Summer is officially over: it’s time for Connor to go back to school. I hate September even more now than I did when I was a kid!

We’ll be heading off in the Saratoga on Sunday morning, taking off from Málaga (IFR as it’s the weekend) and flying 3.5 hours to in France. Just a quick break there for fuel and what my son calls “personal business” and then straight through from there to Shoreham.

View Malaga to Shoreham in a larger map

I wrote about Shoreham before but it could do with an update and maybe some photographs.

Destination: Shoreham

I’ll try to collect some interesting stories and photos for you while I’m away (but not TOO interesting, I hope!).

When this post appears on my website, I should hopefully be on my way for exploring new places! We’ll be flying into Newcastle (EGNT) on Friday. It’s the international airport for the North East of England and a very busy place. I can’t help but feel a little bit nervous.

Newcastle Airport has offered offered package holidays since the 1950s, with planes going to such exotic locations as Isle of Man and Isle of Wight. In 1954, there were 35 scheduled services per week carrying 5,500 passengers a year. By 1980, the airport was carrying a million passengers a year and now the figure is over five million. All of this is on a single runway – so it’s just a wee bit busy!

Last year, the airport reaquired the original 1930s airport terminal which they are going to open up as a visitor centre – I’m really hoping it’s in a state that I can visit it.

I want to do circuits over the weekend but I don’t think think I want to compete with all those jets. I have a pilot friend who lives up that way and I’m relying on him to come up with some recommendations although I’m taking the details of Carlisle and Eshott which both look interesting. I could really use some recommendations for a nice airfield to take everyone for lunch on Saturday if anyone knows the local area.

So right now, hopefully I am coming in safely (and competently!) on this 2,329m runway. I just hope I don’t get squashed by one of the big planes.

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Location: Newcastle
Date: 17 April 2009
Sunset: 20:15

Airfield: EGNT Newcastle
Website: http://www.newcastleairport.com/
Phone Number: 0191-214 3207 Airport Authority
Samson Jet Centre (General Aviation handling): 0191 286 4156 or out of hours 0191 214 5916
email: ops@samsonaviation.com
Hours: H24
Frequencies:
App/Rad 124.375
TWR: 119.700
RAD: 125.825
ATIS: 118.375
Runways: 07/25 2329×46m Asphalt
Airfield Height: 266′
Circuit Height: Variable
Weather Info: http://www.northumbria-flying-school.co.uk/weather

Note: Training flights require prior arrangement with ATC and only within Mon-Sat 0730-2300 Sun 1000-2300

Misc:
Nearby Pub

We’ll be taking the Saratoga out for a spin after a long winter parked at Málaga airport. Unfortunately, the lack of practice means I can’t take passengers and I’m feeling rather edgy about my abilities, so Cliff will be doing the initial flying until I get a chance to meet up with an instructor next week.

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We’ll be flying from Málaga to Strasbourg first. As we’re coming in from Spain, we don’t need customs so we can fly directly into Neuhof (LFGC). It’s a small airfield with 819 metres of grass and the radio is in French – I’m glad that Cliff is the one doing the flying!

Then I get to do the tourist thing while Cliff takes the Saratoga to England to pick up his family at North Weald and bring them back for a long weekend in Strasbourg. After we drop them back off, we’ll be flying to Newcastle where I’ll take over the controls and get back into shape. Sunday I am taking Cliff to York to meet a friend and then I’m going to London to meet up with a bunch of bloggers: I wouldn’t want to try to get everyone to the right place without the small plane! Monday morning we’ll head back to Newcastle and then from there we’ll head back home to Spain.

Hopefully I’ll get lots of great photos and new stories to share – at the very least, I should be able to tell you about a few more airfields and whether they are worth a visit!

See you in a fortnight!

Shoreham Airport is one of my favourite airfields with a convenient location and easily spotted from the air, whichever direction you come in from. They have a decently long (1,036 metres) asphalt runway with PAPI but their commercial traffic isn’t very high, so they are still General Aviation friendly and ATC has always been helpful.

