QXC passed
 

Hope you'll all forgive this blatant piece of self-congratulation, but I'm far too elated to keep this one to myself.

To cap off a perfect couple of days, today I passed my Qualifying Cross Country. Route was Cambridge - Leicester - Norwich - Cambridge, and the met conditions were absolutely fabulous (barring the very hazy sunshine I encountered when I turned final for r/w 15 at Leicester! :uhoh: )

Landings and airmanship were all annotated as 'good' at both Leicester and Norwich, and I have to say I felt very confident all the way round; confident, not cocky.

Best moment of the day? Had to be the call I received from Cottesmore MATZ just after I'd gone through Wittering at 2500 heading east...

"Be advised traffic appearing in your ten oclock, same heading as you but 1000 feet below. Traffic is fast jet and has you in sight."

Glanced down, couldn't see anything, started to transmit an acknowledgement of the advice... just as a Harrier GR5 eased its way out from under my leading edge and gently accelerated away to the north east.

Got a horrible feeling my transmission was something like "Golf Whiskey Bravo, roger, traffic not yet seen... ohhhh beautiful......!" If so, sorry Cottesmore, I just couldn't help myself... :O

Well done mate, great feeling isn't it !!! I was on a high for days after.
Was only speaking to a friend about ours the other night and we both agreed that it was probably the biggest high of our training.

As for the Harrier, what a memory to have as well.

Best of luck with the rest of your training and skills test.

Well deserved congratulations more like!!

Really well done - there's no feeling like it! :D ;) :D ;)

Cheers,

G

BeauMan – Congratulations. Am very pleased for you. :O

Quote: <<To cap off a perfect couple of days,>>

Exactly, perfect flying weather – and my FI away on holiday. Will be back on Monday and you bet your bottom dollar that by then the weather will be non-flyable. :{

That is a nice post Beau, thanks for sharing that with us. Best of luck with the rest and I hope there are better tales to come..:ok: Well done.

nice post Beau, the GR5 must have made your day. Im supposed to be doing my qxc Saturday, and this is th 11th attempt in 12 weeks........

gard dammit!:mad:

Well done anyway mate

Speedy

:ok:

Beau - congrats on the QXC!

PEDANT ALERT - very much doubt it was a GR5 - think those are all replaced by GR7s (single seat) and T10s (trainers). Sorry!! :D ;)

Takes me back to my QXC in 1968. Cranfield-Cambridge-Ipswich:{ - Cranfield in an almost brand new Cessna F150 from Rogers Aviation. On the way back from Ipswich to Cranfield, an F-101 Voodoo shot past on my left co-alt and very close, the pilot in his orange bone-dome giving me a wave as he went past at the speed of heat!

Congrats, BeauMan!

Your Harrier reminds me of my Dawn To Dusk flight this summer. Flying up into Belgium from France, transitting through Florenne's airspace. A few miles before passing abeam their runway: "G-IK, you have traffic 10 o'clock 4 miles, an F16 on the ILS." Coooool!

Took me a few seconds to spot him, but there he was, a little way below us and to the left.... And a very disappointed AerBabe sat next to me, who couldn't see him because the cowling was in the way ;) Fortunately, though, he was much faster than us, and soon passed in front of us and over to the right hand side, so that I couldn't see him any more but AerBabe could. :ok:

FFF
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Hi BeauMan:

Congrats! A great achievement!

And a wonderful experience about the Harrier too... What an aircraft!

TP

BeauMan,

sheesh, no need to apologise. Give yourself a well deserved pat on the back. It's an important step and one that took me a while to get through to. You're almost there.

I can't wait till I read your post saying you've passed your skills test!!

WELL DONE!!

Do not worry about your r/t call, it really couldn't be worse than my call when coming into land at Lydd :)

I think my call was "oh ******, a wasp!! golf bravo foxtrot oscar echo going around" :O

I swatted the offending wasp with my map on the climbout

djk, that's fantastic! Falling around on my floor reading that. And glad you got the b****r on the climbout! :ok:

Thanks very much everyone, it's greatly appreciated. I'm aiming to hit the Skills Test around the end of Jan; will keep you posted.

Beags - !!!!! :eek: Thankfully the GR7 (well corrected CB :ok: ) wasn't quite that close...

Speedy - best of British for tomorrow, I'll keep my fingers crossed, both for you and the weather...

BeauMan,

Many congrats mate! :ok:

F - Wyg