FlyingForFun
21st Oct 2002, 10:58
I wanted to share my experiences of a great day's flying on Saturday.
I was originally planning a short local flight just to stay current, before going home to do some studying. But the weather forecast looked perfect. And when a pilot-friend asked if he could come along for the ride, I knew I had to go further than Reading!
I decided to go to Sleap - somewhere I'd not been before, but I had heard good things about. A nice early start (well, not too early because I was out with friends on Friday night) to get going with the flight planning, but by the time I'd ploughed through the mass of NOTAMs and done all the other planning, it was mid-morning before before we'd finished everything.
It was here that the first two interesting things happened. First of all, my Pooleys guide has two pages for Sleap. For those who don't know the airfield, it has two runways. 05/23, and 18/36. Or should that second one be 01/19? It depends which page of my Pooleys you look at, since one page has one orientation, and the other has a different orientation! Not a big deal, though.
Our ETA if we left immediately was 12.30, but according to Pooleys the airfield is closed between 12.30 and 13.00. We phoned Sleap for PPR, and also checked the opening hours. The guy on the other end of the phone was very confused - they've never been closed between 12.30 and 13.00, so I've got no idea why Pooleys said they are!
We pre-flighted and set off, and it was an absolutely perfect flight in every respect. The weather was outstanding. The forecast said scattered cumulous at 3000', and sure enough at 2999' we were just scraping the bottom of some beautiful fluffy clouds! The vis was amazing, the radio was pretty quiet considering what a nice day it was, and the controllers we spoke to were helpful. We saw quite a bit of other traffic around, especially over Oxford, enjoying the weather. The navigation went as planned - a slight difference between forecast and actual wind threw us a mile or two to the south, but we soon spotted and corrected the problem. I love flying with other pilots - I elected to fly the first leg, and let my friend do most of the navigation, so the workload was sufficiently light to really be able to relax and enjoy the view.
I really can't think of enough nice things to say about Sleap. It's a pretty quiet place, which is lucky because every take-off and landing (unless you can land very short) requires a back-track either to or from the single taxy-way. But the A/G crew are helpful, advising me on the airfield's standard procedures both on the phone before I set off, and on the R/T once I was there, and helping me with my lookout especially for the back-track. Everyone we spoke to there was friendly, and the food was good. They did charge us double the landing fee which was listed in Pooleys, but by now I wasn't surprised that yet more details in Pooleys were wrong! I've never found errors in Pooley before, except once where I had an out-of-date version and the holding points had all been re-numbered, but that was my fault not theirs. Anyway, my passenger paid the landing fees, so I didn't care!
Neither my friend nor I had ever really used a GPS in anger, so we decided to give it a go for the flight back. Having two pilots seemed like the ideal time to play with a new(ish) toy, something I'm reluctant to do when I'm by myself. On one of the recent GPS threads, someone - can't remember who - suggested that using the CDI instead of the moving map provides an excellent cross-check that you're on track, without the loss of situational awareness which I've noticed I suffer from when using a moving map. So we programmed in our route (which was easy, but only because our only turning point was overhead an airfield) and set off.
I have to admit that, having previously been sceptical, I am now a big believer in GPS! We didn't look at the moving map once - we relied on the chart and the view out the window to figure out where we were. But the CDI was the perfect tool for compensating for the incorrect wind forecast which we'd suffered from on the earlier flight, and definitely improved the overall situational awareness. I'll certainly be using it in future, although it is much more clumsy to set up if you have turning points which aren't programmed into the database.
Something to be aware of, though - don't try using new toys by yourself. At one point, I changed to a different screen, and in trying to change back to the CDI I accidentally de-activated our flight plan. It took me a couple of minutes of playing around to work out how to re-activate it. My friend, who was flying this leg, tried to help me out at one point until I suggested that he should probably concentrate on flying. It's very easy to have your head dragged inside the aircraft, especially if you're new to your GPS.
We also had something interesting happen on the way back - several times, the GPS reported a "weak GPS signal", the screen went blank, and then a minute or two later it returned to normal. Did anyone else experience this at around 3pm on Saturday, or was it just us? It could be a problem with our hardware, of course... I've never noticed it before, but then I don't usually spend much time looking at the GPS.
The clouds had built up to a broken layer by this time - too big to be able to fly right up to them without worrying about people flying IFR inside them, so we stayed a little lower. The return to White Waltham was closer to an arrival than a landing (me back at the controls by now), but what a great day! I hope everyone else enjoyed the day as much as I did!
