I took my time arranging the next island trip. After arriving home from the Channel Islands, Anne had suffered a heart attack. I felt guilty at my immediate reaction: thank God it didn’t happen in the plane!

I knew she was feeling better when she started nagging me about our next trip. Which island and when, she wanted to know.

“Are you sure your doctor thinks it’s safe to fly?
“I don’t care what my doctor thinks!”

She made it clear to me that she did not intend to sit at home waiting for the next medical issue to arise. It was, she told me, the right time for her to take risks.

So we planned the flight to the Isles of Scilly. Cliff brought the plane into Elstree and rather unfortunately, went off the end of the runway. The repairs were straight-forward and quick but he managed to get quite a bit of teasing at the airfield. Cliff grimaced and pointed at me. “That’s why she’s flying.” The men laughed a bit too heartily for my tastes.

I often have an urge to dress as unprofessional as possible - mini-skirt and 3-inch stilleto heels, Madonna-style corset (maybe not, with my tummy) and bright red lipstick. I can’t really justify this other than a desire to mess with peoples heads and challenge their stereotypes but I was tempted again that morning, all dolled up before climbing into the left seat. But then I always hear Tom’s voice in my head: “If there was a fire in the cockpit, what would you do then? No protection on your legs and unusable shoes. You deserve what you get.”

So I dressed sensibly in long trousers and flat boots.

Once at the airfield I got out the map and my ruler, plotting a route across the southwest to the Isles of Scilly.

I resisted the urge to make it a sightseeing tour - Stonehenge, Salisbury, Avebury, etc, and instead did a sensible and correct route … on the third try, after lots of cursing about danger areas and prohibited zones.

The sky looked to be full of cloud so I was going to have to fly low. There are three primary issues you must into account when deciding what height to plan a VFR flight in the UK:

1. The relative height of the ground
2. Keeping clear of cloud
3. The quadrantal rule

The quadrantal rule splits the compass into four parts and you choose a height depending on the direction in which you are flying. Presuming everyone uses the rule, it means that there will never be oncoming traffic at the same height as you: clever, huh?

Specifically, a track between 000-089 has an odd flight level, so you can fly at an altitude of 3,000 feet or 5,000 feet above sea level but not 4,000 feet. A track between 090-179 is odd flight level plus 500 feet, so you could choose to fly at 3,500 or 5,500 feet. 180-269 is even flight levels and 270-359 is even flight levels plus 500 feet.

This applies only to flights outside of controlled airspace and is mandatory for IFR flights and recommended for VFR. Note: most of mainland Europe uses the semi-circular rule instead. This is the same concept but you must make sure you know the system in use for the country in which you are flying.

So based on the quadrantal rule, we needed to be at either 2,500 feet (a little lower than I felt comfortable with) or 4,500 feet above sea level. As I was planning, I heard a light aircraft which I decided was a good sign that the clouds were breaking up. I decided on 4,500 feet.

The clouds didn’t break up.

In the end we did it as a low-level flight, 2,400 feet above sea level most of the way because that was quite simply as high as we could get without flying into cloud.

I enjoyed a guilty pleasure at the view but it was a stressful flight - all of the VFR flights were pressed down by the weather and the radio buzzed constantly.

There was one radio call that has stuck in my mind:

“Can you state your destination again?”

“St Mary’s, Scilly!”

I turned bright red as I realised how it sounded. Cliff and Anne both cracked up laughing but the controller seemed to understand what I meant.

St Mary’s won my affection before we even arrived. The controller greeted me and asked if I would like to do an anti-clockwise circuit of the islands. We descended to 1,000 feet and took in the archipelago, an awesome sight-seeing tour that I wouldn’t have thought to ask for.

Once parked, someone came out to greet us and offered to order a taxi for us. Or possibly the taxi - certainly everyone was on a first name basis with Graham, our driver. He agreed to take us to pick up a buggy for Anne (Cliff had tried to rent a car but to no avail - not even a black-market vehicle was to be had) and then to Schooners hotel.

A man flagged him down as we drove away from the airfield.

“Graham, she’s looking for you. She said you have your phone off.”

“I do,” said Graham with a grin and shrug and drove off.

We pulled up in front of the hotel. A man stopped at the sight of us unpiling our stuff out of the cab. “Schooners,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You’ll be lucky if there is anyone there.” He shrugged and helped us carry the bags in. Keith, who had taken our booking, was there as planned and happily greeted our helper.

