[Spoiler]It's got a happy ending, the hero gets to marry the girl (in October only) and he will remember a snow storm [/spoiler]
Hey, hey!
Time to celebrate my longest flight and also one of the most enjoyable flights I had in the UK, PIC - to date !
For two and a half months I have been denied the sky, cursing at the weather, my availibility and the zillion others factors of life that ground GA pilots... Until last week when I managed to log a check out in the trusty C172.
Ah, at last, I was back in the game! Ready to eat the sky, ready to chop the air, ready to full throttle, ready not to forget carb heat, ready to sing Joe le Taxi on Bravo1, ready to fly the world, ready to flare over any runway, grass, tarmac or baked beans!
Overfilled with hopes and joy, what would I do next?
Pre-Flight
Back from the checkout, a quick look at the booking file revealed that nobody had yet booked GOVFR the following sunday (yesteday)! It'll be mine then!
- Sorry?
- Well, if you book the aeroplane for the full day at week-ends, you should fly around four hours.
- Hum.
Quick thinking... 4 hours of surely exciting flight weighed against the best part of £350. Damn it! Money is made to be spent to enjoy oneself and I have saved by not flying much so... It's a deal!
(Back home)
-Honey, we're not doing anything next Sunday, are we?
-Hum, no, not yet but...
-Well we are now: we're flying GOVFR, I have it booked for the whole day!
-Really?
I'm very fortunate that my partner enjoys flying with me, especially when she had not come along for ages. So far so good...
But where would I go, then?
Disappearing in the spare room (nicknamed the "Office"), it was time to unfold the "big" 1/2 million map... This is where the reality sneers a bit a the GA pilot ready to fly the world, as "the world in 4 hours", is more or less limited to a 200 Miles circle. So off with the trip to Prague, Alicante, Pisa or Oslo :)
What about... "Swansea" then, with a bit of coastal flying?
Yes, but that would not take four hours, unless hectic zigzagging en route, best left to the crop-duster pilots among us. That's where my partner came in the room to check on me, as I tend to become slightly autistic when it comes to flying ;) . She glanced at the map and dropped a "We could go to Shobdon", before leaving, happy that I was still breathing.
YEAH! We could fly from Thruxton to Shobdon, land there, then take off to Swansea over the Brecon beacons, land there for lunch and then do the North Devon coastal flight back! That would take some time! That would be brilliant! That's a plan!
(I'll spare the next 30 seconds doing a happy dancing routine. You can try picturing Johnny Haliday trying to imitate Mickael Jackson but don't lose any sleep over it as I don't look like Johnny).
Anyway, we Had A Plan or... at least a route, the planning being marked as "To Do" somewhere in my left hemisphere (or is it the right?) :
Leg1: Thruxton-Malborough-Devizes-Bath-Yate-Lidney-Hereford-Leominister-Shobdon Leg2: Shobdon-Straight to Swansea, way high up there in the sky- Leg3: (Refuel) Swansea-Port-Talbot-PorthCawl-Down South to coast-VRP Minehead-Taunton-Frome-Westbury-Malborough-Thruxton
Time to get the gears out: a cd of Jazz, some heating, and oh yes, a ruler, a plotter, a protractor, lots of pens, the AFE guide, the C172 Pilot Handbook, the 6 volumes of Trevor Thom, a photo of Saint-Exupery for luck and my brown socks.
Shake well, mix with a good dose of airmanship (you cannot have enough of that), retrieve the essential, do not hesitate to add colours to make the picture pretty and... an hour or so later, here it was in my hands the "PLANNED FLIGHT", frequency, nav aids, fuel the whole nine yards, hot and ready to be used.
Time to join my partner, with a silly grin and strange feeling of equal satisfaction and exhaustion, best compared to that one accompanying the end of the activity mostly occuring in bed between one or more consenting adults.
Monday- 07:12am
"And now let's see what Lucy Jackson's got in stock for the weather this week. Lucy, over to you"
-Hello, good morning. Well the weather in Berkshire this week is going to be very much like today: snowy, cold and grey, horrible really..."
Snowy, cold and grey? Horrible? I can't believe it! Don't people, God and the Angels Know that I am going to fly next Sunday and that it's gotta be a nice day???
Yes, it was a week of nail-biting at work, browsing all the www.givemesomegoodweather.com/DontLieToMe.htm?sun=shining of the web for a sign of the gods. 5 day forecast, it's a bit early to tell. 4 day forecast, snow? Well it can change. 3 day forecast. They get it wrong sometimes. 2 day forecast...
It was Friday and the picture didn't look promising with possible fog, some strong winds but mostly VFR. "Mostly" is not a helpful adjective. It's like the half-empty, half-full glass thing, it depends on the point of view. Mostly VFR could be that there will be some VFR conditions but also that there will be some non-VFR ones.
Saturday night. The seed of doubt. It is likely that we can fly, but not necessarily the planned route. :eek: One thing is sure, it may well be another difficult decision to make in the morning...
Sunday 6:50am
Believe it or not, Some Blue Sky and sun shine!!!! More than mostly happy I check the weather again... and this time I feel that we're going to get lucky: if we can take off, legs 1 and 3 are on... the Shobdon to Swansea bit might give us some grief.
Do the winds, do the winds! Ah oui, monsieur, le vent!
(sound of a spinning wizzwheel)
Sun glasses on. The engine of the car is roaring. I turn to my partner: "Give me some sugar baby!" (long passionate kiss). And there we go, "To Thruxton and Beyond!!!"
