Best flying trips ever!

[Louiscoke]

Hi All,

I am thinking of doing my PPL next year (at either Biggin or Redhill), and after reading the many articles on this forum about various training related issues one of the things I noticed was the high drop out rate of student pilots, i.e. those who obtained their PPL, then let it lapse.

I'm obviously keen not to follow that trend, so I thought I would come up with a list of flights I would like to do- a bit like a bucket list I suppose, to keep me always looking towards the next adventure!

So, what were your best flights? Most fun/challenging airports to land at, either UK or abroad? Any hobby should be fun, so what were/are your best flights?

Thanks in advance,


Louis

[Bob Viking]

My Jaguar night Combat Ready trip was fun. Leading a 6 ship of Jags with two F3s as escort versus two F3s. Medium level push into low level against a target. Went via the tanker as well. Beautiful starlit night it was. Barely needed the NVGs.
Sorry, did you just mean light aircraft trips?! The problem with the pprune App is that when I log in I get I see all the recent posts on every forum. I keep butting in where I shouldn't!
BV ;)

[India Four Two]

BV,

Show off. :ok:

My best "quasi-military" trip was 250 kt low-level along the coast in a Vampire T11, followed by a close-up view of the summit of Mt. Taranaki and then using the summit as a reference for some mild aeros!

Louiscoke,

Sorry. Probably not what you wanted to hear! ;)

However, I would recommend any trip across some water to really bring home the utility of a light aircraft.

I recommend Bembridge or Sandown on the Isle of Wight for a first foray over the water. Get your instructor to take you there, including a tour around the island.

Less than two hours, including lunch, for a trip which would take all day by car and ferry.

PS Welcome to PPRuNe and good luck with your PPL.

[Johnm]

Channel Islands, anywhere in France or Germany the Baltic, Switzerland, Croatia are all great destinations.

[hegemon88]

Lunch at Le Touquet (62 restaurants to choose from) - just an hour's flight from most of the South-East. Route frequently used to impress girlfriend/mum/kids/mates etc.

Doable right after gaining the PPL and even before then with the instructor.

For me the beauty of LTQ is that it is just as long a flight as to the Isle of Wight but moves you to a different country and proper food.



/h88

[bsmasher]

Having a license with you when on holiday - I've had some great 'trial introductory flights' by showing the instructor my license when booking something at the local airport. It seems to turn the flight into an exploration of the local area rather than an an intro to what a C152 can ( or can't)
Some highlights (with a UK license)
* Hands on in a Stearman
* Orbits of the Statue of Liberty
* Valley Flying near Wellington



D.

[ITSAB]

Having your licence with you on holiday can be certainly be cool.


My best trip of this sort was last year in france.
Staying near Poitiers we arranged with a local flight school for an instructor and a plane. We arranged to fly our holiday route from the previous year and so that I got to fly a Jodel DR-400, which was quite different to the the C-172 P's that I usually fly.


The route was Poitiers - La Rochelle (taking in the Marais Poitevin on the way) then the Île de Ré turning south to the Île d'Oléron to fly along the coast of the island, and then back to Potiers.


Being over the water for the first time was a great, if at first slighly unnerving experience.
Flying down the coast of the Île d'Oléron got a great view of the Salicines (salt basins), we also passed over the Chassiron lighthouse, upon which we had stood the year before watching the planes going overhead, and now I was going overhead looking down at the lighthouse. Great fun !


Turning back to the mainland we went "feet dry" near Rochefort and then from there back to Poitiers where I made my first landing in a Jodel.


The trip took 2 hours and was great for me as the French instructor (whose english was limited) took care of radios and the nav, my girlfriend in the back took the photos and translated if need be between myself and the instructor leaving me to be "Chauffeur" for the morning.


With a bit of luck we will do something similar this year as well.


Good luck with the PPL, look forward to hearing about your trips.

[Phororhacos]

Shoreham to Shoreham via Scotland. Write up here (http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=84220)

http://www.andytobias.co.uk/track.jpg

[Louiscoke]

Thanks for the replies guys, some brilliant ideas! Including the military ones :-).

Now the small matter of getting the PPL sorted.....

All the best,

Louis

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

Louis, sometimes just an ordinary day's flying can be 'special':

It’s cold at Barton airfield; the low morning sunlight is glistening on frost covered hangars, parked aeroplanes, and even the concrete taxiways. The Chipmunk, usually such a reliable starter, won't. After 40 minutes of priming, sucking in and hand-swinging the prop, Rick, our engineer, instructs us to hold up the tail. With some difficulty, two of us raise the tail to the flying (level) attitude, Rick primes the engine, we put the tail down, and she starts first swing. Priming the engine involves pumping fuel into the engine inlet manifold, where it should vaporise to be drawn into the cylinders as the propeller is rotated to ‘suck in’, thus filling the cylinders with inflammable fuel vapour to enable the engine to start.

