I'll huff and puff and blow your plane down!

Since that great day on the 10th February, the weather has been truly terrible. So I put myself down for at least some circuits on Saturday afternoon weather permitting.

During the week, I had some email correspondence with a TB9 pilot in the USA who responded to the advert for the front spat of our now defunct TB10. We agreed a price and shipping details and I spoke to other members of the group and agreed to take it to the airfield on Saturday for Mark to pick up and ship. He runs a packaging company, so packaging it would be easy. So I rolled up to the airfield at 11:00 and met Mark. He was due to do some circuits but decided against it due to the weather. The weather was nice, scattered cumulus at 3000’ BUT a howling wind – Gloucester were giving 050 at 25 gusting 38 kts – sporting!!

However, he did want to have a play with the Garmin GNS 430 – so I suggested rather than him run the battery down on the ground and me come back in the afternoon, why not both of us go up for a local, I would fly and land and he could play with the GPS to his hearts content. He agreed (while at the same time thinking where his next of kin might find his will).

Anyway, we filled up to tabs and trundled off to runway 04 – so the wind was very gusty but at least pretty much down the runway. I could certainly feel the find during taxi. Power checks complete, I line up and give it full power (making a note to hold the plane down and rotate about ten knots faster than normal). Anyway, no sooner have I finished the brief ‘runway rolling’ checks the check of the airspeed shows 70kts and increasing fast! I rotate at 75 kts (10 kts faster than normal) and am amazed at how little runway we used and how fast we are climbing – this thing feels like it is on reheat!

I get the gear up and the gusty wind is making this climb a lot of fun! I climb on the runway heading and decide to get above the clouds (although that would take me sub-zero, there are plenty of gaps to come back down through). We climb quickly to FL55 and I level off at that. Obviously a lot smoother up here although of course the GPS groundspeed is saying some very interesting things to me depending on the heading!


I bimble about over the Malverns, which have a light dusting of snow from the showers during the week. I do a few steep turns – it is great fun to do a level steep turn and ‘fix’ the wingtip to a point on the ground – so it looks like you are pivoting around a point.


Mark plays contentedly with the GPS and I show him that great OBS function to track a direction into an airfield. I snap a couple of pictures off through the open side window.

Coming up to an hour, thoughts turn to the landing and I head back to Gloucester. The ATIS is still giving 050 28G38 odd – this is going to be fun! I descend below the cloud and am given a standard overhead for 04 left hand circuits.

The deadside descent is easy with such a wind and we cross upwind nicely at 1000’. I have to crab a lot into the wind to hold ground track. The downwind leg takes an incredibly short amount of time, but I get everything done and haul her round to base. I pull the MP back and wait, then push the blue VP know fully fine. Airspeed is within limits, but I elect to take only one stage of flaps. RED / GREEN / BLUE – all good – OK, here we go onto finals.

I call finals and am cleared to land. I keep the speed well up from the normal 75 decaying to 70 to more like 85-90. I bit high, but I can lose that easy enough. I am getting buffeted and use ailerons and rudder to keep things right side up. I can certainly feel the gusts. Numbers coming up… now I am over them. Keep the descent going, bit more, crabbing a little….wind must be a bit off centre-line. Airspeed about 85 – hard to tell, but groundspeed looks OK. Keep going – NOW – flare and hold off – rudder to kick it straight – wow, a gentle squeak – tyres have touched – dump flaps and pull the power off.

We are down. Damn – the palms of my hands are sweaty! Mark peeks between his fingers – yes, we are down! Hmmm... maybe this wasn't one of my better ideas!

I certainly give up on the idea of circuits and taxi to stand.

Well – what an interesting flight. I am grateful for Gloucester’s three runways which pretty much means you can land into wind most times – I wouldn’t have fancied that as a gusting crosswind to any great extent. Anyway – good practice and good for the soul.

We had a cuppa in the Aviator cafe on the airfield. I have rarely seen so many people in there - all I can think is that they fancied seeing the planes wobble and dance their way vaguely skywards with the off chance of a bit of carnage!

Next flight maybe I will aim for White Waltham or Old Sarum – oh and must do some IMC refresher training and start thinking about re-validation.

I can report that Snowdon is still there!

The weather was forecast to be perfect on Friday. Recently arrived high pressure would mean a cold, clear day with little wind. Too good to resist, I took the day off, booked the plane and planned for my long awaited trip to Caernarfon with a bimble around Snowdon. But as the day was so good, I turned it into a ‘round Wales’ trip taking in West Wales (Aberporth), then to Strumble Head and east back to Gloucester via BCN.

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!