North Weald incident yesterday

[ozplane]

I flew in to North Weald for the Fly-In yesterday and had just joined on a long right base for 20 when a microlight declared a PAN due to a rough-running engine but intended to try to make the field. He later radioed that he was going to land in a field which he did, safely. He then lost comms with North Weald so they asked the chap in front of me to relay a message to phone them when convenient. The point of this note is to say that the whole event was very well handled by the micro pilot, the AFISO (?) at North Weald, the chap that was relaying and all the other pilots who responded to the request from North Weald to maintain radio silence while the emergency was on. Just as a point of interest did he manage to get to North Weald after sorting out his problem?

[AerBabe]

We had all sorts of excitement this weekend! A Pan, a local standby, a nice double groundloop down the main runway, someone talking to us and landing at Stapleford ... someone talking to Stapleford and landing at North Weald, and someone landing on the wrong bit of grass, thinking it was our unofficial grass runway!

Anyway, yes, the microlight later came into NW and he was fine. The chaps who came in to upgrade our service to FIS did a wonderful job. Oustanding fellows, managing to handle 350 movements on the Saturday and 190 today.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

someone talking to us and landing at Stapleford ... someone talking to Stapleford and landing at North WealdEr yes, I'm thinking of coming down your way one day for the first time, and these two airfields are somewhat close together, although it seems to me that even with my almost complete inability to find an airfield even when it's directly underneath me I would be able to recognise the different runway patterns, even if I didn't have the DME tuned in to LAM and and still hadn't worked out how to drive the GPS. (I'm guessing that which side of the motorway you are isn't much of a clue as there are rather a lot of motorways round there.)

Anyway, my question is ... how many people round your way find such navigational inaccuracy very expensive indeed due to blundering into Stansted airspace?

[AerBabe]

We get a few blundering into Stansted - it's only 1.5 m north of us. However, not as many as you might expect.

The big give away is the number of runways - we have two, Stapleford has one. I've only ever flown in three times and twice it was very murky and I had to rely on my instructor's local knowledge. The other time I approached from the west, over the Lee Valley Lakes, and it was no problem to spot.

The other big problem is our runways are 02L/20R and 13L/31R. However, remember that the village is always deadside for powered aircraft and you'll be fine.

[2Donkeys]

To the untrained eye, you would think that the presence of a massive motorway junction next to Stapleford, accompanied by an on-field VOR/DME and if this was not enough, the fact that the runways are made of green stuff would be a bit of a giveaway.

Similar clueless happenings occur from time to time at Cambridge and Duxford. I suppose that failure to notice the M11 might be vaguely forgiveable, but failure to notice the City of Cambridge is a bit sad really ;-)

[Send Clowns]

I believe the Dead Sparrows did that one once, Donkeys, and treated Cambridge to lovely display according to a friend who worked there at the time.

[2Donkeys]

I don't know about the Sparrows, but a few C130s have certainly made that mistake :D

[Rallye Driver]

To be pedantic, Stapleford has got three runways:

04R/22L (part tarmac)
04L/22R (grass)
10/28 (grass)

A friend of mine got lost on a ferry flight back from NW to Stapleford in an AA5 after collecting it from maintenance. Was at Brentwood before he recognised where he was. It normally takes about 8 minutes chock to chock!

RD :ok:

[AerBabe]

Apologies, I knew about the grass runways. What I meant was the number of tarmac runways. :O

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Well, I've got a plane booked for the 3rd, so might make it to NW. But every time I've planned that trip for the last eighteen months the weather has won ...

[ChampChump]

Further to Aerbabe's list, I should add my apologies to anyone waiting to leave on Saturday who might have been delayed when a small taildragger had a temporary delay at the hold.....
....and I hope y'all enjoyed my prop-swinging.

It was an excellent day, an understatement which warrants many thanks to all who sweated under high-vis jackets, over tea urns, barbecue, not to mention in the tower....

Thanks, all. :ok:

[Flash0710]

I will put a comb through my hair if Nigel and Geoff get Breakfast lunch and dinner.......!!!!

Cheers for all the help at EGSX this weekend

Going to buy Alan a special comb.......

F

:E

[hollywood285]

The microlight which made the Pan call was a friend of mine who is based at my field!!, not got all the details yet, but was flying his aircraft 2 weeks ago!!!

It was a tecnam.

[FBS]

Well, I have to say I had fun. I came on on Sunday and managed to not groundloop! Glad to hear the guy in the microlight was OK.

Big adventure for me, first time I had ventured near the big city (Harlow)

FBS

[AerBabe]

ChampChump - There was no sweating in the tower; it's air-conditioned. :cool: There was a bit of swearing and name-calling though. :ooh:

[ChampChump]

And all three of those activities pertained where I was. P1 at the time was getting recurrent and I was probably at fault for not forewarning him enough about long taxying when hot and so on. When the wire broke, other things nearly snapped as well.:uhoh:

[Kazakhstan]

Hi,

I landed at NW instead of Stapleford!

That was me, My Father who I shot, was navigator with his expensive GPS unit with moving map. I was PIC.
We left Shoreham and flew just outside Gatwick's zone and overhead London City, my Father was doing a great job but failed to note that giving me spot on headings would bring us overhead Stapleford, and he said we should be able to see Stapleford ahead and I saw what looked like an airfield which turned out to be NW, this vis was not too good and it was not until we were very close that I could make out the runway.

Having a lot of traffic my main concern was to keep separation which took most of my concentration, and I followed my heading not looking too much at anything other than the threshold. It was a good lesson. When we took off it was so hot that I took the whole runway to get off the ground, so was lucky that we landed there, due to that we stayed the night at Stapleford and flew home in the early morning.

[cubflyer]

Kazakstan,

if you were PIC you should have been looking out of the window to check where you were going and surely seen Stapleford or at least the M25!!
But at least you learned the lesson. Always navigate yourself as well, even if someone else is doing it for you.

On the subject of the NW fly-in, I went both days, had a good time, organisation by the Air Britain guys is great, this is always the best fly-in at NW.
But why did you have to "downgrade" the tower to "FIS" from "Air to ground"? It would have been far better with just air to ground and the tower person just giving the runway, wind etc.

As it was, it was difficult to get a word in, particularly with the FIS operator continually asking for "number on board and departure airfield" All totally irrelevant, already provided with the PPR call and again when booking in.
And then when he started saying " G-XX you are number 4 in the queue of aircraft I have to talk to, I'll get back to you in a minute " it would have been much quicker to have just said "Roger G-XX runway 20 QFE 1010, report final".
And why did he need people to call him for start and taxi, the marshallers were doing an excellent job getting people out towards the hold.
Keep It Simple!

[Hold27Left]

cubflyer,

Sounds like you have a problem with FIS, not one of them who causes FISOs headaches are you ?


Aerobabe,

Sounds like it went well :D also sounds like a normal day for a small aerodrome up north hehe Well done though glad everyone enjoyed it :)

[wobblyprop]

the radio situation wasn't helped by a NW resident giving his plan to start, taxi and take-off, hogging a lot of airtime.

I've heard it before up there and when it's quiet it's amusing, on saturday it was annoying.

CAP413 anyone?

[AerBabe]

Yes, Wobbly, we do have one or two residents who, whilst very polite, take a little while about getting their calls out. I try and judge it so the person in question spends 3 minutes passing their message and I respond with 'Roger'. :E

Cubflyer - Not everyone bothered calling for PPR ... and, when they did, there wasn't always time to look up their details to get it all enterred into the logs. Yes, the radio was busy, but it worked.