacket’s not going to do a lot either!“ adds Luke.

We were headed for Cap Griz Nez, the closest point in France, but then turned and headed down the coast while still quite far out. London Info hadn’t asked us for any estimates, not to Folkstone, nor for mid-channel, but it’s worth remembering to put in waypoints so you can easily give them if asked. And Le Touquet was telling the two aircraft ahead of us to do a downwind for 13, and report early downwind. “I’ve never heard that before,” John said when they refused to allow one ahead to turn left base straight off the coast. I was looking forward to getting a different view of the circuit, but when our turn came, we were instructed to call left base. It’s worth making sure you know both sides of the approach, because we left later the same day flying out on 31.

Coming in to land, we had someone else who had already called final behind us. “You do feel the pressure,” said John later, “but you just have to focus on doing what you are doing and getting the aircraft down safely. If they need to go around, it’s not your problem.” Of course, calling final doesn’t mean you are cleared to land, but John managed to get down almost on the numbers and scoot off the runway at the first exit. And have that Ground frequency coded, so you can get parking directions.

Luke says, “We knew it would be a hot day, so we planned to leave early, before all the GA pilots were in the air. We left France again at 5pm local and had planned to hug the Kent coastline and come back via the Thames estuary if we found it was too hot and bumpy when we got back over land, but it was perfectly smooth.”

“I don’t really mind whether I can see the horizon,” John told me, but he admits he wants to be able to see the land on the other side. “It’s our rule of thumb at TwoTwoFly,” says Luke. “If you get to Dover and you can’t see France, you turn back and try another day.” That’s exactly what happened to them two weeks earlier, when the cloud base was too low, and it was hazy and claggy. They turned back and consulted the long term forecast for another day.

The trip may not have been too fearsome, but Luke was very happy to have Gary to guide him. “We could listen to his radio calls and copy him.” Eventually their C42 overtook his flexwing, so they headed into Le Touquet first, but “the French are much more chilled than radio operators here. It does give you more confidence, though, going with a pro, like an arm around your shoulder, even with little things like where to show your passport and how to get into town!” Gary adds to that, “Just don’t go on a Saturday, it’s mayhem!”

John is now slowly working his way through all the French airfields that don’t speak English. Luke is planning another trip to Le Touquet and I am determined to do the flying and or radio myself next time. What are you waiting for? Find someone who has done it, and hitch a ride, or brace yourself and go for it. It’s a whole different world across there.

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A flavour of France

The post A flavour of France appeared first on Two Two Fly.

“It’s all the same! All they want to know is ‘Who you are, Where you are and What you want!’ It’s the same! You tell them that and they’ll be happy.” Ed was highly frustrated with my hesitation at going places that required talking to air traffic controllers. Ed loves the radio. He would rather go through controlled airspace than around it – “you are so much safer!”. The idea that anyone would fly a minute longer than needed to avoid talking on the radio is utterly mystifying to him.

When I sat down to prepare for my radio exam, I carefully wrote out the ‘Pass your message’ bit, complete with my full callsign and the abbreviated one.  Who I was, what I was, from where, to where and what I wanted. As a PA28 with a strange callsign on a mythical flight, I didn’t need anything extra to trip me up. As it was, I tried unsuccessfully to call an airfield that wasn’t one. I did think of pressing pause and calling for help, but instead I told the voice on the other end that I couldn’t get a reply from Enderby Airfield and was calmly told, “Well, just stay with me then.” Later the examiner told me that Enderby was simply a turning point in the exercise. Why did it have a frequency listed then? The answer is probably to give the student that moment of panic that always seems to arise when talking to someone on the radio during a flight.

And transponders? “Radio and transponder, they go together like gin and tonic,” said Ed. “You would seldom have one without the other. And if you have both, you are less likely to get into trouble.” True, and they lessen the load considerably when you can punch in a code and go, but not everyone has one and right now, the more times I can ‘pass my message’ the better.

