Turweston

On Weds 20th Aug I flew down to Turweston which is about 12nm west of Milton Keynes. Unfortunately I can't remember that many details about this trip (except the obvious as you will see) so this will be a fairly short entry.

I planned to fly at 3000 feet since the forecast cloudbase at the time was supposed to be 2800 feet. In fact I never got above 2500 feet and kept having to descend going below 2000 feet on a number of occasions. Other than this the flight was pretty uneventful. Turweston have some very strict noise abatement procedures which include a final approach which is at an angle of 20 degrees to the centreline until you pass a farm about 1nm from the threshold. This makes for a challenging approach requiring some accurate flying. But it all went more or less perfectly... right until I landed...

The runway was 28 with a fairly breezy wind from 210 so the wind on touchdown was something like 210/13. I don't quite know what I did wrong but I think I landed more or less straight but somehow didn't remain that way. Most likely I still had some crab on but the result was that I started to veer off to the left of the runway and briefly tracked onto the grass! :-( Fortunately it was ok and I managed to regain the runway. Not wishing to make too abrupt a corrective action and risk damage to the nosewheel or tipping over I gently steered back onto the runway swearing and red faced an my ineptness even though no-one could see me. :-) :-(

Taxied in and went to pay my dues and get filled up with fuel. No one was in the tower, but the chap on duty with the fuel bowser however had noticed my landing incident but just laughed and said "I won't say anything if you don't". Anyway, once I'd had a sandwich I set off back and apart steering a heading to keep me well clear of Husbands Bosworth where there was a gliding competition in progress, the trip back went well. And I think the landing back at Leeds on 14 was a pretty good crosswind landing - why can't I be consistent :-(