hour building progress so far - part 2

Tuesday was a washout.

I was expecting Wednesday to be the same, but Leeds was luckily in a window with heavy rain further north and south. Had been planning to go to Carlisle but the METAR there showed low (<1000ft) cloudbase and it was on the fringes of the northern rain band, so I decided to go to Caernarfon instead. Had been there before as a passenger so knew the route was quite easy.

Out via Keighley and tracking the VOR into Pole Hill (POL) and then outbound taking towards the Liverpool zone's VRP of Seaforth. Called them up and asked for a zone transit which they agreed to readily as my RT was good and to the point. Transited their zone at 3400 feet (if I remember correctly) to cross the Wirral and into North Wales. Initially could almost see the summit of Snowdon (see photo), but the cloudbase came down quite rapidly to less than 2000 feet, and considering my track took me over a ridge at 1900 ft I thought I'd have divert round it, but luckily the cloudbase lifted enough briefly to fly over. Then was instructed by Valley to transit the Menai Straights not above 1500 ft which wasn't a problem as the cloudbase was worryingly coming down all the time :-(. By the time I got to Caernarfon it was 800-900 ft at times which considering the overhead join was supposed to be at 1300 ft with circuit at 800 ft posed a bit of an issue. But managed to join overhead at 1200 ft and did a reasonably tidy circuit and ok landing. The navigation and plog worked out really well, and heading and altitude holding was generally quite good.

After a quick drink and snack set off again as didn't wanted to get stranded by weather or cloudbase. Did a slight modification of the route back to follow the coast which worked out better since the cloud base was still very low until Colwyn Bay. Didn't get a zone transit on the way back as I forgot to ask for one on initial contact, so had to cross the Wirral (see photo of Liverpool with the Wirral in the distance) below 2000 ft. Tracking the VOR back to POL went a bit wrong however as I set my heading and kept losing the VOR radial. Realised after doing a FREDA check that the DI was 30ish degrees out! Consequently was significantly too far left of track managed to get back on track and tracked in ok, but must keep an eye on the DI and perhaps do more regular FREDA checks. Landing at Leeds was ok as far as I remember.