It’s all about mitigating risk. The more you listen and know what to expect, the more you will understand what they are asking of you. Many is the time I have flown with an instructor and not comprehended a single word of the interchange with the controller. There was the day I went up to practise talking to London Information and even though I knew to say Student Pilot, Say again, – and again, and then a third time – I could not for the life of me figure out what he was asking of me. It was the day before I was heading to France, and I was supposed to be doing the radio as well as the flying. I landed in a puddle of tears and decided to call off the trip.

Of course, Ed is right. Whether it is for a MATZ penetration, an ATC or a small farm strip, it is all the same thing. And the more polite and confident you are, the more likely you are to get what you want. I have heard John ask to head through a no-fly zone because they were all on lunch, which meant we didn’t have to go the long way around. Ed cheerfully engaged the Stansted controllers about flying across their runway in a manner that would have been churlish to refuse.

There was the time I returned ashen-faced and bewildered. I had been practising my radio with Essex Radar and they had told me, “Stay out of controlled airspace!” This time John and Ed chorused, “Then you stay out of controlled airspace!” Problem is, I thought I was in it already, as I was flying in the TMZ stub. At my height, though, it still wasn’t Class D airspace. You never stop learning.

Or the time James turned to me and said, “Did you notice him say QSY, when you asked to change frequency?” In all honesty, I hadn’t. Apparently, that’s an old Q-code, that is still used by air traffic controllers.

I am constantly reminded of understanding a child just starting to speak. The words are there, but initially it’s only Mum who can figure out what Baby is saying. That’s because she’s been listening longer than anyone else. The same with radio. The more you listen, the more you hear and understand. There’s only one option. Keep listening, keep practising, until it becomes second nature.

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Radio – the last hurdle

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“What on earth do you want a ladies group for? If a bunch of blokes set that up, you lot would be hollering and shouting about sexism! I just don’t know what you want from it.”

A valid point, I thought. The comment got me thinking. What was this new Women in Microlighting Facebook group meant to do for any of us women pilots?

Set up a few months ago by the BMAA, initially it didn’t feel like it was anything more than yet another Facebook group. But as the posts grew, and the numbers swelled – to include more than a sprinkling of gentlemen pilots too – the chat became more, and more interesting. It was now a place to post your achievements, and one to find a chorus of approval and encouragement.

Now I could answer the first question. And my answer would be, It is very daunting being alone out there in the flying world, and that is what most of us women pilots are – a lone voice in a club of men. And however polite, encouraging and supportive they are – and almost all of them are, certainly once you have your wings – they just aren’t the same as you. Of course we are all different, but I have found looking around and seeing what other women are achieving an incredible encouragement.

It’s a bit like being at gym, and the instructor is counting down the seconds as you hold that plank. Every bit of your body is yelling at you to give up right now but knowing that a bunch of other girls – again with a sprinkling of guys – are also in this with you, and they are sticking it out, helps with that countdown. If they can do it, I can too. And then you all collapse afterwards.

Don’t underestimate how challenging it is being so visible as a pilot. I once did a radio call check from Brookmans Park, a good few miles from home. My airfield and the guys in the air responded, but so did flying friends much further afield. I had done it properly, with the aircraft callsign, but at least two of the replies were, “Hi Nushin, read you five at Old Warden!” and the same from Stoke. I didn’t have a clue who I was thanking. James gets told by friends further north that they hear me “Leaving for the Wist”, in my Saffrican accent, all the time. Yes, think about that. They don’t say they hear him, because he is one of many. But calling on the radio as a woman, you don’t really blend with the static.

I did have fun the other day though. Membury is obviously a busy club and has been on the airwaves a lot in the past year or so, and I have always taken pleasure in hearing another woman calling in the air. Imagine my delight when I met her at Popham. “Next time I hear you on the radio, I’m going to just say, “Hi Cath! It’s Nushin!” Well, coming back on a long and bumpy flight from East Kirkby, I had that chance. No callsigns. I could do it too!

Your easyJet captain may well be a woman nowadays, but even I was surprised to see the visual representation of the gender graphics for non-commercial pilots. Think of a clockface, and a slice about the thickness of a minute. That’s the group that needs to grow, if we are all to be flying in years to come.

