Its been a while...

Its been a while since my last post so apologies to anyone who does actually read this.

May was a quietish month flying wise because of one thing or another, but saw me start on the navigation side of things and in one of my next updates I'll go through how my instructor teaches it, because it is actually pretty neat and make real sense.

The Flying School that I am a member of (Sheffield City) have a couple of trips a year where planes are rented and we fly off to somewhere. This was my first trip and it was to Margate (Manston Airfied), and it was very, very good.



The picture above was taken when we landed at Old Buckingham, there weather was gorgous and I managed to get a little sunburnt. We stopped over for about an hour while we had something to eat and watched our other plans come in, there were four planes in total, the DA40 that I was in, 2 x PA28, one a 161 Warrier, the other an Arrow plus a Cessna. The Cessna was last to land and someone pointed out the it looked like one of the pilots had had an accident...

Not being one to miss a "Kodak" moment I lept up and took the photo, how does the mastercard advert go... Priceless.

We then routed towards Clacton,then routing to Manston. While on route I took the oppurtunity to do a couple of photos.

Once we were close to Manston, we we asked to hold for a while as a 747 was doing was a practise run for a demonstration so we decided to go and see the cliffs of dover.

Wow, the only way to see them is by plane, we flew over them and circled around for a bit flying down the coast for a while.

While circling we heard a Stearman on the radio requesting info, we decided to go looking for him and caught up with him just the other side of Dover. We asked on the radio if he wanted to fly in formation for a bit, which he did.

We slowed the plane to let him catch us up, once he caught us up, he pulled up and broke away at which point we had a mini dog fight. It must have been a sight for anyone on the cliffs watching the two planes turning and chasing each other.

After a while he broke away and resumed his course for Manston, at which point we followed from a safe distance.

Once we arrived at Manston and taxied off the runway, which is huge, we waited for the rest of our planes to arrive.

While we were waiting the 747 resumed, what turned out to be its circuits. Yep, its amazing to watch a 747 doing cicuits, exactly as I have done them. Round and round, apparently when we arrived it had already done over 30!!

We had quite a late night in Margate, with a couple of the guys not actually getting to bed until 05:00 am. Thankfully they were not flying the next day. We awoke to a hazy morning and there were concerns that we might have to "scud it" home, but as at least four people had IMC/Instrument ratings we could get above the clouds. So at about 12:30 off we went, we watched a private jet show everyone how it is done as he lifted off the runway and punched straight through the clouds, whoosh and he was gone.

One the way back we routed straight to Sheffield via Gamston and Doncaster, we travelled back at 8,500 ft out of harms way, say above the clouds the view was amazing.

One thing that the trip has made me want to to do is to get my PPL more, I am planning to get it by the end of July, including the Margate trip I have around 47hours flying time so its time to pull my finger out and get on with it. I have the first of my exams booked for tomorrow, so hopefully the next update will have some good news.

Until then.