Been a while!

Well I haven’t fallen off the planet – just recovering from an age waiting for someone to be available to take the aircraft for a new alternator (having run through all my own annual leave already, and being a rather small group at present, it was surprisingly challeging — anyway one Swansea want one of our shares???).

We rolled the 50 hour check in at the same time so should be good to fly for a while now.  Hopefully we’ll have one of those lovely clear Septmebers – although I’m looking out of the windows at rain right now.

Anyway, between one expense and another I was skint again, so only a quick local was on the cards before I forgot how to do it.

Refreshed me though, as it always does.  Just meandering about the sky.  Circling the occasional isolated cumulus and watching the pattern of shadow and sunlight away down there below me.

I’m feeling comfortable with BeeGee know.  The three-handed performance to start up flows a bit more and the full-stretch rudder input to minimise the turning circle without overshooting entirely is a little less awkward.  In the air I don’t spend the immediate seconds after applying full flap dangling from the tail as the aeroplane suddenly realises I want to descend and dashes off with me wailing wait for me!’ and the runway doesn’t half disappear behind me before she catches on I’m trying to land and it might be an idea to settle down now…

Now just need to sort the cashflow for some more trips before winter well and truly arrives!

White Waltham

It had been ages since I’d flown any day out type trips and since I had a fellow BeeGee groupie lined up to sharing the flying and thus costs I was keen to go somewhere new and didn’t much care where.

Mike suggested White Waltham to which I readily agreed.  I have been there before but never under my own steam as such, so it certainly ‘counted’ for the purposes of my desire to flying somewhere new.

I dawdled over charts on the floor (four folds away you know — in bandit country of the southeast…), but would up with a more or less straight line via the Old Severn Crossing, South of Swindon and North of Reading cutting straight through Lyneham’s (lack of at weekends) class D.

No hurry for an early start on a Sunday morning, so Mike pitched up to fetch me at around 10 and we had a cuppa before sorting the aeroplane out and setting off.  I was flying the outbound leg and the first thing I discovered was that the wind was nothing like as forecast, either on the ground or in the air.

Nevertheless we escaped with 10 without incident and the first leg was over familiar country and easy to work out a more realistic drift correction than on my bits of paper (Mike had an Aware in his pocket, but I’m contrary and actively enjoy doing it the old fashioned way.  I think it comes from spending all day staring at computers — the thought of getting in the aeroplane on my days off and staring at another leaves me cold.)

Swansea appeared to be feeling their oats more than usual, being oddly insistent (for an a/g unit) on getting at least a ‘roger’ for things like wind info.

On the plus side this sudden keenness did result in them arranging a completely unexpected handover to Cardiff for the first time I can ever remember.

In spite of the sunshine we clapped eyes on no one and heard anything other than commercial traffic.  Perhaps that’s why Cardiff themselves also seemed unusually interested in us.  We got a squawk and unasked for traffic information on apparently the only other light aircraft flying in South Wales, before an (actually unwanted) handover to Bristol.

Where it was bedlam — not helped by the fact the VOR I was fiddling with, planning to practise my tracking while I was at it, started shrieking with horrible interference the moment I changed comms frequency.

All the lack of aircraft making the most of the weather back home were out in force here!   From Bristol we went to Brize and then to Farnborough West (should, with hindsight have skipped Brize – they couldn’t wait to get rid of us.)

This is turning into an r/t moan, but only because they trip so far was over such familiar territory I have to amuse myself somehow!

The bridge was the point I started concentrating on the navigation, as opposed to floating  vaguely in the direction of England…

Badminton went past on schedule and I burbled a bit to Mike about landing there for the trials.  As we looked around it really was airfields in all directions.  I joked that any engine failure here would be ‘pick an airport’ rather than finding a field.

We passed over the southern edges of Swindon, getting rocked slighly by the thermals rising from the concrete and tarmac  and passed the Membury mast.  This really was straightforward for navigation!

The offending VOR which squealed like a pig every time I switched to it was CPT and we crossed it bang on track as we headed onto the northeast of Reading and the flooded gravel pits which White Waltham’s Pooley entry informed me was point Whiskey.

