Le Weekend - Samedi

Mostly CPL instruction is Monday to Friday, 9-5:30. But one of the instructors, Roger, is part time and is available for weekends if required/appropriate. So on the Friday I'd arranged to go flying with him at about midday on the Saturday. Unfortunately he phoned first thing in the morning to cancel as he 'd not been able to sleep a wink that night or the night before and he feared he was coming down with a cold. A shame, but the last thing I want is a sodding cold!

I'd booked our aircraft from 15:00 anyway, so I could use that slot to do a bit of solo flying as I still need a couple of hours. I was going to take one of my friends from the gym flying, but not only was he not available but the weather was pretty grotty. I set off on my own in a visibility of 12 or 15k (can't remember which) but it was pretty poor and I couldn't see all that far. Not too much of a problem as such as I was planning to to some PFLs and position fixing. The PFLs didn't go too bad - would only have died a couple of times :-S but I still need to work on my vital actions, checks and mayday calls to get them more slick. Did have a close-ish call with first a Robin flying school aircraft out of Leeds and then a microlight - what kind of fools fly on such a poor vis day?! Oh yeah, that would be me too... :-) Just goes to show that even on a crap day, you still have to keep your eyes peeled as there will always be someone out there no matter what the conditions.

Tracked the OTR VOR for a little way and did a position fix between OTR and POL and quite bizarrely when I tuned in POL I was bang on the heading that happened to be on the OBS at the time. I really need to buy the VORTRAK attachments as it's so much hassle to do a position fix without them, and they have been recommended as excellent diversion planning tools also.

Headed back to Leeds and was inbound to Ecup at the same time as another aircraft. Couldn't spot him for toffee in the murk and ended up deciding to reduce speed by about 20 knots to let him get well ahead as I knew he was a bit ahead of me but that I was faster. Didn't spot him until I saw him turning onto finals - damn I hate crap vis! Misjudged the landing a bit and needed to squirt some power on to avoid thumping it onto the deck. Still, another hour bites the dust...