So now we have a little virtual club of women who are doing all manner of daring stuff and loving it. They go further than I would dream of, they get through tricky radio journeys, they fly in wild weather, they take their kids up without thinking about it, they fly different aircraft. It’s wonderful to experience. And when I am feeling discouraged, or like I don’t have the stuff it takes to make a pilot, or that I have wasted too many hours just getting to the water tower and back, I go to that virtual clubhouse and listen to someone’s pleasure in this amazing sport. And then I figure, if they can do it, I can too. And I plot a new route in the hope the weather will be flyable tomorrow.

Come and join us in our virtual club and celebrate how fast it is growing.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/369388913654148/

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A woman’s perspective

The post A woman’s perspective appeared first on Two Two Fly.

“I will tell you. But then you must meet me at Old Warden. Alone.”

“Sure, I will drive.”

“No, fly. On your own.”

This wasn’t an assignation. This was a challenge. One pilot to another.

Tough love. That’s what friends are for, isn’t it? My fellow flyer, another John, was trying to encourage me to go solo again. Sure, I had done all my required hours alone in my aircraft. In fact, after that, on one perfect spring day, I had gone for a flight along Stansted’s zone on my own. I have the awful selfie to prove it. (I know, I know – my sister has already told me off!)

After that, it was a matter of replacing an instructor I knew would keep me out of trouble, with a passenger that I felt comfortable having beside me. Sharing an aircraft has meant that James and I built up many hours together. Initially I would be the passenger while we flew into an unknown airfield, watching and learning the approach and join, and then I would fly home. After a while, I would be the one flying into the new airfield, and James would fly us home. It has worked fantastically well for me, and I would recommend it to anyone sharing an aircraft. Buddy up with someone more advanced than yourself. It meant I could build up my confidence and go further afield than I would have if I had been the only pilot in command. For any given leg of a journey, though, there was always only one P1. No fuzzy lines of command allowed.

From there I progressed to flying with other pilots who couldn’t manage my sporty Skyranger Swift.

But what I never did was go up alone. “That’s crazy,” said Ed. “If you aren’t relying on someone else’s help, then you could just as well be alone.” Well, no. Two pairs of eyes work better than one, and it is quite simply more companionable with a fellow traveller.

Many of my friends thought nothing of it. They would fly with or without someone in the right-hand seat. Just as many pilots told me they never went up on their own. Why would they?

I do remember once trying to school myself to jump in and fly alone. It was one of those perfect days, no one else around for company, but I simply couldn’t.

The day of the challenge, I found a million excuses, all valid, for not flying alone. I hadn’t slept very well. That was never a good start to flying. “I’m not doing it,” I told a girl-friend. “Another day,” she soothed me, “you will know when it’s right.” I didn’t need to justify it to anyone else, because I hadn’t told anyone of my plans. “It’s smooth as silk up there,” said Neil when he landed. It did look good. If not now, then when? I didn’t want to give myself a problem to solve. This had to be a challenge I aced. I took a deep breath and called Old Warden for PPR and texted John with my eta as I checked out the aeroplane.

My memory of flying alone was how quickly the aircraft leapt into the air and how much right rudder I needed to balance out the lack of passenger. James had never wanted me to get used to actually flying with a weight, which some folk at the airfield did when they were alone in the cockpit. “You won’t even notice it,” he promised. I didn’t really believe him.

There was so little wind, I took off straight from the apron onto 21 and caught my breath as we soared up into the air, turning over the pylons and calling, “Departing for the West.” This was it, I was on my own – and it felt quite good. No wait, it felt fantastic! Like a muscle memory of an old exercise, I sat up straight, all my senses on high alert, and I smiled. “I’ve got this! I know what I am doing. I can. I am fine. I am in control,” was running through my mind as I set course for the cluster of wind turbines that marks the entry into Old Warden’s zone.

The half an hour sped by, enjoying the countryside in its yellow and green April splendour, looking at the patterns on the clouds, alone and loving it. I heard no one in the circuit as I switched frequencies, but a second call elicited “Runway 03 in use”. Phew, with nothing to choose, that was the one I was most familiar with. Rehearsing my radio calls mentally, no one would have detected even the slightest trepidation as they came out. “They sounded great,” John said later.

