Well, I have all the details of how to enter in front of me here... but others have beaten me to it, and posted everything you need to know already, so I won't repeat it!
AerBabe and I decided to produce a Pilots' Guide to some lesser-known airfields. Most importantly, there had to be something interesting to do there, which we could write about in our guide. All the airfields had to be within a sensible distance from London, such that a London-based pilot could go there for the day. And we tried to avoid all the most common airfields, too.
We had a rough idea of the kind of distance from London which the airfields would have to be, so we drew a large circle on a chart, and began looking for interesting places near to the edge of our circle. The route took us through the Channel Islands, northern France and into Belgium, as well as covering most of southern England - so as well as being intersting, some of the airfields that we visited also had to meet customs requirements too.
Covering such a large area meant that weather was crucial to our mission. We aborted our first attempt before we even started, because a small area of low pressure had unexpectedly formed over northern France. On the second attempt, the forecast, even when we set out, was good, but we ran into some unforecast low visibility below the very low cloudbase. We diverted safely, and flew on when the weather cleared, but eventually ran into more clouds, and realised that we would have to abort this attempt because we had wasted too much time with our diversions.
On the third attempt, we successfully completed the route. We produced a guide to such airfields as Coventry, Branscombe, Alderney, Beavais, Charleville-Mezieres, Charleroi, Framlingham, Peterborough Conington, Skegness and Long Mynd - and a last minute addition, Shotteswell, which replaced Long Mynd when we found out that the field at Long Mynd had been reduced to something a little shorter than the length I'd have been comfortable with. We would land at all of these airports, talking to the locals, and picking up leaflets about nearby tourist attractions.
We planned to set out at 4.30am to pre-flight the aircraft, ready for a 5.30 departure. But with Coventry not opening quite so early on Monday as they do on other days of the week, we were delayed right from the start. Noise abatement issues meant that we had to overfly Branscombe without being allowed to land there, but from there we flew on to land at all our planned destinations in the Channel Islands, France, and then into Belgium. Turnaround times were crucial to us - we had to refuel, pay landing fees, clear customs, use the toilet, and get as much local information as we could - and the schedule called for stops of between 30 and 60 minutes (depending on the size of the airfield, whether we needed fuel, and so on). But we managed to keep to our schedule pretty well, all the way to Framlingham - and that was where we started having problems. Conington - our next fuel stop - told us their fuel pumps were broken. At Skegness, they had closed the runway to do some maintenance on it. We had no choice but to get fuel at Framlingham if we were to complete our planned route.
We found some very friendly people doing some gardening in the farm next door, and one of them offered to drive us into town. An hour later, and we'd purchased a half a dozen 5-litre fuel cans, filled them all with MoGas, and poured the MoGas into the Europa, and we were set to go. We had taken long enough to do all this that we had to overfly Conington rather than land there - not only were they closed, but we were running out of daylight. And of course we had to overfly Skegness, too, since the runway was closed, before heading for our final stop, Shotteswell.
Whirly has already mentioned how gruelling the day is. The competition rules require you to start doing something related to the competition at 4.30am. Many competitors choose to use this time to eat breakfast, travel to the airfield, finish the planning and so on. But, with so many stops to make, we knew that we'd have to start flying as early as possible. By the time we arrived at Shotteswell, it was over 14 hours since we'd first taken off from Coventry, and we'd logged 9 hours' flying in that time. I was absolutely knackered... and that was a large factor in my running off the runway at Shotteswell and bending the undercarriage - something which I've mentioned on PPRuNe a couple of times (but couldn't go into details without giving the game away to Whirly that she'd be seeing us at the awards dinner!)
Despite that, it really was a wonderful experience. Neither AerBabe nor I had ever flown across the Channel before without an instructor, yet here we were arranging for life-jacket and life-raft hire, reading up on the various requirements for travel between the UK, Channel Islands, France and Belgium, researching landing fees, PPR and out-of-hours operation at every airfield from international airports through to tiny farm-strips and gliding fields which don't normally accept powered visitors but might make an exception if we talked to them nicely enough. As well as that, we had to research the local area, and plan our time with far more precision than I've ever done before or since, figure out where to eat and where to refuel, and do a bit of jiggling with weight+balance to ensure we could safely carry both of us, a liferaft, and full tanks of fuel.
If this sounds fun, and you fancy having a go, then don't underestimate the amount of work that's involved (of 26 entries over the last two years, only 10 managed to complete it), but if you're prepared to put in the effort then you will definitely be rewarded with a sense of achievement.
FFF
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