Michael’s Flight Training Diary

Hours flown today: 1h 45m

Total time to date: 40h 0m

After a month away from the airfield due to work commitments and bad weather, the sky was smiling benignly on me with light winds, 30km visibility and puffy cumulus at 2500ft despite the slightly ominious QNH of just 996mb. Hooray. That must mean it’s time for the dual mission to Thruxton, a few miles west of Andover. Louise also asked that I plan the return direct from Andover to Charlbury, in order to cross Brize Zone. She may have forgotten that I already did the zone transit a few weeks ago, but no matter - it’s an excuse to spend more time in the air and get more experience. And unlike my previous excursion through Brize Zone on a Sunday afternoon, it would be slightly busier mid-morning on a weekday.

The route was plotted to make my way visually to overhead central Oxford for a remote departure, then setting heading direct to the northern tip of Andover 32 miles distant, routing at 3000ft to clear the Harwell danger area. On crossing the M4 (about 15 miles north of Andover) I’d change to Boscombe Zone, and on reaching the northern edge of Andover change to Thruxton for the join. On leaving Thruxton, I’d head back towards that northern tip of Andover, then route directly to Charlbury 37 miles due north, crossing Brize Zone on the way, before heading visually back to Oxford airport.

And so we made a straightforward departure on 01, following the circuit pattern around and climbing out south-east towards the Dreaming Spires of Oxford. Which was my first mistake: I’d plotted my starting point above the geographical centre of the built-up area of Oxford, yet flew to be overhead the “city centre” where the colleges and shops are. Had I not been familiar with the city, and actually compared the outline on the ground with the outline on the map, I’d have realised that I was a mile west of where I wanted to be, because Oxford is a peculiar shape with a big bulge to the south-east. It unnerved the instructor, because it took us close to Brize Zone - there was no risk of hitting that though, because I know *precisely* where the eastern edge of the Zone is, because it runs directly over my house!

I quickly realised that cruising at 3000ft wasn’t going to work, because there was scattered and building cumulus with the base at 2000-2500ft. So I ducked beneath the cloud to 1800ft, got Brize on the radio, and started to plan the diversion around the Harwell danger zone looming ahead. Brize prompted me on the radio when I was two miles away, so I executed a rather haphazard diversion: turned 30 degrees right, waited about a minute, resumed original heading, waited until Harwell with its marvellously visible giant aluminium donut had passed behind, then steered 30 degrees left to resume track. I hadn’t timed it properly though, and I kept getting west of track as I resumed navigation to Andover. I passed directly overhead an ammunition site that I guess was the disused airfield at Welford, about a mile and a half west of track.

We soon passed over the M4, and just as I was about to say goodbye to them, Brize once again pre-empted me to suggest I call Boscombe Zone. I changed to Boscombe, requested MATZ penetration, and settled down again, carefully checking my location with respect to Newbury and looking out for Andover. I was quite anxious to identify Andover, since I was in an unfamiliar and relatively featureless part of the country. But as my instructor pointed out, with 30km visibility, the fact that the area is featureless and Andover is the only large town actually makes identification easier, because unless I’ve made a gross error any large built-up area visible must be Andover. The instructor was trying to get me to relax, because I’d kept myself continuously busy with navigation for the whole leg, frantically reading the map and the ground. This was partly because I’d never quite got back onto track after the sloppy diversion around Harwell, so I was a bit anxious. But anyway, a large built-up area came into sight, and after about three minutes of detailed and rigorous examination I concluded that yes, it was Andover. Phew. Mind you, given the noted and consistent absence of gross error, it would have been *extremely* surprising if it was anything else.

As planned, once overhead northern Andover I called up Thruxton, and with the airfield in sight I flew over to join. It was runway 25, right-hand circuit, and I had planned to fly an overhead join, but with the ceiling of the MATZ above me at 1500ft QFE, and circuit height at 800ft QFE, that wasn’t going to work! The instructor had a straight-in approach in mind, but I thought that was bad form at these little airfields. So as we cruised along dead-side, we opted for a cross-wind join, turning across the circuit near the upwind end of the runway. My studies of Google Earth last night came into their own as I precisely flew the noise-abatement circuit. Which would have been great, except that I’d mis-read the airfield information, mistaking joining height for circuit height (they’re close together and low at Thruxton due to the MATZ overhead), and only my instructor’s firm correction put me at approximately the right altitude. Oops. Still, there was little other traffic around. I started the final descent, came around nicely onto final, and all was going swimmingly until the houses near the threshold started getting AWFULLY, AWFULLY BIG… causing me to instinctively hold more back-pressure than I should have done, and the speed drifted down towards 60 knots, at less than 200 ft. The houses were disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as plummeting vertically in a stall into their rooftops. Anyway, a tweak of power and a momentary release of back pressure built the speed back up again, and I pulled it back together for a scrappy flare and ungraceful touch-down. I felt a fair bit of instructor’s foot on the rudder in the flare, too. Not great.