“Just square off your circuit, give yourself lots of room,” Dan had encouraged me. Now even I was surprised at how perfectly my overhead join was panning out. “Don’t lose your height here!” I muttered to myself as I joined crosswind, with the same shouty voice the instructor had at this point. I turned downwind just as John called overhead, in time, as he later told me, “to see your superb landing.” It could have been the other John or Ed or James or Dan in the early days of flying in: “Keep it flying, a bit more power, don’t get too low until you are over the hedge, right, you are in, now look towards the end of the runway, pull back, gently does it, and you are down,” but it was only the replay in my head.

The radio is the last place for chit-chat at an airfield, but I couldn’t help a delighted chuckle as I called, “India Alpha vacated zero three, with a greaser of a landing!” There was no-one but John to hear, fortunately. The CFI would have torn strips off me, but I didn’t care. I parked up and took the biggest smile ever in probably the only selfie that has worked!

I was on Cloud Nine as we sipped our juice, and I couldn’t stop thanking John for giving me the boot I needed to get up there alone again. He didn’t really have anything to tell me, other than that I should fly alone more often.  Will I? I am sure I will sometimes, now that I have broken the block I had about it. Admittedly, the trip home was a lot bumpier than going there, and if I had met that turbulence on the way out, I could well have cried it all off.  But I didn’t, and that’s all that counts.

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Girl going it alone

The post Girl going it alone appeared first on Two Two Fly.

“You won’t want to fly, so why are you coming over?”, the CFI had asked. “We’ll drink tea and talk about flying,” I quipped back, “standard pilot stuff.” Why was I going if not to fly? Well, it was a glorious sunny day and on the Tafs and Metars, it should have been a good one. But I have learnt that if we’ve had gale warnings, of whatever level, the day before, the air is still turbulent. I would be happy to soak up a bit of sunshine though, I thought.

“Get your aeroplane out,” he barked as I walked in. “I’ve got 45 minutes free.” “Will I like it?” Both windsocks were parallel with the ground. “You will hate every minute of it, but it’s good to fly in conditions like this.” Then he told the surprisingly large assembled group how the wind had picked up the club C42 and dropped it back on the ground, just as he was telling his student about the importance of ground handling.

“Make sure you point it into wind,” he added as I went to open the hangar door. It was the first time I had ever arrived and found the club aeroplane in its hangar, not waiting on the apron. I was a little apprehensive as the huge metal doors swung open.

James helped me get the Skyranger out and swing it round, warming up the engine. We watched as the needles slowly climbed. On the screen, the airspeed flickered up to 20 then 25 knots as the wind gusted around us. “That’s almost enough for it to fly right now,” he commented as the entire frame shuddered. I sat hoping the brake would hold.

The CFI got in. “Flying in this is a piece of cake. No difference. It’s the ground handling that is challenging,” he said. “If you don’t handle it correctly while you are taxiing, the wind can flip you right over. That’s why I came in on 32, rather than 26, so I didn’t have to taxi so far in a crosswind. If winds this strong hit you from the side, they can tip you over, and there is nothing you can do about it.

“You want to have the wind in front or behind you at all times.” He opened the throttle more than I would normally have done, started moving and then swung the aeroplane around so we had the wind from behind now. “Keep the throttle open and the power up, don’t stop now, or the wind will whip us around.” I had already done my checks, so with my heart in my mouth I edged forward. “Don’t stop! What did I say!” as I slowed to take the sharp bend onto the runway. Lucky no one else was flying!

It was the worst take-off I have done in a long time. “Fly! Fly!” he yelled, but I wasn’t sure whether he was saying do or don’t, over the roar of full throttle. We skipped down the runway until I finally lifted off, shaken at being in such extreme conditions. “Why did you do that? We could have wheel-barrowed into the ground? I have seen it happen!”

He was right about being airborne. “Good fun, isn’t it?” he grinned. Er, no, not really. I didn’t dare comment, just pleased I had an instructor at my side. Actually, it really wasn’t that bad and we did a ten minute orbit before heading back to the airfield to try again. My speed kept shooting up and down. “You’ve got to fly your aircraft on a day like today. It’s all about attitude and power. Choose your attitude, and fly. You don’t want to get too fast, or you will stress the aircraft, so keep taking your power down if you need to with all these lifts. This isn’t a flat calm day where you don’t have to concentrate.”