The slight haze we’d started the trip with had lifted and White Waltham was fairly easy to spot early.  Our first radio call revealed that the runway had changed since our phone call that morning, and was on an opposite direction circuit.

I wheeled round to get the airfield on my left, following my idiotproof approach to overhead joins of “keep the airfield on circuit side and fly round it until you see the proper runway!)

In this case the proper runway was 11 and the direction we were approaching from required almost a full 180 in the overhead before we could descend. All the while, bearing in mind it was joins at 1300 due to the eastern edge of the ATX being in the London TMA.

I rather overshoot the turn onto final, but was otherwise happy with the arrival, two sets of eyes watching for the noise abatement spots was a help.

Mike hopped out to settle the landing fee while I noted down tach times and extracted myself.

While planning the trip I’d mentioned it on Facebook with the result that we were joined by Paul S and assorted forumites for a leisurely lunch and a very pleasant wander round the hangars, as well as introducing BeeGee all round!

The southeast is a different world from west Wales — and the amount of money sloshing around to support so many lovely old and new and twirlybatic machines is astonishing.

Eventually it was time to return and we refuelled and trooped the length of the field to return to the runway threshold.

At which point the alternator packed up.  Again.

Some discussion later we decided we were really no better off here than Swansea, and set off home intending to go non-radio once we were underway.

It was really rather peaceful actually!  Mike was flying and I gazed out of the windows and idly kept half an eye on the navigation.

We flicked back on to Swansea radio as we approached only to discover that we and a few other still flying were in the doghouse for being out of hours…

Oh for a farmer’s field and an aeroplane with no sodding electrics!

Anyway, it had been too good a day out to fuss about.  So we’ll see if a bill follows the scolding, and wait to hear when we need to present ourselves at Bournemouth for a new alternator!

Thinking out loud

After a number of weather cancellations, Saturday arrived bright and clear.  Well, clear apart from the lightening and hailstones…

Happily, all those big, bounding cu-nims had wandered their way north by the time I set off for the day’s session on holds.

This required a certain amount of briefing beforehand and I was sincerely hoping it proved simpler in the air than it has on paper as I’ve been applying my brain to it for some while with a rather a lot of foggy confusion remaining.  The bedroom floor is positively littered with little scribbly diagrams of stick-aeroplanes dot-dot-dotting their way towards NDBs drawn in such anguished mental frustration that some of them are stabbed holes in the paper.

However, at least I was fairly confident I knew which hold was which and when to use them, but in case of brain failure Dave had drawn some clues on the DI in chinagraph.

The Cardiff hold is left hand (non standard) but the same works for standard right hand ones as well if you flip the diagram.

Essentially, once you’re inbound to the beacon, you look at where the outbound track falls and there’s your join – no Maths In Public required…

We’d see!

To save time, money and mental workload we were going to do a sort of ‘dummy run’ using the Haverfordwest NDB but flying the pattern of the Cardiff hold.  This had a number of advantages — not least among them being the lack of whopping great hailstorms in that direction.

The plan was to take off, track towards the VOR at Strumble then as soon as we picked up the NDB at Haverfordwest to strike out towards that and track overhead before turning around and having a go at joining the hold.

We’d do once around, then fly the “still pretending it’s Cardiff” alternate procedure, knocking off at 1500′ or so before we became a nuisance to anyone actually flying at Haverfordwest.

So off we went.  A foggles-day as it was beautifully clear behind the clouds.

I still need more practice with accuracy and getting the mental picture of where I am in regards to the various nav aids and made rather a meal of getting on a radial to Strumble.

Tracking the NDB into Haverfordwest was rather simpler as I wasn’t fussed which direction we were going as long as it was towards the field!  It’s when I’m called upon to track a particular QDM that I come a bit unstuck.

Overhead the beacon fairly closely, judging by the speed with which the needle swept round and then back towards it from the southwest.

This put the outbound track of 120 firmly in the Parallel join sector so back to the beacon we went for a right hand turn to 120 to track out the ‘wrong way’ for a minute.