One evening, we were coming in late. We’d left Málaga on time that morning but we were held up refuelling in France and then we had fierce headwinds all the way across France and the channel. I asked London Information to speak to Shoreham on our behalf: we had a passenger that needed dropping there and the taxi was already parked and waiting. Shoreham confirmed that they closed at 2000 which was approximately our ETA but that they would wait for us to get in. When I explained that we weren’t staying but wanted to taxi to the terminal and then go out again, the controller barely flinched. Everyone was watching the clock – we got in before closing but was a minute past closing time before I could get the plane in the rolling. The controller was patient and never pushy – he took his time without rushing me to switch to Farnborough so that he could shut down. Shoreham could have justified charging us through the nose for the extra five minutes of ATC but the controller was very friendly about the whole fiasco.

The end of last year the word was out that the Shoreham was in financial trouble – proposed expansion to the airfield was put on hold. Then on April 14th it seemed it was over: Shoreham Airport went bust with debts of over a quarter of a billion pounds. Stupidly I stopped paying attention at that point – and so did everyone on Wikipedia, which ends the story of Shoreham Airfield with all flights being blocked.

I know better than to use Wikipedia for research, dammit! In reality, the closure only lasted a single day and the airfield was immediately purchased and re-opened for business.

Certainly their their website makes it clear that it is business as usual, so my worrying was pointless. That’ll teach me!

So, my cheat sheet for the flight:

EGKA Shoreham
Date: 23 May 2008
Sunset: 19:55 GMT
Phone Number: General Enquiries: 01273 467373
Hours: Mon – Sat 0800 – 2000 (or sunset) Sun 0830-2000
Frequencies: APP/TWR 123.15, ATIS 125.30
Runway: 02/20 1036 x 18 Asphalt
Website: Shoreham Airport
Useful: Circuit Map
Divert: Biggin Hill

This’ll be a quick stop to pick up my son and then fly straight to Germany, where my presence has been requested at a family-get-together. So we’ll be flying to Mannheim City the same day and spending the weekend there. Wow, the Saratoga is seeing more action this month than it has all year!

Alfons Eigenmann’s description of Altenrhein airfield, as translated by Harald Rauch and edited by Ed Rathje:

The Altenrhein airfield was built in the years 1927-1928 by pumping mud from nearby Lake Constance (Bodensee) onto a swampy area close to the shore line. Almost in the middle of this area a turf runway of 600 x 100 meters was built, laterally marked on both sides by a ditch 240 cm wide and 80 cm deep, which was filled up with yellow gravel from the Jura (the mountain range bordering France in the west of Switzerland). The grass taxiway areas were on both sides of the runway. As the airfield was certified for light single engine aircraft only, it was not capable of heavy bomber aircraft operations.

It doesn’t exactly inspire one with confidence to hear that the airfield is based on mud piled onto swamp! Luckily I’ve been to Altenrhein before and I know it’s a wonderfully simple approach and at 1,500 metres the runway is more than enough for me to feel comfortable.

My quick reference notes:

LSZR St Gallen (Altenrhein)
Date: 16 May 2008
Sunset: 18:54 GMT
Phone Number: +41 71 858 51 65, +41 71 858 51 44
Hours: Montag – Freitag 06.30 – 12.00 / 13.30 – 21.00 Uhr
Samstag 07.30 – 12.00 / 13.30 – 20.00 Uhr
Sonntag 10.00 – 12.00 / 13.30 – 20.00 Uhr
Frequencies: Tower 118.65 MHz (119.7 MHz), ATIS 123.775 MHz
Runway: 10/28 1500m x 30m
Website: Airport St. Gallen – Altenrhein

Note: Do not rely on other people to gather information for you – and for the love of safety don’t rely on my notes being correct for your flight! Always verify all details yourself.

St Gallen actually has live webcams so I’m thinking that I might twitter my estimated time of arrival and see if anyone can spot us coming in!

I don’t know a lot about Lausanne but hopefully that’s about to change. After a bit of a refresher in North Weald, I’ll be braving a border-crossing into Switzerland: flying to Lausanne to meet with some people and hopefully to waste some quality time sitting at the edge of the lake looking at France.

My quick reference notes:

LSGL – Lausanne
Date: 14 May 2008
Sunset: 19:00 GMT
Phone Number: Phone +41 21 646 15 51, Fax +41 21 646 15 91
Hours: 0800 am to 0800 pm
Frequencies: ATIS 118.82, AFIS 123.20
Website: Lausanne airport (moves your browser, ugh!)
Useful: Circuit Details
Runways: 18 / 36

Note: Do not rely on other people to gather information for you – and for the love of safety don’t rely on my notes being correct for your flight! Always verify all details yourself.

