PFA Report ?

[Monocock]

Come on guys.........for those of us who couldn't make it how about an update on the latest?

The pics are great on the other thread but i'd love to know all about it. What's new, whats not? What were the approach procedures like in the end?

I was tied up ferrying family around this weekend so any of the latest would be of interest.

[Mike Cross]

As no-one else has had a go here's my two penn'orth.

I flew in Saturday lunchtime and out again Sunday late afternoon. I had no problems arriving or departing. The movement control was quick and slick, as it needs to be with that many movements.

It is up to individual pilots to use their own judgement as to whether or not they are happy operating in that environment. If, having read the AIC, you have any reservations about your own abilities you should think carefully about whether you should go.

A previous visit to the airfield is obviously very helpful. There is a rumour going about that one arriving aircraft asked for taxi instructions. "But you haven't landed yet!" said the controller. "Yes I have", said the pilot sitting on the ground at Aston Down. (Maybe someone can confirm whether this is true or just a good rumour)

Making everything work requires good teamwork, with everyone doing their bit correctly. From what I saw, ATC and the marshallers did a first-rate job, as did most of the pilots.

The AIC was not as clear as it could be. There were heights alongside the advisory routes with no clear explanation of what they were for. Where there was only one height one assumes it was the height to fly at, but where there were two it wasn't obvious whether it signified a height band to fly within or one height for arriving and one for departing traffic.

Advisory routes also had danger points to watch out for. For example at Malmesbury I was approaching from the east with a right turn of more than 90 degrees to make while another route was feeding people in from the south-west heading towards me in my 10 o'clock and at the same time another route was converging from the north-east (my five o'clock), all on the same point.

However Kemble has a lot of CAS round it so it can't have been easy to design the system, particularly as it's not been done before at that airfield.

I also went to GFWE at Kemble earlier this year. IMHO the control at the PFA Rally was a lot better (particularly as this time I was not cleared to land on a runway that already had a departing aircraft sitting on it ready to roll)

Mike

[Andrew Sinclair]

I put a few photos here (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94800&perpage=40&pagenumber=2). As for the approach procedure......I found it worked well at the time we arrived. We routed in using the advisory via Sandhill/Redlands gap, Blakehill and Malmesbury. Didn't need to orbit at Malmesbury so turned North East to the railway, left onto base and left onto final.

No problems with speed or spacing, but on final at about 250' AGL I was overtaken (literally over the top) by a French registered PA28 aircraft which cause my heart to flutter a bit. I looked up and saw the wheels and thought....that's interesting. Anyway went from number 1 back to number 2 to land. She landed long and I landed at the start of the black section of 26 hard. No harm done.

Marshalling worked well and we were shut down in no time.

On the way out it was, as I mentioned on the other thread, very slick. The controller was working extremely hard but kept it cool and flowing an absolute credit to the ATCO profession.

[flower]

We departed about 5 minutes after Andrew, the ATCO was a true professional and I hope he gets to see this as he was working so very hard but made it all run so smoothly .

Inbound we had very few problems , we seemed to arrive when there were a few aircraft but not enough to make it a hastle.

Only bad thing for me was that I lost my watch somewhere, so if anybody found a ladies watch with a brown leather strap and a rectangular face let me know :ok:

[Mike Cross]

Checked lunchtime Sunday and it had not been handed in.

Sorry:{

Mike

[Kingy]

I went in non-radio on Friday in the FRED. I phoned for ppr and joined the northside 'racetrack' for the grass on downwind as briefed. The system seemed to be working well. My main problem was that I was marshalled to the southside for parking. This involved a long taxi across the field - lot of it on hard surfaces. The FRED has a tailskid and this was an obvious problem (sparks everwhere). It took over half an hour (following a vehicle) to taxi back to the grass runway later in the day. - Very poor!!

Apart from that, a very nice event.. But I prefer Cranfield.

Kingy

[Mike Cross]

Kingy

From the AICTail skid equipped aircraft, microlights and motor gliders can expect to be parked northside behind the Control Tower. Perhaps if you'd held position you would have been able to tell the marshaller where you wanted to go and avoided the hassle.

