CPL day 8 - second nav trip

This and all subsequent nav trips are going to be as would be done on the test - you get a destination to plan to for your first leg and then a couple of minutes before you arrive at that destination you are given a diversion destination to plan for in the air and fly to.

So, a relatively easy one to start with - leave the zone by Dewsbury and then plan a leg to Winterton (which is about 5 miles north-north-east of Scunthorpe. From Dewsbury set my planned heading and noted down the ETA of 43 and pointed out the M62 as being to the left as planned for my GEC. Dick pointed out that motorways are not good features for GEC as you could still be to the left, but 30 degrees off your desired track and it would still be left; it would depend on your angle of approach and where you would cross which not suitable for navigation. A better feature he pointed out would be that big urban area of Wakefield just to the left of the nose - oh yeah, that would be better!

Anyway, carried on with my planned heading and altitude (2000 feet) and the power stations of Ferrybridge and Eggborough appeared down the left as expected, and my halfway point of Snaith (that we saw the day before) arrived just to the left of track as planned and a minute ahead of schedule. Put in the revised ETA of 45 as if we were one minute ahead at half way we should be two minutes ahead at destination.

Continued on with the heading as everything was looking good. Picked up my main feature of Goole as expected to the left of track. Struggled to find the funnel features I'd picked of the cables across Trent Falls and Flixborough as neither was easy to pick out in the dull light, but everything was still good with the track because I could see I was tracking to the north of the bend in the river. As we came up on Winterton there wasn't a lot of easy features to positively identify it by, but the instructor pointed out that it was the only big town in the area.

He then gave me the diversion destination of Melbourne (no, not in Oz, but 10nm south-east of York). Drew on my line and eyeballed the heading 330 and did a TTT noting that instead of two minutes after the original ETA as expected, we arrived one minute before it at 42 and three minutes ahead of the revised ETA. Revised the true heading to be 325 and then applied a max drift correction of 12 degrees left to it to give me a heading of 313. The distance was 15nm and at roughly a mile and a half a minute the ETA was 52. Noted that down on the plog but, ahem, that's all I wrote down.

Anyway, my halfway point came up on track and on schedule and I duly arrived overhead Melbourne on schedule (if I remember correctly since I didn't note down the ATA on the plog). Then tracked the NDB back to Leeds, partially IMC and did a reasonable approach and landing.

In the debrief Dick was ok with the general flying, altitude and heading keeping put pointed out that I need to fill in the plog better.