One of my favourite bloggers, Plastic Pilot, used to be based in Lausanne. He has a video of the approach on his site so I almost feel as if I’ve been already.

I wondered which runway to expect and he told me the following:

Runway 18 has power lines on short final and a downslope. Be ready to go-around. Runway 36 is a bit tricky as you come in from the lake as the terrain on final slopes up. Preferential for no wind is RWY 36.

I can’t say that I prefer either of those approaches but I’m sure it’ll look less disconcerting when I’m coming in. Well, I hope so anyway.

I’m hoping to end up with some extra time in Lausanne to explore. Plastic Pilot was good enough to send me recommendations and a list of interesting places to fly to including what looks like a somewhat exciting approach at Saanen which he recommends trying out, with an instructor, simply for the experience.

Riss gave me a more down-to-earth recommendation:

The Musee l’Art de Brut is worth it, if strange. It’s not your typical museum.

The Museum is focused on a Japanese exhibition at the moment so I’m really hoping we’ll get a chance to see it.

Hopefully I’ll have interesting photographs (and boring stories about my landing) to share with you all soon!

We’ve got a busy fortnight coming up – I’ve done a quick mock-up of the route we are starting to plan. The plane is parked in North Weald (in Essex) so the flying doesn’t start until we get there (the British Airways flight to Gatwick doesn’t count, that’s just a case of arrive at the airport and stand around feeling frustrated!). Then we’re flying south to Switzerland and navigating our way to Lausanne and then on to St Gallen for the weekend. Then, like some sort of psychotic dot-to-dot, we’ll head north with a vengeance to the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides to pick up the wheelchair we dumped to save on weight on the last flight. Just a day or two there before we dive down towards London again, theoretically going to Shoreham but recent news means that looks iffy. I hope I’m wrong!

Then we’ll load up the plane and head home to Málaga via a quick overnight stop at Bordeaux for refuelling. Whew!

I’ve drawn it on Google Maps but that really just makes it clear how inefficiently we’ve made our plans – great zigzags! View the larger map for a more detailed view of our stops.

View Larger Map

I’m working on an article called Sylvia’s Mother at the moment (er, if you are my editor, read “working on” as “finishing off”. I swear you’ll have it by Friday) and wrote about my thoughts before taking my mom and my son up in the Saratoga.

This is from my initial draft. I can’t help but feel that the family flying magazine that the final article is aimed at would not appreciate this.

Every time I thought about it, I ended up with my heart in my throat. My mother and my son in the back of the light aircraft. If I mess up, it isn’t just me. They are trusting me to fly the plane – this plane that still scares the bejeebus out of me. What if I lose concentration and twiddle the vertical speed knob counter-clockwise instead of clockwise and the plane starts to dive dive dive down into the ground and we end up a fiery inferno on some Tuscan farm, last words of what-the-fuck?

I know this is ludicrous. I have, on one occasion, twiddled that very knob the wrong way. The moment the nose tilted down, I disengaged the auto-pilot and tilted it back up. No drama, we lost no more than fifty feet of height. I know the fear isn’t rational. But still. Are they out of their minds?!

So, it’s cut for now, although I might try to rewrite it in a more gentle fashion and re-insert it. First I need to go find out what a bejeebus actually is!

Everything is ready for the next flight. Cliff will do the first trip IFR. We’ll be flying up the coast of Spain and then across to Menorca for a refuel and last minute check before a long water crossing directly to Rome. Then we’ll continue on IFR (so constantly under watch, which strikes me as a good thing) so we can enter the Class A airspace and go directly to the Roma Urbe airfield.

Roma Urbe on Google maps

Click and then zoom out to see the location. It’s amazing, right on the northern side of Rome! That river is handy too, that’ll make the airfield loads easier to spot.

A few days in Rome (yay!) and then we will bundle my mother into the plane and I’ll fly us to Mannheim. Cliff thinks we can route right over my cousins house in Bavaria on the Austrian border, which will be neat. We’ll be high (argh, Alps!) but if it’s clear weather it should still be some pretty spectacular views.

It’s a three-hour flight, which compares really well to a commercial flight: the time you spend queuing and getting your luggage checked in and yourself through security adds up fast so I suspect we’ll make better time than my mother would have with a Lufthansa flight. Certainly more interesting!

I spent formative years in Mannheim and so although I’ve never landed at the airfield, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding the airfield from the sky.

See if you can spot it.