We landed on 32 and then spun around to see if I could do a better take-off. This time I didn’t hop. “You have airspeed almost immediately,” he said. Later, “Did you see how quickly James got off the ground?”

James, who also got to go up, compared notes after our windy experience. He’d been told to rotate quickly but got yelled at for stopping before he turned onto the runway. He was also told it is better to hold the stick neutral than push it the wrong way. The phrase is, Climb into wind, dive away from it. I would in all likelihood be sitting figuring out whether that means I should be holding the stick forwards or backwards, and then get it wrong! The aim is to allow the aileron to tip up or down, and thereby get the wind to actually hold the wing down, rather than meeting it full on and tipping it over. We taxied with the wind behind us and the stick far forward, and I kept wanting to pull it back, as I am used to holding the weight off the nosewheel.

In all, an interesting, even exhilarating, experience. For myself though, I reckon one of London’s great museums is a better option when the wind is blowing a gale.

Note: No animals or aeroplanes were harmed in this experiment. Do not try this at home. And yes, we were within the Skyranger’s limitations of a crosswind landing at all times.

For more about flying in windy conditions, see https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/active-pilots/safety-and-technique/windy-flight-operations

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Diving into wind

The post Diving into wind appeared first on Two Two Fly.

“Think of it this way,” explained the instructor John. “High pressure keeps a lid on things, so all the rubbish floating around in the air is trapped there. The winds are light, the skies are clear, but the visibility is bad. With low pressure, the winds are stronger and blow all the muck away, so the visibility is much better. However, it’s more likely there will be rain and storms. Take your pick.”

I can’t honestly say that high- and low-pressure systems had really impacted on my life, until flying meant I wanted to know what weather was predicted. Now, setting the altimeter with every flight, and sometimes watching it rise or fall between two flights on the same day, it all became more critical.

When you learn how to call the QNH on the radio, you learn that under 1000 you need to say the word hectopascals. So, no surprise to realise as this stormy weather lashes down, and the winds are listed as gusting in the mid-30 knots, that your altimeter would currently be reading under one thousand hectopascals.

Last week, with the unseasonal summer temperatures we had in February, it was a different story. Then you would have been setting your altimeter somewhere over 1030. And like so many other pilots, you would have looked on your Tafs and Metars to see the wind was almost negligible, and then out of the window to see the sun was shining and headed for the airfield.

That’s probably why I was sitting at North Weald Airfield in a PA-22 waiting for almost twenty minutes at the hold, before there was a gap in landing aircraft and we could take off. Every pilot who could fly that day, and some who couldn’t, were in the air.

It was as we took off that I realised yet again that it isn’t all about how sunny or how windy it is. The skies were abuzz with aircraft, yet the visibility was probably on a par with the day we got caught out in the mist on the way to Old Warden. Forwards, nothing. On the sides it wasn’t bad.

“Want to have a go?”, the pilot asked politely. ‘Not a chance, mate.’ The fact that we weren’t having an Airprox with someone else on a joyride in this murkiness was simply luck. I didn’t want to be at the helm if that happened.

I am not sure I have ever quite understood an inversion layer, but I did that day. Of course I have punched through those fluffy clouds as you head off on a holiday in one of the big boys – or back through them as you come home. I have been up to ‘play in the clouds’ in small aircraft too, but then you are always in sight of the ground. This wasn’t a layer of clouds though. From the ground looking up, it was a crystal-clear day, blue skies and not a cloud to be seen anywhere. John had sent me a photo of his flight earlier: blue sky above and a solid line of white below. It looked like cloud, but it was simply particulates trapped by the high pressure.

We were still in the London TMA, and even over 2300 feet it was pretty much a pea-souper. It wasn’t long, however, before we were hugging the east coast, with no height restrictions. I watched as we climbed. At 3200 feet we burst out into a clear blue sky. I could hear all those cheesy songs in my head now. This was the day everyone had come to fly in. Smooth as silk, clear as a bell. Way below I watched a tiny aircraft heading north. ‘Come up here,’ I wanted to tell them, as I tried out the yoke on the vintage Colt and watched the sun glint on the North Sea.