Mike

[Hairyplane]

Went on Sunday with 'Stampe' in my 63 year old yellow cabrio -

I felt that I wanted to support the event in view of the fact that the aircraft is on a PFA Permit and I have always found the PFA really helpful.

We were also keen to visit some of our stallholder friends.

The first problem we had was the ATIS.

When we eventually called the tower and asked them to confirm the ATIS frequency, we explained to them that it wasn't working. 'Oh yes it is' was the reply. 'Oh no it isn't' piped up several other pilots.

This then prompted a broadcast explaining that the ATIS was 'down' for a few minutes whilst it was reset.

We then landed on the grass, the marshaller then kindly 'batted' us over a cone - fortunately without damage.

We then discovered that we were in a separate park to the main static park, necessitating a bus link.

No sooner had we parked, we heard a loud 'clank clank clank' from behind. An Auster-type had dropped a wheel down in a hole (well marked...) at the threshold of 08 grass and judging by the noise and the damage to the metal prop, had struck something harder than grass (it flew out later, without any engineering inspection....)

We saw some appalling approaches/ landings on both the grass and the tarmac. There was a crosswind and we were surprised that a lot more tailwheel pilots didn't use the grass.

The show wasn't busy - a lot more visitors on Saturday apparently.

We enjoyed the very kind hospitality of Dave Unwin (great guy!) and his team of lovelies on the Todays Pilot stand but nevertheless decided to leave earlier than planned.

Whilst at the refuelling bay, another Auster type taxied straight into a large runway direction board (how the hell did he manage that?) and sat there chopping away at it, presumably wondering what that funny noise was....

They then got out, took a picture of the hole in the board, started up and taxied away....

Lining up for departure, we then saw the inevitable 'keep it low and zoom climbs' to impress the visitors...

I haven't been for years, and won't do so for many more.

The PFA is a great organisation with some cracking people dedicated to it.

However, I believe that some 'currency/ time on type/ total hours' guidelines should be issued in respect of the PFA Rally. It is undoubtedly a daunting prospect for the lesser experienced.

In this way, the standard of airmanship and flight safety can only be improved as a consequence.

I know I have put my head above the parapet on this one but I really do think the organisers need to put a greater emphasis on flight safety.

Underwhelmed I'm afraid.....

Best stand? - Wilksch Airmotive without a doubt. that guy has got an awesome product. His contribution to the PFA will be huge.

Worst? - The guy who sold us the most aweful carpetburger. Ugh!

HP

[stiknruda]

I arrived 1915ish on Sat. No problems with the procedure from the south, though I do agree that the AIC could have been clearer - on the diagram some more info would have been useful, such as where to call final.

The presentation of prizes was rather long and tedious. Nick Bloom is a fine pilot but not the world's best compere! I had to watch it as a friend won the Squadron Trophy!

Beer at £2.50 a pint was acceptable but I wouldn't frequent a pub that charged those prices.

The stands seemed "slimmer" than in previous years.
I picked up an oil filter opener and a 3/8ths AF ratchet spanner.

Loos were adequate and I even head rumours of showers!!

Lots of nice aeroplanes - yet again a mighty fine Pitts line up. The S1-11B (Pitts Super Stinker) won the Squadron Trophy - a great aeroplane that I first saw being built in Oct 97.

I especially liked the very nicely finished bipe with the Mazda engine - Isaacs Fury.


The only downer was the 90 minute wait for fuel on the south side on Sunday morning. I guess I just chose the wrong time!

The cadets were great at marshalling and a good time was had by all my mates.

Looking fwd to next year already!