See how Mannheim is nestled in between the Rhein and Neckar? The airfield is just south of the Neckar, which is the lighter, smaller river on the north east. Now you don’t plonk runways in between houses so forget about any built up areas and look for a clear field that could fit an east-west runway.

Found it? Hopefully you’ve zoomed in close and ended up at this lovely airfield.

If you zoomed out and got lost and ended up in Coleman, the US military is likely to want a word with you. So don’t do that. And lets hope that I don’t!

I was watching my log book carefully as I waited for the weather to clear and then, most frustratingly, waited for the plane to be in good working order again. Although I have to admit I was relieved that someone else found the fault rather than leaving it to me.

I then managed to get a flight in just the nick of time: there’s a three-month deadline for taking passengers and, god forgive me, but I still hate the thought of flying that plane solo.

We flew to Angouleme where I made a complete and utter hash of joining the circuit and then overcompensated for the weight of the plane by coming in way too fast. On the bright-side, I have now come up with a cheatsheet of things to review after an extended amount of time without flying. As I get more experienced I’m sure this will become redundant, but at the moment I think it makes a real difference.

• The order of a standard radio call

Silly, but there’s a hideous blank moment the first time I’m asked to pass my message where I think, “I have no idea what to say” and end up stuttering lots. A quick refresher would avoid one stomach cramp per flight, always a good thing.

• Diagram of a standard join

I always end up twisting and turning a plate to work out the angle I need to join the circuit. The problem is that I assume I know what the join will be like and think that one through without considering the other options. I just need to plan in a few minutes of staring at it, test myself on joins in various configurations using both circuit directions and taking into account coming in from an odd angle. I’m just not quick enough to think this through in the air while I’m desperately trying to get the plane to slow the hell down.

• Review emergency procedures on the ground!

It’s all well and good testing myself in the air, quiet moments filled with considerations of what would I do if …. But when I’ve not flown for weeks, it’s a bit of a jump to assume that nothing will go wrong until I’ve achieved radio silence and had a chance to review. I should be testing myself on the ground first.

• Visualise

I learned this in the PPL and somewhere along the line forgot. Visualise the processes needed. Stepping through the planned flight serves as a refresher and more importantly nudges me on the ground about the things that are a bit hazy in my mind.

The Saratoga is sitting in Elstree, we cancelled our flight home when it began to snow. We’ll pick it up in a few weeks — meanwhile I keep saying I want to re-read my coursework from the PPL. No time like the present!

My resolutions.

Short-term:

1) I will get working on Alderney this week and finish it off.
2) I will sort through and post all the millions of photographs gathering virtual dust on my hard-drive.
3) I’ll go back to thinking about this one island at a time rather than get overwhelmed at the total number of islands.

Long-term:

1) I’ll book my travel times and hotels more than 3 days before the day I wish to leave.
2) I’ll do regular updates here aiming for a post a week.
3) I’ll do at least 10 islands this year (don’t panic! One island at a time).
4) I’ll find the perfect fry-up.

Broken down like that, it doesn’t sound so bad…

The Isles of Scilly are said to be the most isolated islands in Britain, which I have a hard time believing — in England maybe, but in Britain? It’s a total of 150 islands (five inhabited) but in line with my other destinations, I’m staying on the chunk of land with the airfield on it.

The Cornwall Wildlife Trust (www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk) do some great PDF pamphlets including “An identification guild to the Carnivores of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly” which I immediately downloaded with excitement. “There are six species of Carnivore found in Cornwall,” is said in the introduction, continuing on to say “None of the Carnivore species are found on the Isles of Scilly.”

Ah well.

There are half a dozen small mammals though, including the “Scilly shrew” which apparently isn’t a reference to the women, and I have a recording form in case I should stumble across one (hopefully not in the hotel room). As far as I know, it’s too late to see puffins but I’d like to go seal watching and maybe even search for orcas. I’ve packed a bathing suit in hopes of experiencing the “sparkling white beaches” and St Mary’s has enough prehistoric sites to keep me occupied for months. And then there’s the intriguing mystery of Lyonesse.
I’m quite looking forward to this!

Finally have confirmed the trip to St Mary’s and the Isles of Scilly for next week. Looking forward to this, especially as I did all the leg-work last month. The flight in looks a bit confusing; I might go a bit of a roundabout route.

I was a bit amused by the local online news, reassuring me that “The proposed strike by air traffic controllers at St Mary’s airport has been averted.”