Then right again and back to the beacon for a left turn into the hold proper.

Sort of almost a figure of eight.

What surprised me and perhaps shouldn’t have, was what a steady pace it all happened at.  A minute seems an awfully long time once you’re properly set up and just sort of waiting — and at the same time seems altogether not long enough while you’re frantically trying to remember how the  next bit goes!

At the ‘far end’, a minute’s flying, (and about 2nm on the DME, and with the ADF about 30 degrees off the tail) another rate one turn back towards the beacon.

My turns being less than perfect and the wind more than nil, this was followed by a certain amount of weaving about attempting to regain a QDM of 300…

(Not to mention the occasion on which I stopped the outbound turn short at 210 instead of carrying on around to 120…)

During the inbound turn The Book helpfully advises that one can ‘determine whether you will undershoot or overshoot the inbound track and take appropriate corrective action’.

Dave put a bit more detail on this, advising that halfway round the turn (i.e with 90 degrees to go), the ADF should be at around -70, and with 30 to go it should be around -45.

If it’s greater then you need to tighen up the turn, if it’s less than slacken it off.

I played with this a bit more on “Tim’s Amazing Navigation Simulator” when I got home and it does make a sort of sense.

Someone at work the other day introduced me to the difference between “needing more training” and “needing more practise” — on ADFs and holds I need more practice!

It makes sense but slips from my mind when asked to do it at the same time as fly…

And all accuracy goes completely out the window when it comes to doing anything else at all!

Anyway…

A couple of turns around the hold and then we flew a bodged version of the Cardiff Alternate let down procedure (bodged to keep us above H’west’s circuit!)

The approach charts are starting to make more sense and look less like a beliberately obscure and encrypted treasure map, which is something.

Accuracy still to work on there too as when I pulled off the foggles to see the runway ahead it was… well… there… but I’d have still had a fair amount of manoeuvring to do to put myself remotely on the centreline!

Climbing away, I had a few brief moments to note it had turned into a lovely day before it was foggles back on and tracking away from the NDB.  On limited panel.

Now tracking away and keeping an eye on both heading and ADF is not my strongest suite to begin with, and add to that a neck craning gawp at the compass every half minute and the start of tiredness after an hour’s worth of ‘headwork’ and my tracking left rather a lot to be desired!

Recovery from unusual attitudes also enlivened the trip home – think I need to revise those in general.

Once we were out of range of HAV, we changed to the Brecon VOR to get distance from Swansea (via a small amount of arithmetic – Brecon is 30 miles away) and for the practise got QDMs to Swansea who have a very good, accurate VDF kit.

Foggles came off once we were around Cefn Bryn positioning for downwind and I blinked, trying to reorient myself as Dave did a quick rundown – “Mumbles, Three Cliffs, and there’s the field.”

I think changing for foggles back to visual flight is in a way an odder transition than coming out of cloud.  You’ve consciously kind of cut yourself of from paying attention to what’s out of the window to a greater degree.

Anyway, we touched down with the stall warner squeaking, for a 1:35 hour trip.

The plan is probably to do this in one and a half hour blocks to leave a sensible amount of time for getting anywhere kitted out to do anything!

Next time out is Cardiff for real.

Alarums and Excursions

Not posted in a while between one thing and another.

Sometime soon, I’ll have time, money, weather and a serviceable aircraft all at the same time!

I’ve always wurbled about the first annoyance (at aeroplane and self) over on the Flyer forum so I’ll just requote that here for the non-forumites among you.

Basically our alternator packed up…

Did I discover this on the ground by following the checklist item which says “Ammeter charging?”

Nope. Or if I’m entirely honest: “Well… Yes….Almost… but then I convinced myself I was wrong…”

So I discovered it in the air instead, during the first set of checks after levelling off. Low Volt light still on and the Ammeter lifeless on zero no matter what I turn on and off.

So how did I come to convince myself it was fine on the ground?

Point one – I’ve flown several aeroplanes where the low volt light flickers a bit when the engine is running slowly. That didn’t immediately stand out to me as a problem and I didn’t look at it again during the powerchecks.

