So, it’s sunny with hardly a cloud in the sky, and I’ve got the urge to fly. Today I should be doing circuits, but going round and round landing over and over just doesn’t appeal, not with this lovely weather. I had a word with the instructor, and he agreed that we should do a bit of a cross country navigation exercise. Yay.
With that all sorted he suggested we head east, as its too easy heading west, what with all the coastline you really can’t get lost! He suggested Callington, and then changed his mind to Gunnislake, as that’s much more challenging to find. Then He suggested Davidstowe, and I said, “Oh, that’s nice and easy to find, so that got scrubbed and replaced with Boscastle. Both Gunnislake and Boscastle are hidden in valleys and you can’t see them until you’re almost directly over them. Next came the ruler, and the trusty CRP1. I measured off the distances, and did all the angles and popped the numbers on my flight plan. Next came working out drift due to wind and ground speed due to wind too. Now, I haven’t touched my trusty flight computer, a CRP1, in some 13 odd years. Its’s a circular slide rule on one side and a nifty spinney wheel on the other side for calculating wind speed. I looked at it blankly. After fumbling with the dratted thing for a few minutes it slowly started coming back to me, which was just as well, as my trusty instructor couldn’t remember how to use it either. Apparently, pilots these days use an app. Well, I like to be able to do things for myself for those occasions when there’s no WiFi or phone signal or the phone battery is just dead. I try not to rely on technology too much, as it can and does go wrong.
With all the numbers sorted out, ground speed worked out we headed off to the RV12 to get her pre-flight checked. This time I got to do the gurgle test on the oil since the engine was nice and cold.
With no further ado, we got airborne and set course for Gunnislake and it became clear that the wind dirrection we had used wasn’t the reality, but flying looking out the window I corrected our course over Pensilva using Callington as my ‘aim’ which got us right overhead Gunnislake for a leisurely turn over the old bridge which spans the river Tamar.
It was during the assent over the airfield that two things became instantly apparent. The first one was when keying the radio, you can’t hear your own voice which is terribly disconcerting as you immediately suspect you aren’t transmitting. And the second thing was that the touch screen on the glass panel had become non functional, so putting in the transponder code was way too convoluted. It’s just not designed to be used that one!
The route from Gunnislake to Boscastle was nice and easy, mostly because I’d worked out the difference between the real wind direction and what the figures we’d worked with on the ground. Flying VFR is all about looking out the window and not by just blindly following a heading on a gauge, and it’s exactly the kind of flying I love. We followed the coast briefly from Boscastle to Tintagel before heading back towards Bodmin. On the way back we did some ‘what if the engine runs roughly’ and ‘and then dies on you’ kind of questions, followed by a practice forced landing.
We flew a nice far out base leg to radio in to the airfield before doing a longer final approach. I fluffed the approach really, I came in a little high and a little fast so floated and landed long. But we got it in with lots of room to spare, although I did consider a go around, we settled before the mid point and the landing was rather gentle.
All that remained was to hanger the aircraft, pay the man and get a debrief on my Navigation. And my long landing. All is good though, as next time I hit the circuit in earnest!
Neil's flying space 