"Prime was only reaching the back cylinder" says Rick as he walks away. I’m too thankful that the engine has started to ask what this has to do with the sub-zero temperatures. Later I realise that when the air is warmer, the pooled fuel at the back of the tail-down inlet manifold vaporises and all four cylinders get a whiff of the vapour as it’s sucked in prior to starting. In the freezing air of this morning, it just sits there un-vaporised next to the back cylinder and may just give that one a small whiff. Raising the tail allows all four cylinders to suck in some vapour.

Runway 27 right is in use, so off I go west towards Warrington, then south down the Low Level Route through the Manchester Control Zone, noting the high groundspeed readout on the GPS once southbound in the northerly wind. Out over Shropshire into a very bright low sun and now clear of the altitude restrictions of the Low Level Route I climb to 4000 feet to pick up a stronger tailwind and to do a few loops and rolls. First, a loop; as the nose comes up, the ‘G’ comes on and I’m pressed hard into my seat. Farms and villages disappear under the wings to be replaced by sky. Ease off the pull on the stick and Shropshire re-appears over the canopy-top from behind as we coast over the top of the loop before the landscape expands past the nose, then sweeps back under the wings as we finish the loop. But rather than levelling off, I keep the stick back until we have about thirty degrees nose up, check forward - and roll. The landscape travels a-r-o-u-n-d the windscreen up one side, inverted in the top of the screen as I hang in my straps, then down the other side. I pull up again, and roll exuberantly the other way - magic! This is fun, and being a Saturday, RAF Shawbury is unmanned so there’s no hassle of radar vectors from them around their helicopters in the Military Air Traffic Zone.

North of Telford I let the height bleed off, down to 1500 feet, and call the Strip. The strip owner answers on his handheld radio. He has got anti-flyer problems in the vicinity, so I feather off the power for a nimby-friendly steepish but almost silent glide from wide downwind weaving between the farms and scattered houses to a silky touchdown onto the initially uphill runway 33, then I put power on to keep it rolling up the grass slope to the level ground by the clubhouse amusingly labelled ‘Terminal One’, and reach up to unlatch the canopy and slide it fully back on its rails. I swing the Chipmunk around in front of Terminal One where the owner is standing, flick the mag switches ‘off’, and the prop clanks around a few revolutions flickering in the glare of the sun. Then there’s silence; just the whine of the gyros running down, and the tinks and clinks of cooling metal.

There’s a warm welcome, and we enjoy a cup of tea in the clubhouse and chat about his campaign for survival of this glorious rural haven in the shadow of the Wrekin. The Chipmunk, red and pert parked with its tail towards us on the green grass, nose in the air seeming to anticipate flight, looks classic and timeless – the perfect compliment to this country aviation scene.

Time to go, and I’m roaring up runway 33 again, tail high and airborne before the level section of the runway. An immediate steepish left turnout over the western boundary, waving to the owner by the clubhouse as I turn, keeps us neighbour-friendly. I climb to 3000 feet past Sleap for some more aerobatics before letting it come down low by Rednal to see if the owner of that ex-RAF airfield is there. He isn't, and I decide to cruise home on a low level sight-seeing tour to minimise the effect of the headwind.

From eight hundred feet and looking down sun, the bare-branched beech woods cast long shadows across frosty-white Shropshire fields. Every hill and undulation is side-lit and picked out in sharp relief in the golden winter sun - even the sheep each cast a shadow several times the length of the animal. Sleeping villages with golden stone churches, flashes and meres, the lonely remote Whixal Moss, secret places in the middle of a wood, grand country houses and estates, lonely farms down muddy tracks, occasional main roads with beetling traffic, white finger posts at remote country lane junctions all sweep under the Chippy's wings.

I skirt around the Peckforton hills and past the castle. A couple of sightseers look across to this graceful red aeroplane. Beeston hill with its castle perched atop its steep sided and isolated prominence passes the right wingtip. Oulton Park motor racing circuit comes up on the left. Those cars are no doubt roaring and squealing their way around the track, but look ludicrously slow and confined from the freedom of Sierra Lima's speeding cockpit.

A familiar voice from the Manchester Approach controller as I enter the Low Level Route again gives me a Flight Information Service, and once past Northwich a direct clearance from there to Barton which gives me some unfamiliar countryside to look at from above. Barton’s circuit is quiet (everyone’s off flying on a day like this) so I join straight onto left base for runway 32, taxy in for fuel, then go for a nice hot cup of tea and something to eat in the clubhouse – and to thaw out. I love that Chippy - but a heater would be nice.

Aren't we lucky to be able to do this? Beats gardening or DIY any day.

