Saturday, November 18, 2006

Night Circuits

I fancied a bit of night flying as the airfield is open nice and late and it has been over a year since the last time. So I booked the aircraft for Friday evening.

The weather leading up to it was poor. A front was going through with low cloud, rain and gusting winds, but the forecast showed the front well clear by the late afternoon, so I hoped the Met Office knew what they were talking about.

I rang the airfield at 15:00 and they advised that I book for circuits and put me through to the tower. The tower seemed surprised that I was planning on doing them that evening and asked if I had seen their TAF’s as they had earlier been forecasting 25G35. I said that I had, but that the weather now looked much better. They agreed that is was about 220/10, but that would be a full ten knot crosswind on 27. My (inspoken) reaction was frankly – big deal! A ten knot crosswind would make it a bit more fun that’s all. So I booked out and they said if I didn’t show, it would be no problem.

Anyway, I drove off at 15:45 and weather looked OK, with light winds and clouds easily at 2500 with the very odd one or two at 1000’ – fine for circuits.

I got the plane out and checked her over carefully and took my time, using a torch as the light was going. One of the flying schools had clearly given up for the night, but another school was warming up for some night training.

I started the plane up at about 16:50. I noted a fiar old mag drop on the left mag and thought ‘oh great – a plug has gone!’. But I decided to at least taxy for power checks as I might be able to ‘burn it off’ by running the engine lean for a bit. Sure enough, in the normal power checks, rough running on the left mags. So I leaned to mixture and ran the power and temperature up for 30 seconds, then tried again – hey presto, no problem now. Probably just some fouling by being run too rich.

The club aircraft got out ahead of me and was obviously off on a short cross-country and I had the circuit to myself as I lined up on 27 and started the take-off run. Yes, it was a bit different in the dark and I rotated a bit later than usual. However, the climbout was OK. I turned onto crosswind at 500’ and started to hear rain on airframe, so I climbed on cautiously read to drop the nose of the lights on the ground started to disappear, but up to 1000’ circuit height and no problem.

The first circuit was fine, if a bit wide. My approach was a bit low (a common mistake at night) so I powered up a bit a climbed to the correct approach path. My flare was a bit high (again a common mistake), but I had enough energy to ‘feel it down’ without stalling and dropping her in.

The second circuit was much better. More the normal shape and a better judged approach and landing.

The third and fourth circuits and landings were OK. The final one was going OK. I called on final and the tower replied ‘err report final – err no, clear to land, wind is…..’. I had to laugh, he was obviously so under-utilised and bored that I caught him off guard! He probably had the last laugh though as I rounded out late and barely had time to flare before I touched. It wasn’t hard at all, but it may have been a ‘three point landing’ – not a great idea in a nosewheel aircraft.

Only a quick five night circuits, but good fun nevertheless. Even my familiar Arrow felt different at night and I had to concentrate on what I was doing and looking at.

Next up must be some more IMC refresher training prior to my revalidation in December / January.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Playing with the gizmo's

I had a couple of hours spare on Sunday afternoon and the weather looked OK (some clear bits, some low scattered cloud and some showers), so why not!

As I made my way to the airfield, I was engulfed in a fairly widespread shower which certainly covered the airfield and areas to the south with low cloud and poor visibility, although bizzarely, there were gaps in the cloud to the north with plenty of aircraft buzzing about and excellent visibility.

It was also a race week at Cheltenham, so the airfield was loaded with larger private aircraft and very busy with helicopters shuttling to and from the racecourse some four miles distant.

So I booked out for a local to the north. By myself this time, I decided to give the avionics a good ‘going over’ partly to cross-check them against each other for accuracy and partly to refresh myself ahead of my IMC revalidation.

By the time I was lining up, the showers had drifted off a bit to the west and it looked OK to the north, so away I went. There was some very scattered low cloud at 2200’, but I was easily up to 3700’ and well clear of the airfield. I tried a few steep turns just for the sheer hell of it, then settled into playing with the avionics.

First I tracked BCN and HON VOR’s with the VOR and DME and cross-checked the results against the GNS430 GPS with the OBS set. Both VOR’s accorded very nicely. I confess I did have a ‘double take’ when VOR 1 was clearly picking up a strong signal and I could ident the DME, but no ident on the VOR. After a couple of minutes, something stirred at the back of my mind as I remembered that the GNS430 needs you to select Id on one of the buttons – DOH! Glad I remembered this now rather than looking a fool with an instructor!

However, the ADF was a bit of a different matter. It was generally 5 – 10 degrees off to the right and fairly consistently so. I know these things are hardly accurate and certainly not precise, but it is worth getting it looked at.

I then tried a couple of radio calls on COM 2 and these worked fine. Basically, all of the avionics were fine with a slight qualification around the ADF.

I have to say that I quite enjoyed being by myself and having a ‘play’.

I got the ATIS and gave Gloucester a call. I got a standard overhead join for 27 right hand. I spotted the aircraft in the circuit as I descended deadside and it looked like I would slot in well. I gave a call on the downwind leg and was No3 to another aircraft about to turn base – I looked for him and lo and behold, I spotted him quite quickly – damn, this is all going way too smoothly!

Did the usual checks, especially the red/green/blue finals check and settled into a nice approach, maybe five knots too fast, but I bled that off. Over the boundary fence and continue descent while over the large displaced threshold, round out and flare. Hold off, nose up a bit, hold off some more, nice nose-high attitude – all of which is rewarded by a gentle squeak of the tyres as they touch. Nice one!

It is minimal wind and I can’t quite make the intersection without hammering the brakes, so I don’t try and aim to taxy from about 20 metres past. However, Gloucester anticipate this and give me a short backtrack (splendid chaps).

I taxy back and shutdown. I know it is sad to get too excited about a quick local, but I have to say I found it very enjoyable and refreshing. I was busy, I reminded myself about a few things, renewed my faith in the avionics (not that it was wavering) and generally felt really good. Funny that!