“Hello, Ron.”

“One room for the three of us,” Ron said with a wink, his glance encompassing Anne and me.

“No problem,” said Keith, “top floor”

“No chance,” said Ron. “I’ll take these bags up one floor and that’s my limit.”

(Our trip on the Isles of Scilly will be continued next Friday so be sure to pop by!)

August is a busy time in general aviation so I suppose it’s not surprising that it is also a time of many accidents. However, the amount of small planes in the news this past week has seemed excessive. These three stories made the international press: the first resulted in five fatalities and thankfully the other two only in minor injuries. I’ll be watching for the accident reports on all of them.

17 August, England: The mid-air collision in Warwickshire has garnered the most attention. A Cessna twin on final appears to have flown directly into a home-built two-seater light aircraft, which disintegrated on the spot. The twin-engine appears to have limped on a bit before crashing into a field about a mile away. The four occupants of the twin and the pilot of the light aircraft were fatally injured. Both pilots were very experienced and were in contact with air traffic control. Both aircraft were coming in to land at Coventry Airport when the crash happened so it would seem the radio transcripts could shed some light on the accident.

Further references:
BBC News
AAIB Press Statement

17 August, Germany: A couple flying a single engine plane clipped high-tension power lines on take-off from Kempten-Durach and ended up hanging upside down in the plane, some 20 metres above the ground, for two hours before they were able to be rescued. The rescue team brought a hydraulic lift to remove the pilot and his wife from the aircraft before using a car crane to lift the plane out of the wires. Preliminary reports are pointing towards pilot error.

As it happens, this is an airfield I know well, as it is local to my cousin’s Bavarian farm. I only have one photograph that shows the power lines:

I recommend watching the Liveleak video of this, just for the incredible view of the plane dangling upside down. It put shivers up my spine.

Further references:
Welt Online (German news)
Liveleak with video

19 August, Japan: A Cessna crashed into a city street in Yao, a suburb of Osaka, crumpling the plane into a scary looking piece of metal. The two occupants sustained only light injuries and no one on the ground was injured. The plane had taken off from the local airfield and then, according to news reports, the pilot stated his intention to turn back due to engine trouble. Apparently, fuel to the engine stopped when the pilot made a turn although there was plenty in the tanks.

Looking at the photograph, it’s amazing the amount of damage the plane sustained without causing any major injuries to either the occupants or pedestrians.

Further references:
Flightglobal photograph
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/small-plane-crashes-on-city-street-in-japan

I loved the idea of landing at every one of the British Isles from the moment my boyfriend set me the challenge. One of the key reasons was that these islands have some of the most interesting airfields I would ever come across.

St. Mary’s airfield was no exception to this. At 600 metres, it was my shortest runway: my previous best had been Alderney at what suddenly seemed a luxurious 880 metres.

Obviously, I was not going to go to a short runway in order to practise my short-field landings - I wanted a large margin for error until I was confident that I could do this consistently.

So I took the Saratoga out a few days before the planned trip. I chose to do circuits at an unlicensed airfield with an 1100 metre runway and a friendly group of people who I hoped might give me some tips. As I sipped my coffee and explained what I was doing, the CFI said, “Hang on, just one moment” and dashed out. He came back in dragging two young men behind him, one of whom was grinning like a maniac.

He introduced the young men: the insecure looking one was John, a new instructor in his 20s. George was the one with the crazy smile. I was about to find out why.

“George is here for instruction but the plane he usually flies is out of action. We were about to cancel his lesson. How about you take them both out. John can sit up front with you and help you with your short-fields, George can see a different plane and how it flies.”

George was positively bouncing with excitement.

“Sounds great,” I said, wishing desperately I’d done some circuits for practice BEFORE coming here, so that I could look a little slicker.

John pulled me to the side. “I’m not complex rated,” he said in a low voice.

“That’s OK,” I smiled. “I don’t need help with that side of things. Just help me land it in less than 600 metres.”

It was a fine summer day and the circuit was busy. I stepped through my downwind checks out loud and smiled at John, who seemed a bit pale. Everything looked fine to me so I ignored him and carried on with my approach. Just before touchdown, I registered that John had said something but not what. I was concentrating on my landing point and didn’t take it in. We touched down with barely a bump. I cleaned up the plane, put the power on and once we were up in the air again I glanced at John.

