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!