Point 2 – I’m far less familiar with this aircraft and what ‘normal’ is. I did look at the ammeter and was mildly surprised it wasn’t registering “much” (or “at all” in reality!) and I should with perfect hindsight have realised that it was actually dead flat on 0 rather than merely ‘not showing much’.

I should have done my turning off and on of things and recycling of the master switch at that point but I didn’t. I convinced myself I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing and off I went.

Undramatic of course because I had presumably a more or less fully charged battery and was only ten minutes out so I just came back again. Fiddled a bit more on the ground, enlisted a few more pairs of eyes to help me look for an obvious physical cause and then gave up ad came home to break the bad news to the group that there’s probably another bill coming.

Far too easy though to convince myself I wasn’t seeing a problem when there was one there staring straight at me with a perfectly clear set of symptoms.

Interesting.

Anyway, Gwyn sallied off over half term to get it repaired.  Turns out the alternator is a fairly ancient model (though marginally less ancient that BeeGee her self in fact – she was built with a generator…) and one of the brushes had snapped off, and in the process wiped out one of the earth connections.

Due to the aforesaid ancientness, parts were something of a salvage operation, but she is back up and running now.

In the meantime I’ve spent two consecutive booked IMC lessons sitting around drinking coffee, participating in airfield gossip and moaning…

Because of weather.

Got to sigh when the weather is too bad for IMC flying in May/June!

Fingers crossed this weekend will buck the trend!

G-RVIV being used as demonstrator

On the plus side I spent last weekend – the sunny one – helping out at the annual Devon Scout Aerocamp.  24 Scouts a dozen or so pilots, and lots of flying and talking about flying!   The Scouts do their Met, Nav, and Aeronautics badges and then get to plan and fly a route.

This year we were also lucky enough to have CarolAnn Garrett drop in on her way around the world!  (Well almost in – Belle Vue was a shade on the short side for her Mooney, so Steve retrieved her from Dunkeswell in his pretty RV-4)

She certainly got the most animated set of questions from the youngsters of any session over the weekend – not to mention a lot of delighted pilots.

The contrast in the youngsters before and after their flights was pure magic as always, especially one young lady in paticular who was enormously nervous, on the very brink of not going (and anxious to fly in the most solid looking of the available machines!)

She did go, and it was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.  And the clear elation afterwards was enough to lift anyone’s heart.

I say this every time, (and I say every time that I say it every time) but we are bloody lucky, aren’t we?  Weather and parts-spitting alternators not withstanding, we’re privileged beyond measure to be able to go and play in the sky.

Scouts and helpers with Speedy.

Thanks to Derek for the photos.
More on Flickr, click for link

IMC on a flustery day

Between getting familiar with the new aeroplane and also the various expense and running about with that, it’d been a while since I’d done any more on the IMC.

Next session was supposed to be NDB holds, but since ‘BG doesnt have an ADF and since I was quite keen to get some more familiarisation in, and combing that with the IMC seemed a useful idea, we went up just to do some general handling and VOR tracking.

It was a rather flustery, windy sort of day and getting ‘BeeGee’ untied and the cover of was an rather breathtaking process (flying the club planes does mean that someone else has done all that of course!)

In spite of the wind the parachutists were undetered so I moved aside for the jump-plane to precede me before doing my power checks, which still take me that bit longer at the moment.

In typical fashion, the flustery wind was favouring lumpy old 10 (the rubbish weather almost always does!), so I taxied out decidedly cautiously, freewheeling down the hill to the threshold with the engine idling and my hand hovering at the brakes.

Power back on to get turned around and lined up with full rudder stomped in to try and minimise that turning circle then off we went.

In the brisk wind the takeoff roll was pleasingly short, hardly more than I’d been used to in TOMS, and BeeGee rattled over the ‘join’ between the runways without attempting to launch herself airborne too prematurely.

On with the transponder and instruments as we climbed and on with the foggles too, as the cloudbase was considerably higher than it had looked from the ground.

