CPL day 7 - first nav trip

The weather was looking good, at least until the afternoon, and ideal for nav training. Dick gave us a fairly simple route to plot - leave the zone via Ecup, route to Castle Howard, then down to Snaith and back up to Ecup. It was a trip where Dick would not say anything about the nav and would use it as a measure of how up to scratch we were on out navigation. Myself and Dave who is at the same stage in the CPL both planned it as we saw fit and took it in turns to do the trip and Dave got the dubious pleasure of going first. His nav and plog went more or less according to plan - me found both destinations, and was on track and on time (as per revised ETA), so I knew the marker had been laid down. At least I knew what to look for when finding Snaith which I'd never been to before.

The cloudbase had fortunately risen to above my planned 3000 foot cruising altitude which would enable a request of a MATZ crossing of Linton rather than a MATZ penetration. Nevertheless, I would still request a penetration because the top of the MATZ is 3000 feet and it's a courtesy to request it just to be safe. After handover to Leeds Approach I requested a climb to altitude 3000 feet and to contact Linton to get ahead of the game. I think they asked for me to stay not above 2000 feet (the usual VFR clearance when leaving the zone) and remain with them until I'd left the zone. Once I had been released to contact Linton I requested aMATZ penetration (though I fumbled my RT a bit on passing my details) and got cleared so everything was good. The track was good most of the way on the first leg and the navigation features popped up as expected. At halfway I was one min behind of schedule which required revising my ETA at destination to be two minutes later. Arrived on time and the altitude and heading holding had been good.

The second leg went more or less the same as the first with an ETA and track correction required. After turning at Snaith and heading back to Leeds the fun started. There was a large shower washing in over Ferrybridge power station and the ATIS was reporting CBs and rain! As I tracked in we entered the shower and the visibility almost vanished! I could still see things beneath me on the ground and spotted Sherburn to the right since the shower hadn't reached there. But ahead was impossible because the sunlight from behind the shower lit everything up and that combined with the rain streaming over the cockpit meant all I could do was fly my heading on instruments. It became a bit more bumpy (had been quite bumpy anyway) as a result of passing beneath the CB but we had the Leeds NDB tuned in and our track matched the ADF needle which meant both that we were tracking in the right direction, but more so that the CB wasn't a TS (or the ADF needle would have been swinging all over the place or pointing at the centre of the TS. Still managed to spot my halfway point and was on track and on time. Once we'd been cleared to enter the zone and were positioning for downwind right for runway 14 we popped out of the rain and into the clear and sunshine, perfect timing :-) Everything calmed down, there was no more bumpiness and the wind dropped to something like 230/04. Finished off a good trip with a good approach and a pretty good landing.

Had a quick individual debrief with Dick where he was happy with the trip but pointed out my tendency to navigate too much by looking for every little feature (micro-navigation), rather than pick three or four main features and fly by them.

That was followed by a longer debrief with both Dave and myself where Dick laid down the expectations and required CPL standards for navigation and also key points for nav in general and for each leg of the trip and various other useful things - way too much to put in here. But suffice to say I'm not too far off where I need to be and just need to fold in some of these new ideas/requirements, so I'm a happy bunny!