CPL day 13

Today the initial nav was to Mount Airey airfield about 4nm north of Brough and about 8nm west of Hull. Yesterday I looked at various probable destinations on Google Earth to aid in spotting them from the air, but sods law was that the one I couldn't find was Mount Airey :-( Furthermore, because G-BXLY was in for a service we had to use G-BOVK instead which doesn't have as sophisticated instruments, key in this case being no HSI (which it permanently aligned with magnetic north) and just a standard DI. This meant that I would have to regularly check the DI to ensure it was aligned with the compass to avoid inadvertently going off track.

My planned track was due to take us directly overhead Church Fenton so I'd need to be at 3500 feet aal to remain clear. So planned for that, but once in the air it became clear that I wouldn't be able to get above about 2000 feet. Called up Linton and requested a MATZ penetration (and partially fluffed my RT). However, I didn't request penetration of Church Fenton. Consequently the controller there pussy footed about before he realised he could have handed me directly off to Church Fenton's frequency. This meant that I had to alter my heading to the north to remain clear of their MATZ. When I finally got clearance it was for no closer than 3nm to their field (ie. penetrate the MATZ but remain outside the ATZ), though it didn't matter by then since I'd already altered my track.

Tracked through their zone and once clear made to rejoin my original track by adjusting my heading by 30 degrees to the right for 3 mins before reverting to my original planned heading. While all this was happening the cloudbase was steadily descending and ended up dropping to around 1000 feet agl which meant I had to make step descents to remain clear of the clag along with the rest of my workload. This meant I neglected one my FREDA check despite swearing to myself that I wouldn't! :-( In fact the DI was at least 10 degrees out to the right so the result was that rather than rejoin my planned track I was diverging from it to the right. I only spotted this when I saw Breighton on my left IIRC when it should have been about 2nm to my right.

A correction in track and I was back on course again. Only I couldn't see Mount Airey, at all, anywhere! :-( Eventually Dick helped me out to locate it, and it became evident why I couldn't locate it earlier - because I was so low with the cloudbase being about 900 feet and me at about 800 it was hidden behind a band of trees. Had I been 1000 feet or more above it would probably have been much easier to spot. All the events so far had gotten me somewhat bothered and my brain was frazzled such that Dick orbited for me a couple of times while I worked out my diversion to Ferrybridge (a very easy and well known feature, perhaps chosen partially because of the bad conditions, but perhaps to settle me down) again.

Anyway, we headed off and not long after (with a bit of helpful prompting from Dick) I realised that we were left of track because we should be over the M62 and it was to our right. This was partially because I didn't really know what to use as a GEC until Dick pointed out that the point where the M62 crosses a railway would be a good one. After correcting my heading things panned out more or less as planned, though I had to alter my heading for a wandered DI again.

Can't really remember any more of the details but I think I did a most excellent crosswind landing :-)