Skills Test

I was supposed to take my skills test this Tuesday (4th), but it got moved to Wednesday due to some problems with another plane. The plane in question was in a field... after an emergency landing. So I arrived at the school and plotted the route, which was Sheffield VRP to Drifield then to Louth.

We set off and headed towards Driffield, it went badly wrong, I was about 10 degrees left of track, I ignored what my di was telling me and headed towards the power stations where Goole should have been, wrong power stations ... DOH!

I realised and corrected by flying east until overhead Goole and then resumed the correct track, I was a little off track when overhead Market Weighton, at which point I was asked to divert to North Moor, which is just south of Scunthorpe, I plotted the line and headed south checked the 3 things and couldn't see it, after a few orbits I realised that we were directly over head it, which made me feel both better and stupid !

We then headed into Sandtoft for a couple of circuits which went well, apart from the first landing as I was a little slow and there was one heck of a crosswind, the second landing was spot on. We then climbed out of the circuit and did a engine failure after take off, basically just pick a good field, which I did then carried on climbing. I performed two stalls, the approach stall and a clean stall, both worked quite well. Then it was the forced landing, again I used an unorthodox method to descend, but it would have worked and as the CFI said, if your engine fails you need to land, how you land doesn't matter providing you do it as safely as possible.

Then it was steep turn time, first one went okish, lost a little too much height, but then did another couple, 1 to the left another to the right and they worked well, then it was a flapless approach into Sheffield which went well, very gentle landing.

Taxied to the appron and was told that I had passed!!!

You can only imagine how relieved that I was and how elated, so much more than when I passed my driving test.

Only thing left now is the comms practical, which is booked for Tuesday lunchtime.

Mock Skills Test

I arrived Monday night for my mock skills test with Christian, the planned nav route was going to be the Sheffield VRP to Shire Brook, then from Shirebrook to Market Rasen. I planned the route before heading into the school and noticed that the route took me through Scampton MATZ (Milatary Airspace). Scampton is where the red arrows practice and if they are "active" you are not going to get through there so I game them a ring and asked if R313 was active. R313 is the designated code for that area and nope, it was clear all day.

So I arrived at the school complete with my plan and off we went in a PA-28 Warrior (G-BODD), once overhead the VRP I turned onto my heading for Shirbrook, once overhead Shirebrook I turned towards Market Rasen after a couple of minutes Christian told me he would take over the radio and asked me to divert to Sandtoft.

I wasn't quite sure where I was, but knew I would be overhead Gamston at some stage so drew the new course from Gamstons overhead straight to Sandtoft and once overhead Gamston turned onto that course. After about 5 mins I could see Sandtoft so I knew I was on course.

Once we had reached Sandtoft he directed me to Trent Falls where we would do the other exercises that are part of the Skills test, it was a bit of a blur so not sure what order they came in, but we did the three types of stall, clean, approach and final. We forced landing, which was quite interesting as I did it using a right hand circuit, which Christian said was harder, but it fealt easier for me.

We then went through steep turns... the first couple ended in spiral dives, but after a couple of goes I got the hang of them again. We did some slow flight and general handling and then headed back to Sheffield where I did a flapless landing.

The de-brief was a nightmare as he is such a perfectionist, but he did say if it had been the real thing then I would have passed so fingers crossed for the real thing.

Bonjour Honfleur (Well Nearly !)

This last weekend saw the second fly away of the year, this time it was to France! Due to some double booking issues the plane I was supposed to fly (G-CCFS a DA40) was unavailable and also the person who I was flying with cancelled so it either meant some reshuffling or... take the slingsby !!!


So I took the slingsby, in total there were four planes going away, all four seaters, except the slingsby, a PA28 Warrier (G-BODD), a PA28 - 140 (G-BPFY) and a DA40 (G-CCLW). We set off at about 11:30 on the Saturday after filling out the forms for our return and also planning the route, the plan was head to land at White Waltham for some lunch before crossing the channel to France, landing at Deauville. The return journey would be via Kemble for a spot of Sunday dinner.

We were first to taxi to the runway, while doing the power checks the DA40 came up behind and started him power checks we finished ours and just as we were about to request clearence to takeoff we heard the pilot of DA40 tell the tower that it appeared they had a leak and would return back to the stand. Looking behind us you could see a large "puddle" on the tarmac.


On the way down we flew over the Airfield that Top Gear is filmed at, there old 747 that is parked on the tarmac has been repainted in Asda colours ! Its quite a big site and I was disappointed that the "Top Gear" logo was only a camera trip overlaid onto the old hangers.

We landed at White Waltham (EGLM) which is a grass strip which means that I've been signed off for grass landings !! The food was rather nice their, if a little pricey. They have a lot of club planes parked and seem to have a very active circuit, due to noise abatement problems and its proximity to London the circuit height is only 800 feet.





