Heading north

[finalapproach]

I will be doing a trip oop north in the next few days, departing from an airfield south of London. It's been a while since I have negotiated the infamous Luton-Stanstead corridor and i wondered if anyone who regularly does it has any advice. I am planning to route LAM-BKP-BKY and then head north, keeping underneath the eastern edge of Luton CTA, ie not above 2500, between BKP and BKY so as not to get anywhere near the dreaded Stanstead CTA and incur their wrath. I will initially be with Thames Radar - are they likely to pass me on to Luton Appr? Does this sound about right? Anybody got a better routing?

[Dimensional]

FA:

a) it's BPK; might make things interesting when you ident the VOR before using it ... ;)

b) if it's a nice day, good gin clear VFR etc, why not route LAM (or rather, Stapleford) - Ware VRP (or Broxbourne Lakes if, like me, you avoid VRP's like the plague) - Royston? The VORs around London tend to attract a hoarde of people all seemingly flying without looking out of the windows at the best of times... This route has the added advantage of a lovely long straight Roman road you can follow... :O

c) on the way out, try and avoid Gransden Lodge if you can (my personal bias), routing either towards the west of Cambridge (nice views!) or Sandy Mast (the 801'agl jobber) would be my bet...

Further north, Wyton can't provide anything other than a FIS (no radar) and your best bet is Cottesmore Zone, 130x2.

Hope that helps...

-D

[drauk]

It's really not that big a deal - the gap isn't that narrow. The VORs you mention are perfectly situated to guide you. Or use a gps. For the final bit of protection talk to Luton on 129.550 and they'll (probably) tell you if you're about to bust any airspace. I doubt Thames will hand you over, but a freecall will do the trick.

[bladewashout]

I do it several days a week as I live just south of Luton zone, rotary and work up north.

You can route via Panshanger overhead (bit tricky to see until you're right on top of it!) to hit the south east corner of the Luton zone, then Walkern village, Biggleswade then hanger left and on you go. 2,000 ft.

Contact Panshanger first to let them know you are coming over, then get on to Luton. I contact Luton 50% of the time for flight information svc, tell them I'm routing east of Stevenage and remaining clear of controlled airspace. You can happily fly past with just a listening brief on Luton 129.55 (I may regret saying that... :rolleyes: ), although you may then hear a call letting someone else know you are there (unidentified traffic). If you hear that, it's polite to call in and let them know, to make sure they know who you are and your intentions as you are clearly in someone's way.

There's not a lot of time to be saved going through the zone and it's a lot less stressful.

The corridor is pretty wide, don't exceed 2,500 or go too close to Stanstead side (1500ft there). It's not that busy, but worth keeping a lookout more to the north/south, because stuff generally goes that way.

GPS helps... ;)

BW

[finalapproach]

Thanks very much for the tips!