Later I went up myself in my beloved Skyranger. This time we couldn’t climb out of the murkiness.

I thought about that earlier this week as I set the altimeter down a few dozen hectopascals and went up in what felt a bit like a tumble-drier cycle. No other traffic to worry about today then. Storm Freda hadn’t quite blown herself out. The key was in the FIR at the top of the weather, promising Severe Turbulence. I was doing cross wind landings with John, and after fighting to get the aircraft lined up on 26 I handed over to him. “So, you show me how then.”  We landed just as inelegantly as I had done. The wind at 300 feet was 25 knots he had said earlier. “Hmm, I have to say, your landings were better than mine,” he admitted.

There have to be some perks to flying in a wash-cycle!

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The highs and lows of flying

The post The highs and lows of flying appeared first on Two Two Fly.

It was a year to the day since I had passed my GST, but Ed wasn’t to know that as he hopped into the aeroplane with me. We were going up to twiddle knobs and do the settings on the aeroplane’s new radio.

I did my checks and took off on 21, straight into wind. We weren’t 200 ft up when he gave me an engine failure. “Here we go,” I thought. “Of course, this is going to be a long ride.” I pushed the nose down and said, “I’d land right here.” Satisfied, he opened the throttle and we climbed away. The static on the radio was dreadful and I couldn’t hear the incoming aeroplane. “I can fix that,” he said, “just need to be on the ground to do it.” “We can go back now,” I suggested hopefully, not sure I had the energy for what would be a lesson with him.

We crossed into clearer airspace and headed north. ”It’s a long time since I went up with you,” I said. “Forgotten it all, have we?” he asked. “What would you do if we had an engine failure here?”, as he cut the throttle. I kept my airspeed, showed him which field I was aiming for and came down quite nicely I thought, putting on flaps and turning final so I would get in neatly to the enormous field I had picked.

“So what marks would you give yourself for that?” he asked as we climbed out. “I think I did okay,” I countered. “Didn’t do the full Mayday thing, but I would have got it in there just fine.” “And what about if I had knocked the mags and you could have restarted it? Good choice of field, approach was fine, pity you would have landed short. You’d have come in on that line of trees, when you had a huge field to land in.”

“Okay, let’s do a stall.” He sensed my brain-freeze. “Remember how to do that?” As I was racking my brains for the sequence of events, he was hammering me about not trotting through the Hassell checks, and although I did it right, I did need prompting. Thank goodness I had done a run through with Dan just a few days before.

One after another they came – steep turns and every version of unusual attitudes until my head was spinning.

As we left the airfield, Dan had been heading to a private strip he had never landed at before. “Let’s go there too,” Ed said, even though we hadn’t done PPR. We overflew the runway and I did a circuit, setting myself up for the landing and wondering why he was on his phone. Until I heard him talk to Kev, the airfield owner. “Mind if we drop in then?” So, he did understand that Kev didn’t like unannounced visitors.

I flew over the hangar, feeling far too high for the runway. Ed got me to push the nose down and I landed, with half the runway left. “You are always in too much of a hurry,” he remonstrated. Kev’s first question was, “Who did the landing?” “I did!” “Then it was okay. Just wanted to check it wasn’t Ed, or I may not have said that!” I laughed.

There was a bit of chitchat and we were off, going to show Dan the strip I wanted to try landing on. As we left, another unusual attitude, but this time I was quicker on the uptake. I found the field and Ed gave me an emergency landing to get the aircraft down.

By now he was bored. It wasn’t a teaching afternoon, after all. “Let’s go and play in the clouds.” I handed control to him, so I could take photos. We looked for a break where he could climb. Climbing up and heading back down later I sneaked in pics of the dashboard between images of the clouds drifting past us. “I would have been worried the aeroplane would bust, at that rate of descent,” said Dan when I showed him.

The flight log showed zigzags and twirls, dips and dives, like a child’s uncontrolled drawing. “So, I wouldn’t have passed my GST today then?” I checked with Ed as we taxied back to the apron. “Nope!” he said cheerily.