I settle down at home in the late afternoon as a big red sun sinks below the garden trees, and I still have a big wide grin that just won't go away.

[Sam Rutherford]

London-Cape Town-London! ;)

Have fun, Sam.

[UAV689]

Mine was apr 20th last year, a bog standard elstree to wattisham..

Bog standard until I proposed to my girlfriend enroute! Well the good people at fboro radar did for me !!

Amazing trip, a small trip but kicked off next stage of my life!

[hegemon88]

OK, I'll be quiet now :oh:

[FleetFlyer]

Do some mountain flying. The Lake District is fab. Just don't do it on a weekday as the RAF tend to monopolise the place during the week. Make sure you get a briefing from someone who has done it before and do a lot of reading on mountain flying before you go. If you intend to go low-level in the mountains, do so only in very very low wind conditions and stay on the down-wind side of any valley.

Many will say its super dangerous and you shouldn't attempt it until you've a bajillion hours under your belt, but like all flying, your safety is related to your preparedness and your en-route risk taking.

Also, as many others have said, fly to France. They actually like flying there, so airfields are welcoming, landing fees are rare, and they have fuel at even the smallest fields. The Dordogne is a lovely place to fly around.

[Lightning Mate]

Low level at the bottom of the Grand Canyon before it was banned.


4-ship at 450 knots - needed lossa g in places.

[rum_monster]

I took part in the Malta Air Rally with about 80hrs. I wrote a write up and it was published in Flyer magazine. Details of the trip are here.

http://www.pathfinderflyingclub.co.uk/Trip%20Reports/Malta%20Air%20Rally.pdf

[Louiscoke]

Thanks for the replies guys, some fantastic stories! Especially take the point about an 'ordinary' days flying that can be special. Certainly gives me something to look forward to!

I'll check out the Malta air rally too :-)

All the best,


Louis

[thing]

Apart from some memorable trips one of the simplest things in flying still gives me a 'Wow' moment every time. Take off on a miserable day with low overcast and climb on top. As you break out the world changes from gray and miserable to sunlit and brilliant white. It's like flying in another world and you kmow that only you and other pilots are going to share that view. Unless you count squinting through a window in a pax jet.

[Louiscoke]

Yes I like the idea of that- presumably I would need an instrument\ifr rating? Are they particularly expensive to add on to your PPL?

[astir 8]

21000 feet - in a wooden glider

[thing]

Yes I like the idea of that- presumably I would need an instrument\ifr rating? Are they particularly expensive to add on to your PPL? It's a minimum of 15 hours instrument training which will give you a IR(R) or restricted instrument rating. The restricted bit means you can't fly in Class A airways (where the airliners live so not applicable 99% of the time in a light aircraft) and the recommended minima for a precision instrument approach is 500', which means you can descend blind to 500' on your approach.

Apart from the safety factor in that you can fly in cloud with no problems and do an instrument approach it also improves your dispatch rate. Let's say you decide to fly to France for the day and want an early start. The weather where you are is overcast at a 1000' base and 3,000 tops. It's raining but the weather in France is fine and your home weather is forecast to improve later on. On a VFR only license you would probably scrub the trip or go later on and have a much shorter time in France. With a IR(R) rating you just go, sit on top of the weather and enjoy a full day wherever you are going. Of course it helps if your home field has all the approach aids, which mine has.

IMO it's the best thing you can spend your money on after the PPL. Others will obviously disagree but it depends on what sort of flying you want to do. There's also a small but odd group who feel that once you have your IR(R) you shouldn't use it at all. Personally I use mine whenever the need arises which is fairly often.

[Desert185]

What comes to mind for me is doing low-level scientific research over Antarctica in a DC-8 based out of Punta Arenas, Chile (Google Operation Ice Bridge).

The next happy memory is flying to/from Alaska VFR in a 185 via the Cassiar Hwy and/or the Trench, with excursions to Skagway and Haines, AK. Nice folks and scenery in BC and YT. 13 trips in 14 years, and the fun meter still pegs. Hard to beat a high wing taildragger in the mountains, i.e. flying in the shade with a great view, and do I make a wheeler or a three-pointer? What's not to like? :ok:

To be fair, it's not all roses. Canadian avgas prices are OPPRESSIVE, especially at Whitehorse. :mad:

[shortstripper]

Lost over Germany in 1988 in a Ka6cr . Best and worst flight of my life! Four hours where the first three were wonderful and the last was errrrmm? Stressful?

Great learning experience though lol

SS

[Louiscoke]

thanks 'thing'- much appreciated, sounds like something well worth having. I might have to pencil that in for 2016- give me a year to get the PPL first!

The next question is whether to go to Redhill or Biggin, but that's a whole other issue.....

:)

All the best,



Louis