Lesson 46: Blowing Off The Cobwebs II

A Beautiful Day For Flying

Sunday 26 August 2012: A beautiful day today, I went flying! Oh and the weather was great too!

The airspace restrictions put in place for the Olympics had already been lifted and so my instructor and I went over to the Isle of Sheppey for some general handling and refresher training.

It was great to cover off steep turns to the right (x2), steep turns to the left (x2), practice forced landings (x2) and some side slipping (x2). It was the first time I'd done side slipping and it was really impressive as to how much of a descent you can get the aircraft in. It was dropping at about 900 feet per minute.

My Track Courtesy of MotionX for the iPhone

View of the sky from the Ship Inn at Upnor

I was in G-CEPX today and the radio was fine. The tacho was overeading by about 1500 rpm. I didn't notice at first the big sticker on the cockpit dashboard, so I had to make some adjustments to get her settled in the cruise. 

Afterwards when walking back to the flying school I saw my first Druine Turbulent airplane. These single seater open cockpit aircraft look absolutely gorgeous. I bet they are fun, and they fly on the permit as well. I watched one take off and it was airborne in no time!!

Anyway, a nice day today. I need to book up for my qualifier now. I am toying with the idea of doing a one stop fly-away as a confidence booster. It's been a quiet year for flying, what with the aweful summer we had with the weather and then of course the Olympic airspace restrictions.

46. 26/08/12 C152 G-CEPX EGTO EGTO 11:45 12:45 1:00 EX15, EX16
HOURS = 40:15 DUAL + 09:10 SOLO

Lesson 45: Blowing Off The Cobwebs

Today it didn't rain and the stars aligned and well, there was nothing else conspiring against me and and.. and .... i actually got into the left hand seat of an aeroplane again! This of course during the Olympics! Booked as a getting to know you Mr Aircraft session again, it was great to be up in the air again. My instructor did the flight plan and we left a very quiet Rochester Airport at 12:30 and tracked out on a bearing of 135 to Detling. We then went 8 nautical miles beyond that on the same bearing before getting into 'free air'. 



At this point we had just passed Ashford and my instructor got me doing some turns, steep turns and stalls before heading back. On the way back we infringed Manstons airspace (this was just after leaving their frequency - where we were the only ones ON their frequency) and got a telling off! I couldn't hear a thing in my headset which was annoying but my instructor wasn't happy with this and telephoned them as soon as we got back and they said it was ok and nothing to worry about.


The skies were absolutely devoid of aircraft. Cloud cover was about 3,000 feet, QNH 1010. It was a bit bumpy coming round the circuit to land and the wind was quite strong although straight down the 20 runway at 20 knots. Landing was OK, I noted the stall warning sounded as I was touching down which doesn't usually happen with me but speed control was a little tricky. I heard somebody else saying that when I was back in the flying school.


Anyway, blimey - I actually was lucky enough to fly again and it was great. I went to book again but my instructor is off now for three weeks so my next lesson is in 3 weeks time. I will probably do a refresher again. The Olympics will be finished and the sky will return to its normal zones and no doubt the traffic will return. I've done all my exams and completed the course its a case of doing this solo qualifying flight and then preparation for the final exam. The weather has been awful this year so I've been unlucky and lost momentum somewhat.


45. 04/08/12 C152 G-CEPX EGTO EGTO 12:30 13:40 1:10 EX15, EX 10a, 10b (15 minutes)
HOURS = 39:15 DUAL + 09:10 SOLO