hour building progress so far - part 3

Thursday was another washout :-(

Fully expected Friday to be similar, but it was a fantastic day and ideal for completing my mandatory CPL 300nm QXC (Qualifying Cross Country) trip. Had been pondering a variety of routes in recent days, but in the end settled on Leeds-Bourn-Shobdon-Leeds. Did all the necessary preflight checks including checking NOTAMs, but here I made an omission. I use a program called Notam Plot which plots out all the notams on a map and you can superimpose your track on it and also apply a filter to show only those which are relevant to your route. I did all that and checked en-route NOTAMs, but forgot to check the airfield ones. As luck would have it, both the airfields I was visiting had NOTAMs - Bourn because there was "intense pleasure flying" and Shobdon because there was an aerobatics competition. As it turned out luckily there was no problems, but I must make sure to check both enroute and airfield NOTAMs in future.

Anyway, back to the flying. Flew a very similar leg down to Bourn (which is about 5 miles from Cambridge) as to Spanhoe, and in fact passed overhead Rutland Water (see photo), the Wittering MATZ and Spanhoe en route (easily spotting the grass runway again), before extending on to Bourn. As warned when I phoned for PPR the circuit was very busy and quite challenging as you have to keep your eyes peeled and wits about you and your situational awareness has to be really good. Did a really quite good job of joining and slotting into the circuit and controlling my speed suitably in the circuit and on approach, only let down by a below par landing.

Had some refreshment and a chat with some of the many GA pilots there - the "intense pleasure flying" was a fly-in for GA pilots who then gave trips to various children in aid of the Burnt Childrens Charity. Felt somewhat guilty that I crashed their event and then left without taking any children flying, but I was on a schedule.

Took off and routed direct to the Daventry VOR and tried to establish a flight information service with Birmingham Approach fairly early on. But they were evidently extreemely busy and I was told you to standby and didn't get a callback for nearly half an hour! You don't realise how much value a flight information service is until you don't have the comfort of one. While in this limbo state I did pass quite close to a glider which popped out to the left and below by maybe 500-1000 ft which I no doubt would have been warned about if I'd had a flight information service. Anyway, for both this and the first leg my altitude and heading holding was pretty good. Having had a chat with one of the CPL instructors and the CPL examiner realised that while the tolerances for a CPL are much less than for a PPL, as long as you are on top of any heading/altitude drift and take positive action to correct it it's not a problem. Consequently I'm a lot more comfortable about that aspect of my flying being nearer the required CPL level than I feared it might be. Navigation and plog to Shobdon was pretty accurate and landed pretty much spot on my ETA with a good base join (no overhead joins because of the aerobatics), approach and reasonable landing.

Filled up with fuel (£1.70/litre - ouch!) and thought I might have to do a LOT of dishes as I only had 35 quid on me and their credit card machine wasn't working with my bill being £131.33! Luckily after having had a sandwich they had it working and I coughed up and got under way. My initial navigation went a bit to pot on the track towards Cannock and again I ended up way left of track and again it was down to a large error in the DI which I didn't spot till too late. It somewhat screwed up things up because now my track into the Trent VOR would have taken me over the site of the V Festival (see photo) so Birmingham Approach had to suggest a vector to avoid it. Another NOTAM failing here - I knew about this one but didn't mark it on my chart since it wasn't that near to my planned track. In future I must mark these things on my chart and keep close eye on the DI, perhaps more frequently than a standard FREDA check. Anyhow, once I arrived at Trent everything went much better and I tracked outbound on a radial pretty closely and timed another good descent into the Leeds zone, topped off by an excellent flapless crosswind landing. All in all a very satisfying and successful QXC! :-)