FlyerDavidUK

29th August 2021 Foreign / Landaways

Club expedition to Kerry, Ireland

I’ve organised a few international flyouts with other members of the Bristol Aero Club at Gloucester in recent years, venturing to Sweden and Austria. Last year was a washout due to COVID, and again this year wasn’t looking promising. I spotted that the regulations had relaxed enough to allow those who are double vaccinated free passage to and from Ireland without any tests. The only additional paperwork is an Irish

12th August 2021 IFR Flights / Landaways

Belfast City

Co-owner Nic and I flew our TB20 from Gloucester to Belfast City Airport for a daytrip, visiting the city, docklands and Titanic Exhibition. Daytrips to France are again possible at present despite COVID travel restrictions, but we preferred options for a buddy flight within the UK. We had enjoyed our day to Enniskillen and I proposed Belfast. I hadn’t visited for some 30 years and wondered how life had changed,

2nd August 2021 Landaways

Doncaster

A daytrip to Doncaster in the TB20 from Gloucester, landing at Doncaster Sheffield airport in Yorkshire, voted the UK’s best passenger airport by Which? magazine in 2019. I’m always looking for opportunities to fly to new airports, and there are still a few regional UK airports that I haven’t been to. Adam, a good friend and also an IR pilot, offered to join me and support me as a pilot’s

18th July 2021 Simulator

Flying into OshKosh virtually with PilotEdge SimVenture

Around 10,000 aircraft fly into the AirVenture, the world’s largest annual GA event, held at Oshkosh in Wisconsin USA and attended by 600,000 people in 2018. Special procedures apply to achieve such a high volume of continuous arrivals and departures, with dedicated controllers, a 50 page NOTAM and dispensation from specific FAA regulations. Even if I had wanted to attend, COVID restrictions would prevent that this year, and the challenge

4th July 2021 IFR Flights / Landaways

Teeside International (formerly Durham Tees Valley)

My niece got married last year but we couldn’t attend due to COVID restrictions. So instead we planned to fly up for the weekend, stay in the same hotel where they held the wedding, spend the day and have dinner there with them and close family. The Blackwell Grange hotel in Darlington is only ten minutes taxi ride away from the airport. A little more than one hour flight time

1st July 2021 Landaways

Rochester

I had a spare day of not instructing and the TB20 at Gloucester was available. Given only short notice and with fairly poor weather visibility, my co-owners were unavailable or preferred to not join me, so I flew a solo landaway. Although it’s much more sociable to fly with others, it can be quite refreshing to have some solo time as a change from the busy dual instruction of recent

18th June 2021 IFR Flights / Landaways

Enniskillen via airways

A day trip to Northern Ireland in the TB20 from Gloucester. Our second new group shareholder had missed out on flying the aircraft during lockdown and after completing his differences training was keen to see what it could do. Nic already had extensive experience of flying around Europe but mostly VFR in smaller/lighter aircraft. So we agreed on a day trip together and after some discussion selected Enniskillen, a VFR

16th June 2021 Other

Ramp check at Gloucester

Ramp checks are common in commercial aviation but relatively rare in the wider General Aviation world, so it was a surprise to see six CAA inspectors arrive by minibus at Gloucester Airport. I was instructing at the club and somehow managed to miss their attention, but they did check another co-owner of my shared TB20 and also one of the other instructors at the club. The team were courteous, polite

12th June 2021 Landaways

East Midlands

One of the new shareholders in G-CORB, my TB20, asked to join me for a day of buddy flying. Various options were considered but we ended up agreeing on a four leg route involving Tatenhill (near Nottingham), East Midlands, Sywell and back to base at Gloucester. One of my bucket-list airports has been East Midlands, a regional airport and a fairly important freight hub – the runway is long enough

22nd May 2021 IFR Flights

Oban to Gloucester via airways

Today was the day to return home. We had enjoyed our extra couple of nights away and awoke to a lovely sunny day, with a good forecast for weather for our trip. We had a leisurely breakfast, strolled back to the airport, paid the landing fee and prepped the aicraft. I had filed an IFR flight plan using Autorouter for 10am local time and we were almost exactly on time.