Well, that’s okay then. :)

What chaos. Isle of Wight is happening as planned, but when it came to Isles of Scilly, we found a definite reluctance to let rooms for 2 nights during high season, when they could get people staying for a week.

So we gave that up and looked at Anglesey instead. Seems there’s a sailing festival happening that weekend and the recommendation of the woman at the B&B we chose was to stay well away until it was over.

Meanwhile, Cliff was looking into Lundy, an island with an airstrip that wasn’t on our original list. It has a 400m runway, “rough ground, rabbit holes.” Not the most heartening of descriptions. He managed to prove that the Saratoga was capable of landing there, not so definitely capable of taking off again. Possibly with an ace pilot. I’m not.

I’m meeting up with my ex-instructor to mess around with some more difficult flying and short-field landings, so we can do a fly-over and take a look at it, but I’m not holding my breath.

Next on the list? Walney Island. Closed weekends. *sigh*

So we decided to give it up for next week, we’ll do Isle of Wight and then drop the plane in Wycombe to get maintenance sorted out and look at options again next week. Perfect flying weather, it’s just the bit on the land that’s a pain. :)

The first stage of this has been quite a learning process. As I’ve worked through the Channel Islands, I’ve realised that I’m trying to do a final draft which is effectively doubling the time spent per section. Now there are big benefits to this, including being able to show people the work in progress, but realistically it’s not the best use of time. The weather right now is good and the likelihood of being able to fly into small airfields is at it’s highest. In the dark days of winter, there will be little or no chance of planning flights, especially to the northern islands, but plenty of time for writing.

So I’ve been struggling quite a bit with tone of voice, tense, transitions and markers and I think that’s the wrong thing to be focusing on right now. I need to do a basic write-up while it’s fresh, locations, history, people, what happened and how it felt. But it doesn’t need to flow, in fact it doesn’t even need to link up. As long as all the pieces are there. I can make sense out of the jigsaw later at my leisure.
Planning for the Isle of Wight and Scilly Isles has put this into sharp relief. Sensible would be to write down now my expectations and worries (600 meter runway!) in preparation for the trip rather than re-writing the previous prose over and over again. I have 16,000 words which means I have enough to cut liberally, always a dream, and I am not relying on hazy memories or scribbled notes, I’ve written the detail.

I do need to work out technical writing issues and the sooner I’m happier with the “house style” for this particular project, the easier it will be. But I need to prioritise the the content over the technique.

…plans are afoot for the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles for the first week of August. Time to dive into those guide books again. As always, any must-see recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Ben, who was going to be flying with me, contacted me on Sunday to say that he was stuck in Copenhagen with a jet whose wheels would not retract.

A nice young man named Alistair agreed to adopt me for a few days, so we flew out to Shobdon yesterday where we got stuck on in the mud of the grass runway and needed 4 strong blokes and a Landrover to tow us back out. The propellor has frightening green streaks on the edges of the blades but luckily only tickled the grass and didn’t run into the ground.
Today has been better, to be fair, I’ve done some decent flying and been given a grand tour of Enstone which has a great club although the runway is somewhat bizarre.

No idea what the plan for the rest of the week is although I am trying to find some brave young pilot who will join me on some cross-country flights for practice (read: keep me from getting lost). At least the weather is good.

I can’t complain really, at least there are plenty of stories to tell.

I’m flying. And I have a plan.

I’m flying to the British Isles. All of them. Well, all of them that have an airfield.

After a lot of peering at Pooleys and pondering maps, it appears that we have a total of 38 islands that fit the criteria of having a runway that is useable (not all of them by the Saratoga, sadly).

First stop is easy: “The British Mainland” … I’ll be flying to somewhere near Oxford and asking a lovely instructor to make sure I’m up-to-date and help me with short-field landings. That at least kills the decision of which country to choose, let alone which airfield.

The intro is written. Dates are set and all the basic research is done for the next three stops: Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney. All that’s left is for me to stop mispronouncing Guernsey.

That, and to start collating information. That’s where this blog comes in. I’ll be posting my locations, my must-see lists and my dates here. I’ll be trawling web forums and mailing lists asking for more details. I’ll be grovelling at people to come here and check that my information is right. I’ll be using it as a scratch pad of sorts, I suppose, while I try to get everything coordinated over a two-year period.
And in the end, this will be the outline for a book about the results: Fear of Landing.