Stik

[QNH 1013]

Generally, excellent.
Particular credit to the ATC controllers, and the Air Cadets who worked long and hard. I sincerely hope someone was well organised enough to take cold drinks round to the cadets and give them regular breaks, all too easy to forget them.
Flew in with Jodel on the Friday, and Europa on the Saturday.
ATIS had lots of problems. Dropout on Friday (as has been said), and very low modulation on the Saturday, when it was a lady's voice, so that we couldn't hear the full text until within a couple of miles.
It was a nice touch to get a free bottle of water from Pilot magazine on the Friday when booking in. I didn't therefore take any water with me on Saturday as I was expecting the same. Unfortunately, was told when booking in on Saturday morning that all the water had gone by then????
Yes, some pilots made mistakes, and I had one climb up in front of me when I was established on final (slick controller offered me the hard runway and I switched to that), but in general I thought the piloting was better than at many fly-ins I have attended.
See you all next year and congrats to the organisers.

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

I also went to GFWE at Kemble earlier this year. IMHO the control at the PFA Rally was a lot better (particularly as this time I was not cleared to land on a runway that already had a departing aircraft sitting on it ready to roll)


It would be difficult for it to have been worse. I remember being 3 back from the 'grass' hold at GFWE, with an aircraft lined up on the hard, with queues of about 20 aeroplanes for each runway, and for several minutes absolutly NOTHING happening on RT. I think the lined-up guy got a stuck mike switch at one point (or pressed his xmit for the intercom). I heard:

"what the f---k's going on? I think the radio's bust. Maybe we should should just go?"

SSD

[Kingy]

Mike Cross,

I did read the AIC and pointed at my tailskid to the marshaller. At first I thought I was being marshalled to the north side and by the time I realised what was going on I was kinda committed to continuing around the to the southside... it must have been a mile or so.

No harm done really - I've changed me worn down bolt!

Kingy

[White Shadow]

Some more comments on the PFA website bulletin-board, Hangar Chat.
Had a lovely day myself, on Saturday, (Grass runway; the Hard looked a bit hairy at times).
PFA website is looking for suggestions for improvements, next year....
WS

[Genghis the Engineer]

I didn't fly in (one day I will, but working there sadly travel by road is always most convenient).

Parking and marshalling arrangements were only mildly chaotic and largely worked well.

I was surprised at how many of the main little-aeroplane / kit companies weren't there. No Mainair/Pegasus, Flylight, X'Air, AMF, Medway or virtually any foreign companies. On the other hand, good to have a close look at the Escapade, and I was interested by the two new projects on ST's stand - I confess that although it looks pretty I'm unconvinced by the Esqual, on the other hand the part-built Spitfire replica looks incredibly well designed and built (nice touch, a tape player quietly playing the theme from the Battle of Britain in the fuselage) and I want one. Small showing from Britten-Norman, first time they've been there I think and clearly only trying to sell maintenance services - maybe they'll bring an Islander next time.

A few good talks in the Forums tent - especially Bill Brooks on designing and building a biplane in 3 days, I felt quite good since I only saw 3 people fall asleep in mine which I thought was pretty good in the heat !

The usual lots of interesting people the peak of which was an elderly gent who came and asked about light aircraft flying. After a brief chat I asked about his own experience of flying, and was treated to 15 minutes on what it was like to fly night air support to the D-day landings, utterly priceless ! (He then to me that he wanted to try flying Helicopters just as Whirly wandered past, so hopefully a very interesting customer for her).

Weather was perfect, very few prangs and none of any real seriousness I believe. Food on offer was varied and generally good (especially the curry), good to meet a few Ppruners in the AV8R on Saturday evening although it must be said that the food and service in there was pitiful and far below the standard of the fast food outlets on the field. Hopefully an abberation since by reputation the place is usually very good.

On the whole, a good Rally.

G

[Mike Cross]

SSD

Visited the Kemble tower some months ago and they had a fancy computer system for tracking movements. I wonder whether they were using that at GFWE and not using it at PFA.

Perhaps someone in the know could enlighten us. My experience is that keyboard entry tends to slow things down a lot, which could explain the problem.

