UK Instrument Rated Private Pilot and Instrument Flight Instructor
Recent sudden UK government announcements in the run-up to Christmas have been quite shocking and upset many plans. I am fortunate to live in a Tier 2 area and so can still fly, but who knows for how long. Today, I had intended to fly solo to Caernarfon in Wales and even called to confirm they were open the day before, but this is no longer permitted. So today I
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I had put an enormous amount of time and effort into passing the CPL theory exams in 2017/18 which are required to become a fully qualified Flight Instructor. I didn’t want that to go to waste or to have to repeat them. These exams are only valid for three years after the final test and so I decided to complete the practical side of the training and gain my Commercial
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Our third and final stop during our week’s tour of north Ireland was to be Newtownards. This would give us easy access to the tourist area of the Ards peninsula. Ulster’s main GA flying centre is based here – it really is the place to go if you want to learn to fly in the province – and it seems quite a thriving club. The Cloud Nine restaurant was very
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Voted number 1 scenic airport in Europe, the tourist marketing photos of Donegal Airport are stunning. What they don’t mention is that it rains at least ten months of the year and it’s quite a tricky airport to land at in bad weather. It’s also nowhere near Donegal city. But the scenery really is stunning especially when the sun does come out and the locals are very friendly and welcoming,
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COVID-19 restrictions make it difficult to fly abroad for pleasure. The closest European countries require quarantine on arrival or return, and this may change at short notice. Ireland on the other hand has much closer links with the UK and as part of the Common Travel Area has far fewer constraints on travel. My wife and I took a week’s break, visiting both North and South Ireland by landing at
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I had filed IFR from Inverness to Gloucester, with a fuel stop at Kirkbride near Carlisle as on the way north. The weather on the morning itself looked good, I wasn’t in any particular hurry, and so I thought I’d make the most of the day by flying VFR around and down the west coast. Inverness to Kirkbride I’ve flown down the Great Glen before, over Loch Ness and Loch
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We flew from Inverness to Kirkwall via Stornoway in the Cessna 182, flying some more unusual instrument approaches. Stornoway has many commercial flights each day but is one of the few commercial UK airports without a precision instrument approach. Pilots don’t get a glideslope and have to interpret that based on the DME distance from the runway. Adding a little further complexity, there are two DMEs – one on the
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A day off from instruction allowed me to visit some friends who live near Wick. The flight there takes around 40 minutes compared with 2.5 hours by road, making that remote corner of the UK much more accessible. Wick John O’Groats airport itself was NOTAMed open, but operating with restricted hours to allow ATC to have breaks. Commercial flights have ceased completely after both LoganAir and Eastern Airways pulled out,
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The forecast for the day certainly was for strong winds, with a SIGMET warning covering the Highland region. Definitely a good decision not to stay in Orkney overnight. Reviewing the forecast, I thought it feasible to fly a triangle across to Aberdeen, down to Dundee and back to Inverness. We had more than enough fuel onboard not to need to land elsewhere, although I did intend to stop for lunch
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Inverness to Kirkwall Almost five hours logged today in my student’s Cessna 182, flown north from Inverness to Kirkwall for some holds and practice approaches followed by serious VFR island hopping around the Orkneys. There’s always plenty of weather in Scotland and today was no exception, but north of Inverness looked (and was) far better. Rain was forecast to arrive mid afternoon and we had originally planned to stay overnight
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