Posts: 108
By: Steph - 28th February 2005 at 15:47
[Spoiler]It's got a happy ending, the hero gets to marry the girl (in October only) and he will remember a snow storm [/spoiler]
Hey, hey!
Time to celebrate my longest flight and also one of the most enjoyable flights I had in the UK, PIC - to date !
For two and a half months I have been denied the sky, cursing at the weather, my availibility and the zillion others factors of life that ground GA pilots... Until last week when I managed to log a check out in the trusty C172.
Ah, at last, I was back in the game! Ready to eat the sky, ready to chop the air, ready to full throttle, ready not to forget carb heat, ready to sing Joe le Taxi on Bravo1, ready to fly the world, ready to flare over any runway, grass, tarmac or baked beans!
Overfilled with hopes and joy, what would I do next?
Pre-Flight
Back from the checkout, a quick look at the booking file revealed that nobody had yet booked GOVFR the following sunday (yesteday)! It'll be mine then!
- Sorry?
- Well, if you book the aeroplane for the full day at week-ends, you should fly around four hours.
- Hum.
Quick thinking... 4 hours of surely exciting flight weighed against the best part of £350. Damn it! Money is made to be spent to enjoy oneself and I have saved by not flying much so... It's a deal!
(Back home)
-Honey, we're not doing anything next Sunday, are we?
-Hum, no, not yet but...
-Well we are now: we're flying GOVFR, I have it booked for the whole day!
-Really?
I'm very fortunate that my partner enjoys flying with me, especially when she had not come along for ages. So far so good...
But where would I go, then?
Disappearing in the spare room (nicknamed the "Office"), it was time to unfold the "big" 1/2 million map... This is where the reality sneers a bit a the GA pilot ready to fly the world, as "the world in 4 hours", is more or less limited to a 200 Miles circle. So off with the trip to Prague, Alicante, Pisa or Oslo :)
What about... "Swansea" then, with a bit of coastal flying?
Yes, but that would not take four hours, unless hectic zigzagging en route, best left to the crop-duster pilots among us. That's where my partner came in the room to check on me, as I tend to become slightly autistic when it comes to flying ;) . She glanced at the map and dropped a "We could go to Shobdon", before leaving, happy that I was still breathing.
Brain working. Neural network computing away. Nearly there... last connexions and...
YEAH! We could fly from Thruxton to Shobdon, land there, then take off to Swansea over the Brecon beacons, land there for lunch and then do the North Devon coastal flight back! That would take some time! That would be brilliant! That's a plan!
(I'll spare the next 30 seconds doing a happy dancing routine. You can try picturing Johnny Haliday trying to imitate Mickael Jackson but don't lose any sleep over it as I don't look like Johnny).
Anyway, we Had A Plan or... at least a route, the planning being marked as "To Do" somewhere in my left hemisphere (or is it the right?) :
Leg1: Thruxton-Malborough-Devizes-Bath-Yate-Lidney-Hereford-Leominister-Shobdon
Leg2: Shobdon-Straight to Swansea, way high up there in the sky-
Leg3: (Refuel) Swansea-Port-Talbot-PorthCawl-Down South to coast-VRP Minehead-Taunton-Frome-Westbury-Malborough-Thruxton
Time to get the gears out: a cd of Jazz, some heating, and oh yes, a ruler, a plotter, a protractor, lots of pens, the AFE guide, the C172 Pilot Handbook, the 6 volumes of Trevor Thom, a photo of Saint-Exupery for luck and my brown socks.
Shake well, mix with a good dose of airmanship (you cannot have enough of that), retrieve the essential, do not hesitate to add colours to make the picture pretty and... an hour or so later, here it was in my hands the "PLANNED FLIGHT", frequency, nav aids, fuel the whole nine yards, hot and ready to be used.
Time to join my partner, with a silly grin and strange feeling of equal satisfaction and exhaustion, best compared to that one accompanying the end of the activity mostly occuring in bed between one or more consenting adults.
Monday- 07:12am
"And now let's see what Lucy Jackson's got in stock for the weather this week. Lucy, over to you"
-Hello, good morning. Well the weather in Berkshire this week is going to be very much like today: snowy, cold and grey, horrible really..."
Snowy, cold and grey? Horrible? I can't believe it! Don't people, God and the Angels Know that I am going to fly next Sunday and that it's gotta be a nice day???
Yes, it was a week of nail-biting at work, browsing all the www.givemesomegoodweather.com/DontLieToMe.htm?sun=shining of the web for a sign of the gods. 5 day forecast, it's a bit early to tell. 4 day forecast, snow? Well it can change. 3 day forecast. They get it wrong sometimes. 2 day forecast...
It was Friday and the picture didn't look promising with possible fog, some strong winds but mostly VFR. "Mostly" is not a helpful adjective. It's like the half-empty, half-full glass thing, it depends on the point of view. Mostly VFR could be that there will be some VFR conditions but also that there will be some non-VFR ones.
Saturday night. The seed of doubt. It is likely that we can fly, but not necessarily the planned route. :eek: One thing is sure, it may well be another difficult decision to make in the morning...
Sunday 6:50am
Believe it or not, Some Blue Sky and sun shine!!!! More than mostly happy I check the weather again... and this time I feel that we're going to get lucky: if we can take off, legs 1 and 3 are on... the Shobdon to Swansea bit might give us some grief.
Do the winds, do the winds! Ah oui, monsieur, le vent!
(sound of a spinning wizzwheel)
Sun glasses on. The engine of the car is roaring. I turn to my partner: "Give me some sugar baby!" (long passionate kiss). And there we go, "To Thruxton and Beyond!!!"
(To be continued, with pictures)