Bolt Head

Today was Mel’s birthday and she said she wanted fish + chips by the sea. Who was I to argue?

The weather wasn’t the best, and rather frustratingly was much nicer both the day previously, and the subsequent day, but it was certainly flyable.

We routed out towards M4 J18, then headed in pretty much a straight line from there onwards. We got a very good service from Bristol who cleared us through their airspace without even having to ask, followed by great service from Yeovilton who also offered a transit without prompting.

The en-route scenery was wonderful…

Bolt Head appeared where expected and I did a quick circuit to check the lay of the land and look at the windsock.

Once down on the ground, we called the local taxi driver who arrived after about 15 minutes and dropped us off in Salcombe where huge portions of lunch were consumed!

We wandered around Salcombe for a few hours until our pre-arranged taxi pick up. By the time we got to Bolt Head, it really was blowing a gale – the windsock was fully extended and it was necessary to cling onto the canopy with dear life otherwise I’m sure it would have departed! Fortunately, the wind was exactly down the runway 🙂

We launched – rather than took off – I’m pretty sure we were airborne in less than 100M due to the headwind, and climbed at an astonishing rate before heading back home.

A fantastic trip and some beautiful scenery – I’ll definitely be back there before too long!

Trip to Compton Abbas

The plan for today was to fly down to Compton Abbas in loose formation with a chap I’ve known for a few years.

The weather was not playing ball, and an overcast that was due to clear many hours ago loitered around for quite a while – we were just at the point of abandoning the trip when bright sunshine shone through… So off we went!

I was departing from Oaksey and Dom from Kemble. What we failed to do was come up with any sane way of ensuring we met up – this resulted in me loitering around outside Kemble’s ATZ looking for him whilst he circled Oaksey looking for me. Having given up on any chance of finding each other, we headed down to Compton.

It was an uneventful flight and we arrived with just two minutes separation in the end, and parked side by side.

We had a nice lunch – good to see that they have set up a pilot ‘queue jump’ for sandwiches, but also disappointed that they stop serving anything but sandwiches after 2.30pm. Seems like an odd decision and huge potential revenue loss on a busy weekend afternoon.

On the way back, we were more organised and went for a bimble up towards the Severn estuary and surrounding area before heading home.

Another great day out – thanks Dom!

Trip from Lyneham

Today I met up with Andy Hawkins who is based at Lyneham and we headed off for a bimble around in Andy’s PA28. He wanted to see Sky Demon running on my 7″ tablet computer – alas that only ended up half happening as I broke the bracket within about a minute of getting strapped into the ‘plane!

It’s the first time I’ve flown in a PA28 – certainly more spacious than I’m used to with my Robins!

Short of ideas, I had suggested we fly over to Newbury and take some pictures of the office where Andy works.

Andy asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to do, so he demonstrated tracking towards the CPT VOR. Radio Nav is something I’m not very strong on, and the spartan avionics fit in my aircraft really limits the amount of practice I’m ever going to get.

We then headed towards Brize where I took some pictures from the overhead of the flying school where Andy did his training before heading back to Lyneham via Fairford.

The approach into Lyneham was executed as a PAR which was fascinating.

A great day out – thanks again Andy.