Mike

[Crossedcontrols]

I arrived late on Friday 20:00, North side, put the tent up hoofed it to South side (bus had stopped for the night)
The Friday evening drinkies in the tent were fine, the choice of a couple of real ales was a pleasent surprise.
The stalls the next day we familiar to anyone that had been before, but enjoyable, with a couple of new ones, and some progress from others.
Camping facilities Northside were fine, I didn't have to que for the shower, and the toilets seemed to stay in operation all day. The AV8 breakfast was fine if somewhat slow in comming. Bumped into Whirly on her stand, spotted Gengis on his, didn't meet any other PPRUNERS.
I departed Saturday afternoon 26 grass, headed north turned overhead Upper Harford then headed East, pretty bumpy, the cub was thrown about a bit as per someones else thread.
I thought event was well organised, I had no problems getting in and out.
I enjoyed it, will be going next year.
CC

[140cherokee]

Noticed several Rutan-style canard 4-place kit planes with continental registrations. What are they and are any being built in UK? Not previously interested in self-build, but they looked good and could persuade me otherwise!

Arrived by car as Kemble's closer to home than my home airfield. Enjoyed the day as weather was excellent. Would go again if local, but probably wouldn't bother to drive or fly any distance if they move it.

[Girl Flyday]

Very interesting to get so much feedback - and your comments can only help to make next year's event even better. But FWIW, these are basically my comments - and I appologise if this seems a bit disjointed at times, but they're in response to several emails I've received...

OK - well having been working in operations from 8am to 8m each day for this year's rally these are my comments in response to the emails I've received...

Firstly, Lyneham airspace infringements. Yes, there were far too many on Friday. Following this, we included comments on the ATIS stressing that pilots should navigate accurately, and avoid Lyneham zone (From my point of view, it's a shame that this was necessary - but we did our best to make sure that we did what we could to make people actually follow the AIC)

On Saturday the infringements were reduced by about 50% - and on chatting to the Lyneham guys Saturday evening, we were told that on an average Saturday they generally had around 4 airccraft blundering into their zone - so considering the huge number of increased movements, perhaps this wasn't too bad - especially on the first year that the rally has been held at Kemble...

Yes, there is CAS nearby - but I think the routes were described pretty well in the AIC, and so I think it's a bit much to say that the Rally should not be held at Kemble, when around 1950 of the estimated movements managed to arrive there without upsetting anybody - spoiled only by around 30 aircraft over the whole weekend who ended up a little 'uncertain of position'!

But given the weather, it seems to me totally uneccessary for there to have been ANY infringements this weekend, if people had kept their eyes out of the cockpit - because although the ATIS was broadcasting 10k+ most of the weekend, the actual viz was far in excess of that most of the time.

The splitting of the aircraft park north/south of the runway was intended to be by type of aircraft - ie 'interesting'/homebuilt craft to the north, and production aircraft to the south. Unfortunately the split ended up a little subjective, depending on the age and knowledge of the marshallers.

The bus service was not as intended - and anyone trying to use it has my heartfelt sympathy. We had requested at least 2 buses, to run from 8am to 10pm - whereas what we got was one bus that ran from (if we were lucky) 0930 to 1800. This has been duely noted as something that needs 'fixing' for next year.

Quite a few of the young Air Cadets ended up being treated for sunstroke (partly due to the fact that for some reason they were all wearing 'winter' uniforms) - and this is another reason why marshallers might have been a bit thin on the ground at times - and is another matter being discussed.

Many of the ATCOs were 'old-hats' at the Rally, whereas some where new. No doubt all of them have learned a thing or two since 0800 Friday. Also, the view from the ATC caravan was not as good when the runway changed from 26 to 08 on Saturday - and the possiblility of getting a higher vantage point for the 'caravan club' (as they were affectionatly know) is another issue from next year.

Landings were very 'variable' (to say the least!). Perhaps this was partly due to nerves, having (at times) been faced with slotting in with so many other arrivals - only to then have your landing skills potentially been given 'points out of ten' by thousands of spectators... But I couldn't help but wonder about the number of people who landed so short, when it had been stressed on the ATIS to land only on the black tarmac section - and having the displaced threshold clearly marked. This was another problem on the bus front from north to south side, when we changed to 08 - because people were landing SO short that we invariably had to set the crossing lights to red for arrivals - thus unnecessarily holding up the (already poor) bus service.

Also, ATC instructions were often subject to varying degrees of 'artistic impression'...

