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Here is a picture of the aircraft that I flew today as part of my move to the Northwest of England. G-BJWW is a Cessna 172 and was a very pleasant aircraft to fly. The club that runs it is called Westair from Blackpool Airport (EGNH). |
Having moved up to the Northwest of England I needed to join a new club and get back up in the air again. I have been remiss in getting up in the air due to having to get the new home in some form of order. Needless to say, the home is still being renovated although we are beginning to get to a point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
It was a lunchtime flight and was more of a flight to confirm to the club that I could actually fly and was competent. My own opinion? I made so many mistakes because I was nervous including almost lining up on the wrong runway. I couldn’t believe some of what I did.
However, we took off on Runway 25 heading out towards the Irish Sea over the Pontins Holiday Camp. At the usual 600 feet we turned north towards Morecambe bay and the Lake District. G-WW performed effortlessly, getting us up to 3000 feet in good time – pretty much over Fleetwood.
MA (the Instructor) wanted me to do a stall so he asked me what I needed to do to prepare for that. In pilot speak – he wanted me to go through the HASEL checks;
H – Height – High enough to recover by 3000 feet
A – Airframe – Check whether we have the right configuration (flaps etc)
S – Security – Hatches, Harnesses anything loose in the cockpit
E – Environment – There is an ABC acronym which means to check for other Aircraft, Clear of Buildings and away from Clouds.
L – Lookout – perform a scan of the area by turning through 90 degrees left and right checking underneath as well.
So … we needed to get to 3,500 feet to satisfy the first piece of the acronym. Once there we executed the Stall and recovered easily. After that MA wanted to do a couple of turns (just dropped 100 feet in the left hand turn) and then we headed back to Poulton which is a Visual Reporting Point for Blackpool airport.
We did a few circuits after that and I wasn’t happy with my performance at all! However, I managed to perform a standard touch and go, a flapless touch and go and finally a glide approach.
The final landing (on Runway 28) – the glide approach went well although I needed to take some flaps off as we were coming down too soon.
Once landed we took the second right (D1) taxiway from runway crossed runway 25 and then back to the Westair hangers.
It was only 35 minutes but it did show me that I need to get back up there again fairly soon.