The VOR/DME worked rather well to my happiness, as we’d only flicked it on for a quick check on the way to Strumble on the test flight before buying the aircraft.

It picked up Brecon from Swansea without fuss on the 260 radial, at 30 miles.  (Useful thing to know for getting home!)

Neither my heading, nor height keeping her particularly special today, although I don’t know whether that was down to unfamiliarity, the turbulent conditions, or simple clumsiness!

On the plus side BeeGee proved quite a lot less inclined than the Tomahawks to wander off while I used the radio and VOR which is useful.

We tracked overhead BCN before turning north to pick up the 360 radial for a few miles and then returning to Swansea.

In the absence of an official let down procedure for Swansea, we simulated a cloudbreak over the bay, using the radial as a ‘marker’ for the coast –  as long as we were to the left of it we knew we were over the sea.  Another useful thing to know!

Lower down it was turbulent again, and by the time we were at circuit height and joining downwind it was distinctly bumpy.  Final for 10 is over some of the rougher terrain in the area and there can be strong patches of sink, Dave reminded me to be very ready on the throttle.

I made rather a hash of the first approach and as we sailed towards the midpoint of the runway still at some speed that gave the aircraft no inclination to settle onto the runway, I opted for the better part of valour and opened the throttle.

I raised the second stage of flap and climbed away for another attempt. Oh well, at least now I now knew how the aircraft performs in a go-around when I stuffed it up…

In the meantime a rather plush Citation had arrived on longish final for 04, and not wishing to compete with something so much larger and faster we stuck in an orbit downwind for 10.

Given the challenge I’d just had on 10 I certainly didn’t envy him the crosswind he must have had on 04!

Second approach was marginally tidier but still not my most stellar arrival.  We live and learn!

I dropped Dave off at the pumps for his next flight as I refuelled and took BeeGee back to her parking spot (more manouvreing practice getting lined up there without the differential brakes!).

Next IMC session will need a club aircraft for the kit I think, but looking forward to taking our own aircraft further afield soon!

Getting to know you…

…<hummity hum> … ♫ getting to know all about you…♫

Ahem.

Well anyway — been flying ‘BeeGee’ and ‘getting acquainted’ as it were.

We had a group conflab out at the airfield to finalise paperwork and numbers before having a good pore over the aircraft and a few snaps.

Since very few of us have much (or any) time in Cherokee our very useful instructor-member is acting as checker-outer-in-chief to get us all up to speed.  (Or more to the point, since we have no toebrakes, making sure that speed and most especially momentum is foremost on our collective mind!)

It was a pleasant novelty of having acquired a four-but-three-really-seater to park myself in the back while Gwyn flew with Alan up front.

You see different things as a passenger.  I couldn’t hazard a guess how much time I’ve spent overhead various parts of Gower, but there’s always something new.  The clouds, which had been lifting all morning, were spread across the sky as though someone had combed them. The bright sunlight now spilling between them picked out dark shadows of the caves in the cliffs around the bays and paragliders were weaving back and forth from Rhossili Down above the walkers on the beach below.

Pretty.

Another item we don’t have is rear seat intercom so I gazed out of the window at all of this in blissful ignorance of the conversations up front as Gwyn and Alan banked hither and thither, speed up and slowed down and generally put the aeroplane through her paces.

I watched the approach with interest – she doesn’t half come down with full flap on!

Then it was my turn and I squirmed from the back to the front – being small helps but there’s even less dignity than in the Tommyhawk!

Once ensconced in the left hand seat I was quite startled by how much muscle memory I’d built up and how thoughtlessly my hands and eyes went to where switches and instruments are in a Tomahawk.

(Once airborne I honestly think I spent a few seconds trying to steer a course by the clock…)

And don’t get me started on the fact that the spangled electronic radio which had replaced our “clicky numbers on a dial” defaults to D&D when you switch it on!

Anyway, such minor fumblings and embarrassments out of the way ( I did find the Starter button eventually — no start setting on the key…) and we were up again.

Both the trim and the rate of climb differed considerably with just two up, and I did rather have to haul her off the ground, not having added enough back trim to start with.