But many thanks to all that attended (making this the largest PFA Rally ever) - and I'm already looking forward to next year!

Heather

[Flap40]

Re the heights for the advisory routes.

They are perfectly clear to anyone who uses aerads on a regular basis which I suspect only includes 10% or less of PFA members. For those of you who don't, I can see the problem!

The aerad (and other ifr chart providers) standard is that a line above a height means "not above", a line below means "not below" and a line above and below means "at".

[Flyin'Dutch']

Enjoyed it.

Not brave enough to fly in so came by car and no queues to wait for entry or parking.

The exposition area was set up very generously which made it a long walk to cover all the ground. Missed the certified players but may be they reckon that the PFA is only for anoraks. Shame really.

Gorgeous weather.

Had a nice time standing along the TWY and admiring all the planes pass by and subsequently take off.

Managed to procure some long desired goodies and picked up a catalogue of Avery tools (one day I will build an RV I hope).

Had a stroll through the aircraft park and admired the various machines. Always nice to bump into some friends.

Good way to spend a Saturday afternoon and certainly nice enough to entertain moi and Sophia (even though she is only 2.5)

FD

[MikeSamuel]

I was there helping show off the RV-9A project I've been helping on. We were the one with the mock up cowl over the diesel engine...If anyone has any pics could I please have a copy!

I saw you there a few times Heather and although I knew the face couldn't match it up the PPRuNe name! I remember now we met at Sywell when you were in that funny French retractable!

Well I was up in the tower/ops room bit for a minute or two on Saturday evening and you seemed to be doing a great job!

I also managed to have a quick chat to Brooklands in the builders bit where the metalwork demo was on...Sorry I had to rush off, but we were flying out back to Long Marston in G-BTDN a lovely little Kitfox...Did anyone see us performing essential maintenance before take-off on Sunday afternoon?! The carb was detaching itself somehow but we managed to get it sorted and with that headwind were off the ground very quickly!!!

I also caught a glimpse of Whirlybird on the BWPA stand on Sunday but again was rushing to fly back, so sorry I didn't say hello! All those women talking flying seemed a bit daunting anyway! I'm sure you would have made a voiciferous (sp?) contribution to the men/women pilots forum on one of the earlier days!!!

Well, my first rally was a stunner and I hope you all enjoyed it as much!

The Air Cadets did an absolutely superb job though, but whoever runs it should really get them some shorts and t-shirts!

See you all next year!

Mike :ok:

[Mike Cross]

Flap 40

Thank you for your helpful explanation, however on the route Blakehill-Malmesbury which I flew it showed 3000'QNH with a line above it on one side of the the track and 2000' QNH with a line above it on the other.

Looking more closely at it and in colour it is possible to hazard a guess that hard should have been not above 3000 and grass not above 2000 but this is not made clear in the text, particularly as hard arrivals are instructed to leave Malmesbury not above 2000, the same as the grass arrivals.

"Advisory routes to Malmesbury are depicted as parallel continuous lines"

"Advisory Routes to Northside are depicted as "London Underground" symbols"

Not on Annex A of the copy of the AIC on the rally website they weren't!

Perfectly clear it was not.

This is not a big gripe but there is room for improvement, and that should be recognised for next time.

Mike

P.S.
Incoming not above 2000, departing not above 1500 following the same routes does not sound too clever either. Incoming AT 2000, departing not above 1500 would avoid the possibility of two aircraft at 1500 head on, both complying with the instructions.

(edited to add the PS, you alwasys remember something just after you clicked the button!:O )

[stephen cook]

Mike Cross said:

There is a rumour going about that one arriving aircraft asked for taxi instructions. "But you haven't landed yet!" said the controller. "Yes I have", said the pilot sitting on the ground at Aston Down. (Maybe someone can confirm whether this is true or just a good rumour)

I fly at Aston Down and we did have a stray visitor on Saturday. It was a weight shift microlight with 2 p.o.b. Can't vouch for your story but it's possible. I wasn't there, but from what people say he was under briefed - he only knew about the regular Kemble frequency 118.9.

Stephen