'Why not go to Lydd?'
 

Recently someone based at Lydd was telling me what a great place it is and how he couldn’t understand why more people didn’t go there.

Today I was planning a trip for tomorrow and the idea was RNAV approach to Shoreham for coffee, then VFR to Redhill for lunch. Shoreham's a bit expensive but I could do with the approach for currency. I rang Shoreham to check but unfortunately they don’t have an approach controller for tomorrow.

No problem, I thought, Lydd is only 20 minutes or so further away and I’ve never been. I checked the website and they wanted £19 for a 'Training approach' and £30 landing fee. Now, everywhere else I go for this sort of thing (Shoreham, Gloucester e.g.) doesn’t charge an approach fee if you go on to land - after all, you’ll probably buy food, fuel etc. Not so at Lydd: because the approach is for currency and not because it’s IMC, it counts as Training so I have to pay both fees. And that’s on top of the extra money to fly further from home. I did point out I was fully qualified (P1 with 'lookout' passenger, not an instructor) and could just have said the flight was IFR but no joy.

So, I decided to do the approach to go around and go straight to Redhill instead. If they had applied the same policy as Shoreham, Lydd would be getting £11 extra in fees and the profit on two sets of coffee and cake. Instead, they are going to make less money. I refuse to believe a PA28 would cause £11 worth of runway damage, still less £30.

Barmy. Still, it answers my question - because it’s in the middle of nowhere and hasn’t thought through its charging policy properly...

Why do you need a ‘controller’. to do a practice RNAV approach in good weather? There is no ground equipment to switch on or monitor, and Shoreham is in uncontrolled airspace. Just fly the approach track and altitudes as a visual approach.
Shows what’s wrong with Luddite restrictions in the UK. In the USA and Australia for example, RNAV approaches are routinely carried out IFR/IMC with Unicom only.

I was wondering that myself, why not go bang out some approaches down to either minimums or MATZ boundaries, at either untowered or unmanned or even out of hours civilian or military fields with published instrument approaches. It’s free so you can’t beat that.

You can do that, but you don't get a complete practice approach that way because you don't get to practice the RT.

It surely would be nice to have the RT, but Im not sure you need that for the approaches flown counting towards maintaining IR currency?

Ah, but you miss all the banter:

"Going around"

"What are your intentions?"

"Another go at the ILS"

"You only booked one approach"

"Look mate, I didn't keep the needle within half deflection so I had no alternative but to go around. And this is a test, and I'll have to repeat the whole flight if I don't get this ILS done, so can I have another approach please."

(all whilst climbing, reconfiguring, keeping the aircraft the right way up, navigating, and trying to work out whether that's suppressed giggles you're hearing from the examiner)

Did you see the sound mirrors under the downwind leg, erected during WW1 for tracking Zeppelins and Botha bombers across the Channel?

G

£30 landing fee, strewth that’s $52 Australian. Landing fees for a PA28 here are around $12.

Simple.
Suppose you're not the only pilot wishing to do this and one or two more aircraft arrive at the same time; somebody needs to be there to decide the 'batting order' and also to integrate any IFR departures which might occur at the same time.
From what I've been told, I understand (may be wrong) that with non towered airfields in the USA, the TRACON controller does all the above whilst you are in Class D/E airspace; don't know how they play it in Oz though.

This is correct in the USA for real approaches in IMC. A practice approach in VMC, though, doesn't need anything other than a safety pilot to perform see-and-avoid while the PIC is under the hood. No need to talk to anybody, although best practice would be to self-announce on CTAF.

My airfield has 2 RNAV approaches that anyone can practice whenever they like, and the uncontrolled field 10nm away has an ILS that is free for anyone to use in VMC, no need to talk to any controller.

Perhaps not having ATC its even better training, you can have your safety pilot play approach & tower and put you thru living hell. Cancel approach intercept and fly thru final and pick up new approach clearance due to GS failure and set up for localizer minimums etc. Really make you earn that currency.

I can (kind of) understand a landing fee, but an approach fee? In uncontrolled airspace? How would that even work? Charge you for talking on the radio? Turn off the ILS? Charging to use RNAV would be blatant fraud..

Hate to contradict you Genghis but stories I've read indicate they weren't built until the '30s and were a spectacular failure because they were too sensitive! The slightest sound was concentrated on the microphones, echoed out, then repeated until they had to turn the microphone off.
Then of course radar came on the scene so the project was abandoned.
Bet the RH & DR interfered with it too.

Think you meant Gotha, not Botha!

I stand corrected, Gotha, and 1920s. Still bloody fascinating things however...

Denge sound mirrors | Sound Mirrors

The technology is WW1 so far as I understand it, and I think that a lot of the infrastructure and lessons in its use were passed over to the early radar systems.

G

Interesting thought.

Anyway, they were very nice on the radio and lunch at Redhill was excellent...

rudestuff:

"Charging for RNAV would be blatant fraud".

I tend to agree with you.

Seven years ago Shoreham was selected as one of the trial airfields for making GPS approaches by the CAA and they advertised for suitably-equipped aircraft owners to engage in a trial (which was run, if I remember correctly, by Leeds University).

I volunteered.

Having been a professional pilot for some 50 years, I saw this as a way for the CAA to drag itself into the 21st century and perhaps join the FAA who have had RNAV approaches for years.

At one point in the trials, I had cause to call the chap who was co-ordinating all the paperwork at the CAA and ask him just how many GPS approaches he had actually done?

"None" came the response.

"Right then" said I "get your arse down to Shoreham and we shall do some".

So, we tried to set up a time and a date and then came the next problem.

He couldn't fly before 1700 for the CAA had forbidden him to fly during his working day with me because I didn't have an AOC so therefore he would not be covered by CAA insurance.

So it was that the young man and I went flying and we flew several GPS approaches. He was a very nice young man (who had a PPL) and he spent a lot of time taking photographs of my Garmin 430.

Imagine my astonishment when the RNAV approach for Shoreham was finally approved that it was contingent upon the Shoreham NDB being serviceable for that is what the dinosaurs had decided was to be the MAP!

So what is the bloody point in having an RNAV approach if it depends upon an NDB (or ATC for that matter).

That’s one of the things that struck me about the Lydd approach, actually - the Missed Approach is pure RNAV (including an RNAV hold)

RNAV approach with NDB MAP is a joke, or?

Try this, and read note 2 at the bottom:

http://www.ead.eurocontrol.int/eadba...2016-09-15.pdf