It had been on my list before my flight with Ed, but now perhaps with a bit more urgency. I am relaxed and confident at the controls, and I feel like a pilot. It has taken the best part of a year. But Exercise 17C – the GST run-through – will be what keeps me busy when going places isn’t really an option.

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GST – one year on

The post GST – one year on appeared first on Two Two Fly.

“We could fly closer over the coast. It might be more interesting.” We had just taken off from a holiday airfield in Devon where our aircraft had spent a week outside, and we were heading home. I was flying, and James was suggesting sightseeing. The answer was an emphatic no.

It took me a moment to figure out why. I wasn’t even thinking he take photos of the magnificent views I was seeing unfold beneath me – Cornworthy, Tuckenhay, Brixham, Exmouth. Village names that exist only in the English countryside. They simply didn’t matter now. This wasn’t one of the jaunts we had taken while we were on holiday. This was different. It was a journey. With a destination on quite the other side of the country. And flying the breadth of England meant coping with very different weather patterns as we went.

A lot of planning had gone into choosing the right day for departure. We had to be out by Monday. While we didn’t want to cut our stay short, we also knew that the following week looked windy. Thursday was a lovely day, but we had planned to visit friends in Cornwall – a mini epic for me. That left Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

Leaving home, we had already found that what looks good on paper doesn’t always translate into a great flying day. James had been packed and ready to leave when he learnt that the airfields Bristol way were fogged in. The option was waiting another day to leave, or replanning his route. Flying solo to Devon, he had opted for a route that didn’t involve navigating the many MATZ the alternative route offered. The next day, he flew out and all was well. But what if you don’t have a next day? That was the thought that preoccupied me.

Studying weather patterns on the Met Office charts, it seemed that Friday would only clear early afternoon. Long discussions with the CFI, a whiz at meteorology, resulted in the decision we would go on Saturday. “It’s the best day,” he said. True enough, Friday dawned misty and cleared but then Saturday started out with mist as well. I had a moment’s panic. We didn’t have that extra day.

“Never mind, you’re flying into good weather, and the mist will clear before you leave,” assured the CFI, sending a photo of clear blue skies to prove his point.

The plan was that I did the first leg, then we reassessed, although in my head I knew I wanted to do the whole route if I possibly could. I had visited our first stop twice, so I had a better sense of the airfield than just off a map, and landing at home I knew I could do. James could do some flying from the right-hand seat if I flagged. “This trip will catapult your flying onto a whole new level in ways you can’t imagine,” the CFI predicted.

There was no mist, but a fairly solid ceiling as we took off. Westonzoyland had assured us the skies there were clear, but we had a backstop if that didn’t work out. I was at the helm now, but I wanted to go the route James had flown, so at least one of us was on familiar terrain.

Heading across the river Exe towards the red cliffs of the Jurassic coast I did request a few photos, but then the Blackdown Hills came up to meet me and I felt sandwiched between them and the cloud base. James became more and more insistent that we would meet turbulence if we went higher. I was looking at what we’d meet if we went lower. We passed Exeter first, then Dunkeswell loomed up on the left. I don’t recall that part of the trip with the same pleasure as driving through its winding roads, getting glimpses of the spectacular views every now and then.

Suddenly we had passed over onto the Somerset levels and the aeroplane felt high again. There was a moment to catch my breath and then the airfield was in sight. We were landing on their second runway, and I had to navigate between villages on the downwind leg. Despite having discussed the approach, I was very happy to have James to help guide me down. On the ground, I realised how relieved I was we had broken the journey, even though we could have done it in one hop. Packed lunch, a tea-break and a chance to stretch our legs, and I was back doing my checks again.

This stretch was totally unknown territory to me. I noticed the strange outcrop that is Glastonbury Tor, which we had once climbed and watched aeroplanes go by. The hills turned chalky white and undulating and I saw a horse etched in white. Further on, another. Right there was a flicker of movement and I noticed the hillside was full of paragliders, swooping off the ridge. I tracked away to make sure we didn’t meet them. By the time we got near Membury, which I know so well as a stopover on the London-Bristol run, I needed a break. We had to navigate around an area for aerial display, and I was happy to let James take control for a while. It felt like we would never get home. Then suddenly I was back on known territory, and I recognised Reading, heading for a gap between two large buildings and noting the possible fields I could land in. The Thames came into view, with its beautiful winding vistas, which I knew from my Isle of Wight trip.