The checklist says “Trim Set to Takeoff” with no indication there or on the indicator what that might be – perhaps on purpose because it varies?

In the interests of reducing our fumbling at least a bit, Alan had taken his chinagraph pencil to the roof and drawn in two big UP and DOWN arrows beside the ‘sunroof-winder’ trim handle there.

Odd to use though it is, the trim was very effective and sensitive and the aeroplane seemed very much inclined to stay where you put her.

We spent a bit of time just experimenting with power settings and seeing what sort of airspeeds and rates of climb/descent we got.

We did some low speed handling and some flat out stuff, and I did some (rather wibbly out-of-practice) steep turns.

Alan picked up on a few of my bad habits and a few things which I could kick myself for because I would never normally do, and which I suppose I can write off to lack of capacity while getting familiarised.

Mental note to self to use the checklist carefully and methodically — some of the things I did by memory, owe more to physical habit than brain and I skipped a few things which were in different places.

Chief among these ‘misplaced’ controls which I did manage to keep on top of is the fuel selector — placed somewhere near the pilot’s left shin for some unfathomable reason…

Ergonomics had apparently not been invented in 1968 and the switches, instruments and control are a rather random scatter across both sides of the panel.

The tacho is oddly positioned way on the passenger side and suffers a certain amount of parallax error from the pilot’s side, though I suppose we’ll just adapt to flying on what it looks like it’s reading!  The mixture is also a bit of a stretch, but I’ve got long arms…

I initially thought the flaps might be heavy, but the leverage from way down there on the floor is so great they were fine.

In any case, all niggles and fumbles aside it was completely and utterly glorious simply to be airborne on no one’s schedule but our own, dawdling about with no particular plan in mind other than “fly ’til you’re comfy’.

We’re going to have lots of fun with this old girl…

In the haze (in more ways than one)

NDBs…

Hmm…

Going to need some practise this bit!

The thick haze that’s been hanging around all week and was so particularly thick and deep on Sunday that it made a thorough substitute for the foggles, in spite of the blue sky overhead, felt as though it had worked its way into my brain as I wandered about making fairly vague attempts to intercept and track assorted NDB tracks.

I understood it in the brief, and thought I had taken in the relevant bits in the book, but add flying into it, and brain overload completed defeated my ability to conjure up any sort of accurate mental picture of what was going on.

Occasionally flashes of it made sense and I thought I was getting it, only to be baffled and blindly following instructions again a few minutes later.

It doesn’t much help that Cardiff is about the only place local that either a) turns their NDB on in the first place, and b) has one that works decently, and they were teeming with other traffic today.

Even my landing, on the grotty 10, was a bit below par after all that.

I need to spend some serious time with “Tim’s Navigation Simulator” I think, to which end I’ve spent the evening with the Thom manual, transferring the diagrams and description therein onto the sim and playing them out.

The haze is lifting slowly…

We’re going to phone Cardiff in advance next time to ask for some training time going round the hold — lots of NDB work.

On the plus side I’m steadily getting more to grips with the actual flying, though with all the furious concentration on trying to get the picture this time I left the radio work to Dave again.

The day’s “hum of nervy concentration” was Moliannwn — my subconsious is obviously of the opinion that spring has indeed sprung in spite of the haze…

Also on a major plus, the group have found and bought a successor to TOMS, in the shape of  G-AWBG, an elderly but low-houred and nicely kitted out PA28 so at least I can get out and about again under my own steam!

Now do it without…

Been keeping this blog, and the website that preceded it, since I very first started learning but it still always slightly startles me when someone who knows me in person mentions they read it – not least when it’s the instructor whose lessons I’ve been waffling on (hopefully fairly) about!

I’m a believer in “practise what you preach” and I spend a not inconsiderable amount of time at work trying to convince my learners that writing about what you’re learning is useful and does help it stick and so forth – so what have I learned this time?

Lesson three, to date and a bit of a long gap between this and the last one, first through waiting for payday, then through a whopper of a cold which knocked me flat for one weekend and then lingered as a cough until I reluctantly marched myself to the quack to get some horsepills to knock it on the head.

