Belfast Aldergrove

August has been a very busy month with constant demand for flight instruction. Nonetheless, I was determined to take at least one flight in my shared TB20. My IR qualified friend Adam was keen to join me on an airways flight somewhere, and we settled on Belfast Aldergrove, staying nearby overnight. It’s the one large airport in Northern Ireland that I hadn’t yet visited and enabled a reasonable but not

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Old Warden

Shuttleworth Collection, Old Warden

I’ve spent most of my time this summer as a full time flying instructor. The risk is that you stick to the syllabus, fly only to a few nearby airports and almost forget what it’s like to go places. While I have made a couple of day trips in my TB20, today I had blocked out some time to fly with another club member (John) for a sociable landaway. Old

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Baltic Tour 9 of 10: Lübeck, Germany

Bydgoszcz to Lübeck The sunshine in Bydgoszcz wasn’t matched by the low cloud IFR reported at our planned destination of Lübeck, so we took full advantage of the 12 noon checkout at our hotel and delayed our departure to 1pm. I’d reviewed the route, checked the weather and NOTAMs, and expected this to be a fairly straightforward VFR flight. I filed my flight plan just before checking out. We took

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Baltic Tour 6 of 10: Spilve, Riga

It would be about an hour’s VFR flight from Tartu (Estonia) to Riga (Latvia) – a little longer than a direct flight due to military restricted zones. I looked into which airport to use there. Riga international has a poor reputation from GA pilot reports: it is considered expensive with poor service, long delays and no AVGAS. Spilve is the GA-only airport close to the city centre, but requires careful

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Baltic Tour 5 of 10: Tartu and Tallinn, Estonia

Today we would reach Tartu – our furthest destination after which it would be ‘downhill’ all the way home. It would also add a new country for me, Estonia, which borders Russia. I had researched landing at Tallinn airport, which although a capital city, isn’t particularly busy. Sadly there is a mandatory 500 Euro handling fee which ruled that out. A popular alternative is Parnu to the south west, which

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Baltic Tour 4 of 10: Västerås, Sweden and Turku, Finland

Another day, another country. The plan today was to fly across to Turku in Finland. The bad weather front was forecast to clear Turku by late afternoon, so I thought that if we stopped en-route to explore another Swedish town, we could arrive later in the day when the bad weather had cleared. I had previously intended to land at Västerås ESOW hoping to meet one of my ‘remote’ students

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Baltic Tour 2 of 10: Aalborg Denmark

After a busy weekend in Germany, we were quite glad to make just a short hop north into Denmark rather than flying all the way to Norway. We had visited Copenhagen before and were interested to explore a regional city on Jutland. After departure, it was a VFR flight with a slight initial route to the east to reduce the time spent over water. We remained with Langen Information, changing

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Strong winds at Hawarden

It’s been pretty windy this month. A low hours PPL visited the club to ask if we would be flying today. He thought not because it seemed a bit windy but wasn’t exactly sure of the limits. It afforded a discussion between us and another instructor not just about what limits to apply, but why. The first thought is about crosswind because this tends to be the limiting factor. Our

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Rotterdam Parkrun

My pilot friend Adam is also a keen fan of Parkruns – a free 5 km organised run held at many local parks on Saturday mornings. They started in the UK in 2004 and have spread to 22 countries, attracting almost 3 million runners in the UK alone. Participants have dreamt up a range of different goals, not just faster times, and one includes running at a location with each

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Splashdown at Welshpool

I’d not been flying our TB20 at Gloucester much over the winter due to weather and other commitments. A short landaway would revive my currency on type and I selected Welshpool as a suitable destination. I had also wanted to explore possible options to visit National Trust and similar properties during the summer months – Powis Castle is within walking distance and the gardens were open. Mid Wales Airport, as

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