So we tootled off to the neat parking area, went to sign in (must remember to complete the sign-out part of the form next time, too), took a quick loo break, then back to the aircraft to depart. The active runway was now 31, which is both grass and uphill and therefore entertainingly novel for me. So here’s the procedure:

1. Position at the very end, to get all the runway there is.
2. Two stages of flap
3. Hold a fair amount of back-pressure during the roll, to get the nosewheel unweighted and then aloft as quickly as possible.
4. When the aeroplane finally lifts off the ground (doesn’t need much of a rotation, because it’s already got a steep angle-of-attack due to the lofted nosewheel), let it lift off, then arrest the climb a few feet up.
5. Fly level at a few feet, to build the speed up to at least 70 knots.
6. Rotate and climb away.
7. With two stages of flap, the climb speed won’t get much over 70 knots. At a safe height, put the flap away in stages and pitch for best rate of climb (75 knots).

So we made an interesting and pleasingly excitement-free soft-field takeoff, turned right back towards Andover, and cruised along at 1500ft QNH until we were well clear of the MATZ. I got a FIS from Boscombe Zone, and turned on our due-northerly track to Charlbury. I’d planned 2500ft, but once again the cloud base put paid to that, so we settled for 2000ft. The air was getting pretty thermal, drifting up and down quite quickly, although fortunately there wasn’t too much turbulence. I’d realised on the ground at Thruxton that on the outward leg, I’d completely omitted my cruise checks (lack of carb heat not good when only 300ft below the cloud base!) - so now, I was doing them at sensible intervals. My meticulous map-reading was keeping us pretty well on course, and over the M4 I switched back to Brize Radar, requesting a zone crossing. As my instructor had predicted, Brize Radar put me straight onto Brize Zone, which was busier than a very busy thing. As we flew just west of Wantage at 2000ft, with me studiously maintaining location awareness, another aircraft announced that he was over Grove (two miles west of Wantage) at 2000ft, on a heading of “001″. This alarmed me greatly, being in our vicinity, at the same altitude and on a similar course, and I started desperately looking out for the nearby and potentially conflicting aircraft. At this moment of course, the controller decided she wanted a chat with us to clear us across the zone, and preoccupied with my frantic searches across the sky I completely missed it. My instructor picked up the call and sorted it, and I felt like I was losing control slightly - I should have been able to deal with that.

So, we trundled across the zone, everything looking pretty beneath us, and I spent most of my mental effort now on maintaining altitude precisely (as required in the zone) as the thermals wafted us skywards and earthwards. Soon enough we were bidden farewell by Brize, and on reaching Charlbury we called up Oxford and turned home. Back on familiar ground, I opted again for an overhead join, and made a pretty neat job of it - only snag was getting a bit close to the runway on the dead side, so that the runway was obscured (it was a right-hand circuit). Everything was going swimmingly until the flare… I seemed to be getting a bit low a bit rapidly, and suddenly there were sharp control inputs from the instructor and the comment “don’t do that!”… and with a wobble we touched down. I didn’t understand, but apparently a high sink rate had developed during the flare, which I’d failed to arrest. Once we’d settled into the hold-off, I’d released the back-pressure, which would have bounced the nosewheel into the tarmac had the instructor not grabbed control again.

The sparse flying this winter has really taken its toll on my landings. I think the root of the problem is that I’ve lost the mental “picture” of the flare and hold-off - I’ve only done eleven landings in four months, and there have been a couple of month-long gaps in there. So, before I do Thruxton solo, time for some dual circuits! Which I was planning to request anyway, if I hadn’t flown today - it’s clear that I need some practice of landing to get my skills back.

The other comment from the instructor, which took some getting my head around, is that I’m making my workload too high in the cruise. I thought I was being super-dilligent with my navigation, but in fact I’m fixating on it excessively, crawling along the track, constantly reading between the ground and the map, to the exclusion of such details as cruise checks, a proper lookout scan and responding to ATC’s requests. I need to have more faith in time and heading - after all, provided there’s no gross error, and the wind correction has proved to be roughly correct, I’m not going to go that far wrong in three or four minutes, which is plenty frequent enough for ground/map reading checks. The mental effort this should free up will allow me to deal with busy airspace, or problems that might arise.