Partial panel was on the menu today and I’d dutifully read the relevant chapter in the rather forebodingly coloured “Thick Grey Book”.  It rather matched the colour of the thick grey clouds in fact, which I’d been eyeballing all morning.

The rest of the week had been clear if windy and cold but today was calm and grey.  Another opportunity for real IMC, although we bunged the foggles in anyway.

It was picking to rain as I prepared HotelUniform, which hadn’t flown yet today.  (Note to self: Don’t try and bite off a ragged nail immediately after doing fuel drain check – avgas – blegh!).

Dave joined me at the aircraft and we taxyed out to Alpha for 22.  I remembered to doing a bit of swerving to check the instrument response, but again forgot to check the DI alignment.  As I write this, I’ve just scribbled a huge box around that bit on the checklist, not sure why it keeps slipping my memory — too much else I’m concentrating on – thinking about what’s coming up rather that what I’m doing right now perhaps.

We took off and climbed in a wide right turn around the field to get north of town and heading towards Brecon.  We entered cloud around 2000′ and climbed to 4000′ where we were below the freezing level but keeping an eye out — well Dave was – that was something else escaping my overloaded brain today!

I set the radial, (080 To), listened out for the ident, and after a certain amount of overshooting first in one direction then the other, managed to get myself positioned on the line and tracking it.

Up to today Dave had been handling the r/t while I was instrument flying but today he suggested I do that as well, and I could straight away see why he’d left it until now – I was a good 30 degrees (plus!) off course by the time I’d bid farewell to Swansea and hello to Cardiff!

Only practice will cure that sort of thing I suppose.  My altitude keeping also still wandered a few hundred foot either side of the 4000′ we’d selected.

With about 15nm to run to BCN we turned about to head west again and once I was settled, out came the sticky notes for the partial panel work.  One on the AI and a small handful on the DI because otherwise you could still see all around the edge!

My focus narrowed to the remaining instruments, endeavouring, at it’s simplest, to to pretty much keep everything still!  Flicking my eyes up regularly to the compass which is decidedly out of the normal line of sight, I tracked west.  More or less…

I was distantly aware, that in my concentration on the flying I had only the vaugest idea of our position and the ‘bigger picture’.

Utter lack of free brain capacity, which was probably why Dave, beside me, was advising “If this happens for real, get some help, tell someone, get some radar directions if you can, get on the ground as quick as you can.”

In point of fact I need a fair bit more practice before even radar vectors would have been much use to me given that I utterly overshot south without even realising I’d done so on at least on of the practice turns Dave asked for!

By now, we were 6 miles from Swansea and were warned when I switched back to speak to them on the r/t that the weather was deteriorating fairly rapidly there, so it was time to call a halt.

We broke cloud around about Loughor into the now fairly murky visibility below.  I stayed on instruments as Dave gave me headings to steer until I looked up to find the PAPIs of 22 before me, looking very welcoming!

A tidy enough landing (I do like ‘HU’s big, flattering tyres!) and tayed into before scrambling into coats to hurry across the apron in the now increasing rain.

Another interesting session, and I’m fairly pleased with how it’s coming along — though I do need to get enough of the mechanics of flying by the instruments into my brain, so I have a bit more mental space to think about other things, like r/t, navigation, and properly regular checks.

More of the same, and some NDB tracking next time I’m told.

Would-be “Son of TOMS” group seeks…

As a  cold keeps me from further IMC training this weekend, I’ve spent the time preparing our recruiting drum…

State of play at present is we stand as a group of 5 looking for an aircraft.  We’d like a few more members to broaden our price range but also want to be back up and flying as quickly as reasonably possible…

We’re a friendly bunch with a good mix of weekend and weekday flyers, and a very useful instructor member in the group!  Experience less important than compatibility with the group.  (We’ve had at least 3 student members in our time, including me!)