Back in London TMA and height restrictions, I once again let James take control to get us past the narrow gap between Wycombe Air Park and Heathrow. Flying the last stretch seemed different and totally unfamiliar. I wasn’t used to approaching from this angle and none of the landmarks seemed to register. I recalled John’s words about keeping your head when you are flying home after a long trip right until you were on the ground as I navigated the last stretch and put the aircraft down on the runway I know so well.

As we landed on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the airfield was bustling, and no one noticed the returning heroes. Not even to offer them a cuppa. Nothing out of the ordinary then. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or put out. Some part of me expected drum rolls and red carpets, but that’s what pilots do. They fly places. And now I was truly one of them.

As a post-script, the following week had three days of high winds, one of them actually a named storm. I thought of the prospect of our poor little aeroplane tied down, alone on a Devon hillside, far from home. And I thanked our lucky stars we’d taken the weather window when we did.

Long haul – more than the sum of its parts

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“Local knowledge. It is what makes the difference between getting into a tricky strip like this one, or not. It is all the information you can’t get off Skydemon or Pooleys.” This was Pete, our inspector, who had once patiently shown me that when all else fails, the spires of London shimmered on the horizon to point us south.

It is a lesson well worth learning. It’s the reason the main entertainment at a Cambridgeshire summer fly-in was seeing who knew about the bump on the 28 runway which threw newcomers – and regulars too – up in the air and at times demanded three go-arounds. I have to say, though, that a former CFI there keeps insisting there is no bump, so I suppose it also depends on which locals you speak to!

“Always try and talk to people who regularly fly there, when you are planning a trip to an unknown airfield,” says Pete.

I found that out last summer when we had our aeroplane at a Devon strip for a holiday week.

“How on earth would we ever find this field if we didn’t have the GPS to guide us back?”, I asked out loud as we headed back to our holiday home base. Exquisite, certainly, these green and rolling fields, but one looked very much like another from the air. It was a question I then asked the two local pilots who chatted to us once we were down. “Oh, there are visual markers,” they assured me.

The no-fly areas over the village make for complicated reading for a visiting pilot. ‘Basically, you should avoid the village at all costs,” John said. “As you climb out, turn to avoid it, and when you come back, make sure you don’t overfly it. There is a long barn you can use as a marker on downwind, and two solar farms that show on the northern side. This mast” – he pointed to what looked like a miniature Eiffel tower in the early stages of construction – “shows your southern marker, and those industrial roofs also show up from a long way away.

“And then there is this short piece of hedge. You can see it for miles. It’s just stuck between two fields. You do please need to remember to land on the right-hand side of the hedge though. We had someone who came in and landed on the left. There was a crop in the field at the time. It didn’t go down well with the farmer!”

The next time we were airborne I scouted out for the short hedge, stuck between two fields. It looked a bit like a moustache, and they were right, you could see it from a distance. It made all the difference. Every time we’d lose the airfield – and that happened frequently turning downwind, or even final –  a moment of panic, and bam, there’s that familiar stubby hedge. Phew, we’re safe!

The other nugget of local knowledge they gave us is counter to the maxim that an uphill runway is always better than the downhill one. ‘No,” they shook their heads in unison. “Even with no wind, or on a wet day, we’d rather come in on 27 than 09, where you have to do a dogleg to avoid the village as you approach the uphill runway. You can set yourself up so much better over the fields as you come in.”

My first landing felt like I literally hopped over the hedge, coming down a bit low, correcting – and then hoping those same locals weren’t watching! It is so much harder to judge your height coming in for a downhill slope, but when you hold back on that stick, as I hear my instructor’s voice yelling in my head, it works out fine.

So when the sheriff tells you his strip has rotor from the trees that will knock you about in a northerly wind, or someone tells you to land long because of the hippo pool near the numbers, it’s worth taking note. Those are the nuggets of knowledge that don’t get published on the airfield plate.

Talk to the locals

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