Due to the size of the prop on the DA40 it actually cut quite a bit of the grass while taxi'ing to the stand and as we were all mature pilots we (Christian) thought it would be funny to help clean the nose wheel!

After a bite to eat and a quite cola we filled out our flight plans and then filed them with the local control office and we jumped back into our planes and headed off. It was quite good that we all landed within 5-10 minutes of each other and we all took off in convoy, GBOFY first, me in GBVLI second followed by GCCLW.

You are wondering where that fourth plane was? That plane G-BODD had gone to Cardiff to do some instrument approaches and was planning to join us later in France.

After an uneventful trip over the channel (70 miles of it) we crossed the coast into France. It was interesting as people were talking French to Air Traffic Control, whichis not good. I can hear you now, saying, "well why shouldn'y they, you're in France!!" Well there is a good reason for speaking English, you have to speak one common language so that people in other planes will know where you are when you report your location and height.


We crossed the coast at Fecamp and then followed the coast to Le Havre, before crossing the bay and turning inland to land at Deauville. While tracking the coast we saw a lot and I mean a lot of paragliders, they were jumping off the cliff to get the up draughts, taking one look at the bright yellow plane and then heading back inland :D

We joined Deauvilles circuit and landed, it is a huge runway (8000' long), roughly 2.5KM in length. Air Traffic left us on the runway for a while before guiding us to a grass parking area where a marshaller was waiting.

A couple of minutes later the DA40 arrived and then shortly after that the PA-28 140 (G-BOFY). We wandered over to the check in area and signed in. GBOFY got refuelled as did we, the DA40 was told to head over to the tower to get its fuel as it runs on JET-A1 (Diesel)

Imagine the sight, we are stood at the edge of the appron watching the DA40 taxi left to right and disappearing behind the buildings, the next thing a yellow van with flashing lights appears on the right with the DA40 following it. It parks up on the appron while the bowser trundles across and refuels it and then it is escorted back to the grass area. Bit like a Benny Hill sketch, but with planes!

While trying to book a hotel for the night it turns out that there was some sort of film festivel in the area and most of the hotels were full, but luckily Steve (the CFI) found one, it meant we would have to share, but it was better than sleeping under the plane.

We then found out that the fourth plane would not be joinging us as there were some delays at Cardiff and Deauville would be closed by the time it would have been able to get across the channel.

We headed off to the Hotel, which was miles away and checked in. Its wasn't a bad hotel, bit motelish, but clean and comfortable. We had a few beers at the bar (7.50 Eu each !!!) before wandering down the road to a local restaurant which was rather nice, the food was excellent. Towards the end of the meal the Chef came out with a huge bottle of Calvados and poured it straight into out mouths!! Its makes you feel old when people don't know what Calvados is!

At about midnight we staggered back to the hotel and raided the mini bars before going to bed, a couple of people didn't quite make it to breakfast and one had actually been sick during the night (thankfully he was not flying).

We arrived back at the airport and planned our route back to Kemble, one of the guys got chatting to one of the airport guys and apparently George Clooney and Matt Damon had flown in that morning for the film festival.

After a quick coffee we checked out and headed to our planes, we were first to Taxi and take off, followed by the DA40 and then the PA28. We retraced our steps and followed the coast before heading out across the channel, this time the wind was against us and it seemed to take ages to cross the water, it was nice though,the sun on our backs due to the cockpit design of the slingsby. When we crossed the coast of England the wind really seemed to pick up and the turbulance was quite severe we tracked various radio location beacons and headed towards Kemble, we joined Kemble straight in and the wind was unreal, thankfully it was straight down the runway. Its probably the shortest landings I have ever done due to the wind.


We all had sunday lunch, its quite funny as it was the first time I have had a meal with all blokes and there has only been cola and water on the table! It was a nice meal, the AV8 restaurant is nice and modern and I can recommend it if you are passing.

As the weather started to get a little windier we decided to head off back to Sheffield as we tracked NE across East Midlands we could see heavy rain over Nottingham, which wouldn't be good as the Slingsby leaks. I managed to skirt the edge of the rain and headed up the M1. The cloud base kept dipping so I kept having to descend, lower and lower, finally we were at about 900'

When we were about 15 miles south of Sheffield we called them up, a couple of minutes later so did the DA40 so we knew he was close, the race was on, who was going to get the sheffield first... we did ! They slowed up and let us land first.

I was knackered at the end of it 6h 40mins of flying in 48hrs, the longest leg was 2h 20m, then all that remained was me to drive home.

It was a good weekend, expensive, because of the plane I took and I did all the flying, but it was good experience.

Now you are probably wondering why the "Well Nearly" in the title? Well its because we should have gone to Honfleur, but we has no idea where the hotel is that we stayed in!

The next update will be the results of my skills test...