My regular flying companion, Dan had to pop in to work just down the road from the airfield so we agreed to meet there. It suited me as it gave me plenty of time for a leisurely A-Check and to clean the windows.
Good to his word, Dan rolls up at 10:00, we jump, start up and taxi. However, a few other people had the same idea and after waiting a good 15 minutes at the hold behind a twin doing IR training and VERY leisurely power checks, it’s my turn to line up. Off we go and I elect to climb to FL50 above a modest inversion and set course to Snowdon.
The scenery was fantastic and I got some good photos as floated along serenely.
I changed from London Information to Valley Radar and headed towards Snowdon. Amazingly I had mis-identified it on the map (I totally missed the big white box with the Snowdon spot height) and successfully navigated to what I thought was the highest point – hey – where is the narrow gauge railway and café on the top? Yes – that peak just to the SW does look bigger doesn’t it? So I headed over there and yes, there it all was looking very dramatic. Dan held it in the turn while I took photos with the side flap open.
Headed towards Caernarfon which we easily spotted from Snowdon and had to loose height pretty fast. Did a couple of orbits and some ‘S’ turns approaching the airfield. This and a lack of food made Dan feel no so good, but he held up. Did the low 1300’ overhead join for 02 followed by the 800’ circuit and landed. Backtracked and parked up. The bad news was that the museum was closed, but we had a filling lunch instead and had a brief look around.
We loaded up then off over the spit of land south towards West Wales (Aberporth). Got a good service from Valley and were warned of Typhoon a few thousand feet above and ‘manoeuvring’ – we never saw him. It seems a shame that Llanbedr is now closed, but it did mean we could fly along the coast and overhead the now disused field.
We trolled along heading broadly south and coastwise (but about 1 mile inland to avoid the danger area). Called up Aberporth who told us the danger area was closed, so we could carry out any approach we liked. The wind was influenced by the cost and was veering all over the place generally at 90 degrees to Aberporth’s only runway. I made an overhead join and went for 08. On final, the very helpful radio chap said the winds had changed and now favoured 26. I elected to continue as it was a minimal tailwind component.
We landed and parked up. I wandered up to see the chap in the tower who was very informative and told us all about the UAV trials we had heard were now common at Aberporth. He gave us a few tips for the flight back to Gloucester and some excellent low level routes around the mountains (perhaps next time). Aberporth was very quite a nearly deserted. Someone was doing their QXC in a Cessna 152 and was headed to the next airfield. He sounded OK’ish on the radio, but was clearly a bit tense – I remember mine well – he did have an excellent day for it with easy navigation in that area though.
We paid the usual £10 landing fee and took off. On recommendation, we climbed to 2000’ and headed to Strumble Point, taking in the view of Fishguard at the Irish ferries on the way. We turned east towards BCN and admired the view. London Info handed us off to Cardiff Radar. It was pretty busy near the beacon and we had a couple of traffic warnings – two of which we spotted in plenty of time – two pairs of eyes really are far better than one! I think Dan is better at spotting air traffic but I am better at spotting airfields!
We climbed to 3500’ to clear the Brecon beacons then saw the hills fall away as we crossed the border into England. We switched to Gloucester approach and picked up the ATIS. They sounded very busy and gave us an unusual ‘report at 10 miles’. The we got another unusual ‘report at 5 miles’ – they must be incredibly busy! Indeed they were. I was approaching from due west and could see straight down 09 which was the runway in use – but no point in asking for a straight in approach with this volume of traffic!
Did a standard overhead join and put her down on 09, taxied, filled up at the pumps and parked on stand.
I had taken a careful measure of the fuel at the start and at every stop using the dipstick and again now. Then I double checked fuel burn by filling it up to where it was when I started the day. Bottom line is that with the airtime I flew, even with the extended 20 minute hold before I got off at Gloucester, I still averaged 38 lph. I had a reliable 70 litres left from full tanks – so this tells me that I can be very confident about 3.5 hours airtime with plenty for diversion and orbiting. Part of what I wanted to do today was to test the fuel burn, endurance and dipstick accuracy to give me confidence for some of the long legs coming up on the ‘Europe 2006’ Flyer Forum trip to Italy in May this year. I now have the required confidence!
What a great day and what a great days flying. I can’t wait to start ‘limbering up’ the May trip with some cross channel forays soon!
