Blinkz - brilliant stuff mate, and excellent writeup! You must be on such a high - it feels like I have LOADS to do until I get my ticket. A great achievement - enjoy it
So when are you flying south to come and visit
First Southern Nav Writeup Sorry for the plain title, however it best describes my latest adventures. I was fearful (not that type of fear if you know what I mean) of flying south from Liverpool (out at Oulton Park or Chester) because in all the hours I have done, only 2 of those had been to the south - one of these was my first flight with another school, and one was with original instructor who left the school. So, as you may understand, the first nav I was about to do came with nerves, and a hope that it would go well. I had planned 2 routes, one being the reciprocal of the other.
The norm at Liverpool at this stage, is to leave via runway 27, out at Chester to Poulton (disused airfield), then to Sleap (through the Shawbury zone), north to Whitchurch, further north to Crewe (southern tip) then back in at Oulton Park. Doesn't appear too complex, but taking the above into consideration, it seemed so for me. At this point, DiscoChocolate is reading this and thinking; "Yeah, EASY" hehe (I will let him explain why).
So, I had two blogs, however we were to be using runway 09 so the course would be the other way round, not exactly how Liverpool fly it, but it isn't rocket science to fly it that way. Took off on 09 and set course for the first point, Oulton Park. Now, I don't know what it looks like too well, so I just followed heading with a little advice from instructor (I was with a different instructor today, my other one was on leave and I have flown with this chap lots of times before, he is very very good). The heading I flew made us exactly half a mile to the left of track, this is because I started the line from the centre of the runway (or the middle of the airfield circle on the chart). So from now on, I am going to start the initial line, just off the circle (I know you are thinking that I should just use the VRP and start the headings from there, but I feel this is good practice, especially to test if your calculations are correct and the wind is behaving like it should).
SO, we were on the way to the southern tip of Crewe, there is a huge motorway bridge that goes over a railway, and I was happy to be able to see this no problem, and to confirm that my heading was spot on. I recorded the time and it was bang on too, it was all going very well so far. So, time, turn, talk. I had already put the "CATDPAFN" call into Shawbury and this went without a glitch (brownie points to the first person to spell that out)
Found Whitchurch without a problem, could relate everything on the ground to that on the chart, including a nice A road and railway which tool us straight in (still following calculated heading of course) - things were going well, and map reading seemed somewhat easier than to the North. Again, the timings were spot on, so we turned and headed for Sleap. I had been told that spotting Sleap from the air is quite difficult, so I kept a good lookout. I looked at features which should lead up to Sleap and used them to "guess" where it should be, and low and behold, there it was - I have to be honest and say that I didn't have much of a problem in seeing it, lets see if that's the same next time round (probably not)
Another good timing, turned round and headed for Poulton. At this point, I read the wrong number on my knee-board, and turned the wring heading - a little "ahem" from the instructor soon sorted that, but if I was solo, I may well have screwed it up (from now on, my headings to fly get highlighted and crossed off when I have flown that leg). Northwards to Poulton was ok - could again follow headings no problem and use features to see it ok. Here is where I had the dreaded "PTT freeze". I hit the button to call for rejoin:
"Liverpool Approach, G-LF##, request standard rejoin to.........................................................
.........................
.........................................
............................................
.........................................................."
Very long pause, with the button down COULD I THINK OF THE WORD "CHESTER"? - NO !
I just couldn't think of the word - I am used to Kirkby or Seaforth so I just let go and handed it over to my instructor. I felt such a
Anyhow, apart from that everything was great, landing ok too. To conclude, I was chuffed with my headings and especially my timings. A very successful flight which went a million times better than I thought it would. I'm doing the same route again on Wednesday dual (but the other way round) and if that goes ok, I should solo it next time round. Then the dreaded QXC !
Cheers all, and again, congratulations to Blinkz - hope you can still make the odd post
Lee