deflated flying
Remind me never to book the 1st slot of the morning in winter again!
Ok here's why
I promised to take my 12yr old daughter with me the next time I flew,so as I work in the week and only able to fly at weekends i booked it for 9am yesterday.
Checking the TAF and METAR I thought it probably wouldn't be clear enough but still thought the visibility might improve which it did to a point
so having to wake my daughter up early to go with me we set off to the field I'm about 40 mins away.ultimately I got there to late as the aircraft had been outside all night and was covered in frost great
So i cleared some of it and decided to taxi up to the fuel pumps.
Another pilot wad already clearing the snow and fueling up I actually thought he was the person who worked there but after half an hour realised clearly he wasn't
I spent over 40mins clearing the frost as I didn't want to take any chances
especially as the temp was -3 at 2000ft my aircraft needed fuel and oil so
that was another 15mins finding someone to fuel it (your not allowed to fuel
yourself)
By this time I and my daughter were frozen not helped by the prop wash from the aircraft in front all the excitement was slowly draining from her and I felt like I'd let her down
The reception guy strolled across to inform me I had only 15 mins left and they had another booking
Oh great insult to injury now so we eventually managed a full circuit with a
landing what a waste of time
I can't really blame the airfield as I got there too late so really it was a Case of bad planning pure and simple but I'm so annoyed with myself I'd done all the hard work of de icing the thing only for some one else to jump straight in and
go almost ! Really was a waste of time and money
Lesson learned not to be repeated I can assure you
Has anyone else had a similar experience they would like to share?
Last edited by aerofoil1; 16th January 2012 at 12:33.