It was a strange day for weather. The forecast indicated a front arriving later in the day, but we were currently experiencing rain from an extended finger which was to clear to the North in the next hour - just time for a briefing. Barrie ran though the brief for this exercise and there's a write up of my notes at the end, though for this exercise we estimated headings and timings. As predicted the sky brightened and we headed off with some haste. Once again we were in Tango-Echo - not sign of Alpha-November though Barrie mentioned the possibility of new aircraft with the take-over. Runway 25 was in use and the wind was calm. We did the power checks on taxiway Hotel - a Twin Otter was coming in and we were keeping clear.
We took off and entered the circuit pattern, though rather than maintain 80ft we turned short on downwind and continued to climb, finally over the runway but climbing 1000-2000ft. I radioed Farnborough - not very smooth considering last month's practice and we began the first leg.
Accuracy of flight is important doing this and I'm not very accurate! Every glimpse into the cockpit or radio call and we start turning. We did a little kink to the south in our outward flight to avoid reastricted airspace R101 - AWE.
We'd passed AWE and there was a great grey wall of rain and cloud in front of us in the distance blocking the view of Greenham and Newbury - time for a change of plan. We flew a little closer and Barrie pointed out Greenam and then he positioned the aircraft over Kingsclere so that we could join the second leg.
Here we did some landmark spotting - identifying Basingstoke by the railway line and motorway. After a few minutes of this we took up our new heading - this time for home.
All approaches to Blackbushe are from the North, so we diverted to finally arrive dead-side.
An amazing lesson with some spectacular weather visuals. There were even a few scattered clouds at 800ft over Blackbushe which we had to dodge.
Notes
There are two major things to think about in a flight - Planning and the Flight.Planning
1. Weather
This must be relevant to the route and should be check via the following Met Office services
- TAF - forecast
- METAR - weather
- Form 215 - significant weather chart
2. Plot route on the chart
- Track
- Minimum Safe Altitude (MSA) - large purple numbers e.g. 13 = 1300 ft
- Planned Altitude - add 1000ft to MSA
- Danger / Restricted Areas e.g. R101 2.4 - choose to fly around
3. Decide TAS & Power Settings
- Affected by temperature and altitude
- Work out leg times
4. Complete PLOG
5. Fuel Plan
- Required
- Onboard
6. Weights and Balances
- Gross weight
- Passengers
- Fuel
- Baggage
7. Landing Away
- Destination airfield details
8. NOTAMS
- Normally done with the weather as could inform a go/no-go decision.
9. Check Aircraft
Flight
1. Cockpit organisation
- Maps
- Knee board
2. Departure procedure
- Overhead Departure
3. En-Route
- Maintain heading & height
- Lookout
- LAI
- FREDA
- Radio
- Update & ref PLOG
- Destination & turning
No comments:
Post a Comment