UK Instrument Rated Private Pilot and Instrument Flight Instructor
Bristol Aero Club is one of the few GA clubs with aircraft and instructors equipped to train disabled pilots. Each year we take on two or three FSDP students for an intensive 2-3 week course and usually get them to first solo level. Some become members and we’ve recruited one or two others directly. Private flying isn’t a cheap sport, so finding a pilot with the combination of disability, adequate
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The flight instructors in our club at Gloucester work hard and fly a lot. But like many, they may rarely fly very far away nor do much IMC. I took two for a short demonstration flight to Cardiff and back in the TB20. One had no IMC rating, the other had one but it has lapsed. Neither had much experience of retractable/VP aircraft and autopilot with most of their instructing
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The choice between flying and driving is sometimes quite easy There’s something about a short flight that always seems much more enticing than a long drive – so a tradeoff between about 1.5 hours in the aircraft vs 7 hours in my car seems an easy decision. Even if there’s still 2 hours of driving involved. I had a business presentation to make in Cambridge for an afternoon and tried
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I’d booked G-CORB, our shared TB20, for the weekend away with my wife. The weather forecast was quite changeable in the days beforehand, and we decided not to go far. The Isle of Man had been on our target list, fairly easy to get to with just over an hour’s flight. The benefit of a shared aircraft is that you aren’t under any pressure to fly long hours or even every
Continue readingTime for a short Bristol Aero Club expedition with two other members, John and Russ. We’ve flown on day trips before, typically practicing our IMC skills, but all of us were keen to journey a bit further and we agreed on a three day jaunt to Scotland. We’d booked the PA28 aircraft and time off on the understanding that if the weather wasn’t suitable then we might head off in
Continue readingThe EuroGA Forum organised a fly-in to Roskilde near Copenhagen which my co-owner Rich and I decided to attend. We took Friday and Monday off work to make this a full four day tour. I suggested a route-plan of Gloucester-Antwerp-Groningen-Roskilde-Rendsburg-Bremen-Texel-Gloucester which was what we ended up flying. Rendsburg was included because it has the cheapest fuel in the area; Antwerp and Texel would be our border control entry/exit points for Schengen
Continue readingLow Cloud but warm and (not too) windy Low cloudbase of 900 feet (broken 600) at Gloucester meant there was very little activity. It was forecast to clear during the afternoon, and the weather looked better to the west, so I picked on Caernarfon as a destination for a day trip in the TB20. Dave, who I’ve flown with at Lyneham came along for the ride. This was very much
Continue readingIt seemed a straightforward job. Fly as passenger to Coventry to collect the Turbo Arrow and return to Gloucester – just a 20 minute flight each way. The weather wasn’t entirely favourable but once the early morning fog had cleared I didn’t foresee any problem. John, my co-owner, kindly offered to fly me up to Coventry and conducted the flight with his usual calm and measured discipline. I’ve not actually
Continue readingMixing Business with Pleasure It’s rare for me to be able to combine business with aviation, but the opportunity came up to visit a couple of sites conveniently near to airfields in Wales. Comparing 2 hours flight time with about 10 hours driving (the roads aren’t very good there) is a very persuasive argument. Not that I normally need one to go flying, but it helps justify the expense. Unfortunately
Continue readingThree pilots sharing some practice Instrument Approaches A plan to share some Instrument flight practice with a couple of IR(R) rated pilots at Bristol Aero Club was thwarted by the club aircraft going tech at short notice. So instead, we all took to the air in my shared TB20 G-CORB and flew to Cardiff and Exeter in turn. Since I can’t instruct, I was P1 throughout and flight time wasn’t
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