Happy flying!
FFF
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I was originally planning a short local flight just to stay current, before going home to do some studying. But the weather forecast looked perfect. And when a pilot-friend asked if he could come along for the ride, I knew I had to go further than Reading!
I decided to go to Sleap - somewhere I'd not been before, but I had heard good things about. A nice early start (well, not too early because I was out with friends on Friday night) to get going with the flight planning, but by the time I'd ploughed through the mass of NOTAMs and done all the other planning, it was mid-morning before before we'd finished everything.
It was here that the first two interesting things happened. First of all, my Pooleys guide has two pages for Sleap. For those who don't know the airfield, it has two runways. 05/23, and 18/36. Or should that second one be 01/19? It depends which page of my Pooleys you look at, since one page has one orientation, and the other has a different orientation! Not a big deal, though.
Our ETA if we left immediately was 12.30, but according to Pooleys the airfield is closed between 12.30 and 13.00. We phoned Sleap for PPR, and also checked the opening hours. The guy on the other end of the phone was very confused - they've never been closed between 12.30 and 13.00, so I've got no idea why Pooleys said they are!
We pre-flighted and set off, and it was an absolutely perfect flight in every respect. The weather was outstanding. The forecast said scattered cumulous at 3000', and sure enough at 2999' we were just scraping the bottom of some beautiful fluffy clouds! The vis was amazing, the radio was pretty quiet considering what a nice day it was, and the controllers we spoke to were helpful. We saw quite a bit of other traffic around, especially over Oxford, enjoying the weather. The navigation went as planned - a slight difference between forecast and actual wind threw us a mile or two to the south, but we soon spotted and corrected the problem. I love flying with other pilots - I elected to fly the first leg, and let my friend do most of the navigation, so the workload was sufficiently light to really be able to relax and enjoy the view.
I really can't think of enough nice things to say about Sleap. It's a pretty quiet place, which is lucky because every take-off and landing (unless you can land very short) requires a back-track either to or from the single taxy-way. But the A/G crew are helpful, advising me on the airfield's standard procedures both on the phone before I set off, and on the R/T once I was there, and helping me with my lookout especially for the back-track. Everyone we spoke to there was friendly, and the food was good. They did charge us double the landing fee which was listed in Pooleys, but by now I wasn't surprised that yet more details in Pooleys were wrong! I've never found errors in Pooley before, except once where I had an out-of-date version and the holding points had all been re-numbered, but that was my fault not theirs. Anyway, my passenger paid the landing fees, so I didn't care!
Neither my friend nor I had ever really used a GPS in anger, so we decided to give it a go for the flight back. Having two pilots seemed like the ideal time to play with a new(ish) toy, something I'm reluctant to do when I'm by myself. On one of the recent GPS threads, someone - can't remember who - suggested that using the CDI instead of the moving map provides an excellent cross-check that you're on track, without the loss of situational awareness which I've noticed I suffer from when using a moving map. So we programmed in our route (which was easy, but only because our only turning point was overhead an airfield) and set off.
I have to admit that, having previously been sceptical, I am now a big believer in GPS! We didn't look at the moving map once - we relied on the chart and the view out the window to figure out where we were. But the CDI was the perfect tool for compensating for the incorrect wind forecast which we'd suffered from on the earlier flight, and definitely improved the overall situational awareness. I'll certainly be using it in future, although it is much more clumsy to set up if you have turning points which aren't programmed into the database.
Something to be aware of, though - don't try using new toys by yourself. At one point, I changed to a different screen, and in trying to change back to the CDI I accidentally de-activated our flight plan. It took me a couple of minutes of playing around to work out how to re-activate it. My friend, who was flying this leg, tried to help me out at one point until I suggested that he should probably concentrate on flying. It's very easy to have your head dragged inside the aircraft, especially if you're new to your GPS.
We also had something interesting happen on the way back - several times, the GPS reported a "weak GPS signal", the screen went blank, and then a minute or two later it returned to normal. Did anyone else experience this at around 3pm on Saturday, or was it just us? It could be a problem with our hardware, of course... I've never noticed it before, but then I don't usually spend much time looking at the GPS.
The clouds had built up to a broken layer by this time - too big to be able to fly right up to them without worrying about people flying IFR inside them, so we stayed a little lower. The return to White Waltham was closer to an arrival than a landing (me back at the controls by now), but what a great day! I hope everyone else enjoyed the day as much as I did!
Happy flying!
FFF
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