On the whole we’re the classic “£100 bacon butty” crowd, with occasionally sallies to Ireland, France or the Channel Islands, and often share flights.  Relaxed attitude to advanced booking and members taking the aircraft away for a few days on a “don’t take the mickey” basis!

We’ll be looking for something relatively low cost initial outlay and able to live outdoors (hangarage at Swansea being what it is!)l, but other than that aren’t wedded to any one type yet, though we do have a few candidates for our ‘shortlist’.

Asking price for the share reflects the amount the existing members have kept in the kitty after poor TOMS’ demise.  Proposed running costs reflected what we were operating with TOMS.

Drop me a line if interested (or of course if you’ve seen any stunning aircraft bargains about!;))

Up above the freezing level

It was a mild culture shock to be tied to the bus timetable once again as opposed to wandering up to the field on my own schedule, and I hadn’t checked in advance with the result that my booking required either a Considerably Early or Far Too Late bus to get me there on time for my lesson.

Considerably Early of course meant there was time for a sausage sarnie first and I tucked in while idly browsing Aeromarkt and GABuyer (a letter had arrived from the insurers a few days previous confirming the hull value so I was feeling fairly optimistic)

Sarnie was followed by coffee in the flying club and a peruse of the nice long list of planned flyouts for the year, before a wander up to the tower to catch up with the gossip there.

Eventually it was actually time to fly instead of loiter so after a brief recapping VOR tracking and the general handling stuff we’d done last time I trooped out to HotelUniform and got ready to go. We’d brought the foggles along in case but the cloud had been steadily thickening all day and we met the base at around 3000′

It was indeed properly different from foggledom…  A flat, shadowless world devoid of reflections on the glass of the instrument faces to give the game away as to which way was really down or corner-of-your-eye glimpses of the real horizon out around you.

I was soon concentrating with such ferocity on the panel that when Dave told me to look up, the ice streaking the screen came as a complete shock.  This despite having discussed it in the brief as part of a reminder to check the freezing levels on the met, and being advised to include a check on the outside air temp and a visual check of the wings into my normal FREDA checks.

And on the subject of FREDA checks, were they ever sloppy today!  Brain totally full.  I just about kept on top of the carb heat, but twice needed a prompt to realign the DI, and forget entirely about changing fuel tanks until we rejoined the circuit at the end.

On the whole my heading keeping was better than my altitude holding this trip (apart from a brief ‘excursion’ when I got thoroughly distracted by trying to set the OBS and only discovered I was approaching 40 of bank when Dave pointed it out!)

I’d halfheartedly and intermittently practise VOR tracking since doing the initial training which helped a touch in knowing what I was meant to be about, but my clumsy fingers and the sensitivity of the device had me twirling back and forth as the dratted needle swung energetically from one extreme to the other as I floundered trying to fix the radial we were on!

The DME didn’t seem to want to play as all, and as we were approaching the higher ground and still picking up ice, frost forming across the leading edge of the wings, Dave told Cardiff we were going west instead so if we did have to descend we could do so safely.

Inevitably my thoughts flicked to the accident.  Had TOMS been carrying ice when Mike went in?  Was that why he couldn’t climb away when he realised where he was?  It was certainly affecting the climb performance of HotelUniform (never sparkling!) as I slogged back up into it, having drifted out the bottom while not concentrating.

Dave patted my shoulder in reassurance, “Okay?  You’re flying it very nicely.”

Was my sudden tension obvious then?  Or maybe he’d had the same thought.   I relaxed again, remembering an old trick someone had once told me when I was learning in the first place — that it’s almost impossible for the rest of you to be tense if your thighs are relaxed – so actively concentrate on relaxing that group of muscles. (and yes it does sound like some sort of double entendre!)

We changed the VOR to Strumble and I wandered along that invisible line with mixed accuracy for a while.

Time had ticked on by now and it was time to head back to the field.

Swansea used to have an ILS once upon a time, and though it hasn’t been used in years, some of the approach diagrams are still knocking about and  for training purposes “faking it” in VFR with a GPS is a relatively cheap way of getting the general idea of how the procedural approaches go.

All in all an interesting session again.

Limited panel stuff next.