“What was that?”

“Never mind.”

It was then that I replayed the sounds in my mind - what he’d said, in a low voice, with no conviction, was “Go around.”

I glanced at him again. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. Was my flying that bad? I continued around the circuit and this time listened out for him as I came down on final approach. He said nothing until we were back in the air.

“650 metres.”

I realised he was deeply uncomfortable in a plane that he could not control. He was estimating my landing run in order to give himself something to focus on. It seemed to work: his fists eventually unclenched. We did another few circuits, each one shorter than the last until John told me he thought I would have landed the Saratoga in under 500 metres.

“You are fine,” he told me. “Make this one to land.”

“That was fantastic,” exploded the teenager from the rear - I’d forgotten he was there. “What a great plane! I can’t believe how fast it goes!”

I felt bad. I fly the Saratoga slower than anyone I know - especially in the circuit where I’m going as slow as I can get away to give myself time to think. If he thought that was impressive, he should try going out with a real pilot.

I thanked John for putting up with me and he smiled, for the first time, and told me to enjoy my trip to the Isles of Scilly. “Great place. Great runway with an amazing hump. You’ll do fine.”

Now there was nothing left to do but get Anne packed up and head for St Mary’s.

[Names and identifying features have been changed]

The first reference to flying at St. Mary’s appears to be 1917: the 34th Squadron of the Royal Navy Air Service were based at Porthmellon, including “seaplanes and flying-boats”.

The first commercial service was offered in 1937: twin-engined De Havilland Dragon biplanes which used a local golf course as their landing strip. They offered a service between St. Mary’s and St. Just-in-Penwith on the Cornish coast.

In 1939, High Cross Farm was converted to an airfield and has been known ever since as St. Mary’s Airport. Surprisingly, it is the 10th busiest regional airport in the UK! The islands have a healthy tourism industry and are a major exporter of flowers but it’s amazing to me that such a little airport could handle all that traffic. St. Mary’s is strictly PPR and has a transit corridor (SFC-2000 ft) between Land’s End (Penn an Wlas) and the islands.

I planned to use runway 15/33: the primary runway which was originally given a partial hard surface during World War II. Now it is 600 metres of asphalt, which isn’t much but it’s still better than runway 09/27 at 523 metres with only 273 of them asphalt.

There’s no flying at St. Mary’s on a Sunday - no one goes in or out. Visiting pilots are warned that a sudden and unforecast deterioration of the weather is not uncommon and, whilst PPRing, I was told to be prepared to turn back due to unexpected poor visibility.

None of this put me off. Not even the note in Pooleys:

Warnings: Pilots should exercise extreme caution when landing or taking-off as the aerodrome is severely hump-backed. The gradients increase to as much as 1 in 13 at runway ends.

I’m not very good at visualisation, so the one in thirteen gradient bit didn’t particularly bother me. If I’d realised that it matched the steepest slope in the Bernina Railway in Switzerland, I might have paid a bit more attention.

The Isles of Scilly (the locals frown upon the phrase “the Scilly Isles” for reasons that I don’t really understand) are an archipelago of 150 islands off of the Cornish coast. St Mary’s, the largest of the islands, is home to Hugh Town, the thriving centre of the Scillies, with an airport and a working harbour and well as half a dozen pubs and hotels and at least twice that many restaurants.

For some reason, I keep spotting the airfield in the news. Directly before we flew to St Mary’s, I checked for details about the airfield and was told that “proposed strike by air traffic controllers at St Mary’s airport has been averted.”

I refrained from referring to the story I’d heard about ATC at Scilly: the on-duty controller was found asleep in a nearby rowboat as there were no flights expected. The airfield’s official history starts with: “September 1937 - August 1939: Golf course used as airfield”.

How could you not love such a place?

Recently, the airfield made it into headlines around the world when they put out an advertisment, in braille, for the position of an Air Traffic Controller. They did, to the relief of everyone involved, confirm that a successful applicant would need to have 20/20 vision. This reminded me that having been to the island, I never wrote about it. I’m ashamed to admit it was the summer before last and I have yet to type up my notes and go through the photographs.

This month, I am not going to get the chance to go to any new islands so I’m out of excuses - it’s time to catch up. So have you got any plans for August? If you think you can keep up with Anne, join us for a tour of the Isles of Scilly!

I’ll be updating every Friday.