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I went flying for the last time last night in G-BNXD, lovingly known as X-Ray, Delta. A colleague from Fujitsu Services and I had tried to arrange to go up together for some time. KevinW has got his MPPL (Microlight PPL) and was thinking of flying to Southend sometime and it seemed like a good opportunity to get a feel for the airfield and the environment.I’ve posted the details of the flight in my logbook on Google Spreadsheets. |
The Flight Path that we followed can be viewed in Google Maps. We took in the sights of the QE2 Bridge across the Thames, Hanningfield and Abberton reservoirs and then back to Southend.
Kevin did quite a lot of the flying from just south of the Thames all the way to Abberton reservoir and turning towards Southend. I was caught out by Air Traffic Control (ATC) when they asked me to “turn left towards Burnham-on-Crouch” as Burnham is not actually marked on the map – there is a splodge of a town but it isn’t labeled. Anyway, I had a good idea where it was and as we went over it we radioed in as to where we were and were given a straight in approach to the airfield.
The only other notable point was that the PAPPI’s were out. These are the four red/white lights that help you determine if you are on the correct glide path to land at the airfield. It meant that my approach was not as good as I would have liked but I was happy with the landing.
Kevin and I then went off to the B52 for a quick bit of refreshment before going our separate ways.
It was another lovely experience in amongst the chaos of moving house.
Gotta go.
