Landaways

November sunshine in Pembrey and the Gower

The plan for today was to take a friend and two of his teenage lads up for a landaway from our club’s Kemble base. Simon had asked to fly over Carmarthen in Wales, where a friend has a house in Ferrybridge nearby. This is only a few miles away from Pembrey airport, which has been on my list of places to visit for a while, so the destination was quickly

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Landaways

Coventry Club Flyout

Club Flyouts As a relatively new PPL, I’ve enjoyed the “buddy flying” at the club over the last year, where I’ve shared flights with other pilots in the Lyneham club. With a view to increasing this and also putting something back into the club itself, I’ve been trying to start off a more regular club flyout program with the full support of the Lyneham club committee. With the club having

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Landaways / solo

Solo to Popham

Change of plan Andy had kindly offered to take me for a flight on the club’s Arrow – an aircraft that I’m not qualified to pilot myself. This is a faster version of the PA28 range, with retractable undercarriage and a “wobbly prop”. Andy had completed two hours of differences training and so was keen to consolidate this with a few flights. I don’t believe it’s worthwhile for me to

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Licences

How EASA FCL affects a UK Private Pilot

UK Private Pilot licensing changed on 8 April 2012 when EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) FCL (Flight Crew Licence) regulations came into force. The intention has been to standardise the rules across Europe, where previously there were many national variations. After a five year transition period, the majority of European private pilots now operate on EASA PPL licences issued by their own country authority. Qualifications/ratings, training courses, exams and skill

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Landaways

Haverfordwest

Great weather for a landaway We had been enjoying an “Indian Summer” of warm weather at the end of September, and I was looking skywards during the week hoping it would last for the weekend. I’d arranged to take a friend, James, for a flight and hoped to go west to Cornwall or South Wales. Andy Hawkins was also planning a flight on Saturday, so we agreed to share a

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IMC Rating

Passed the IMC Skills Test

After 6 months of training and having completed the full IMC syllabus twice (at different flying schools), I was getting to the stage where I just wanted to finish this off. Weather initially looked dubious The weather at home wasn’t good – dark clouds and impending rain. A quick look at the weather report for Oxford showed winds from the North – giving me some concern that the airport would

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Landaways

Another couple of willing victims

Although I’ve been spending a lot of time and effort on my IMC training, I also wanted to enjoy the benefits of my PPL through landaways and sharing these with passengers. I’d discussed taking a friend up for a trip some months back, and we had settled on a date – today was to be the day. Dave asked if his 14 year old daughter could come along too –

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IMC Rating / Training Received

IMC Training Day #15: Practice Approach completion

The plan for today – instrument approach signoff My target today was to get signoff on an instrument approach. I’ve done quite a few of these, and have been lucky enough at Lyneham to have had the opportunity of PAR (Precision Approach Radar – a talkdown by ATC typically only available at military airfields) as well as SRA, NDB and ILS methods. The only type I haven’t done is GPS,

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IMC Rating / solo

Some solo IMC practice

…with a safety pilot of course! After Saturday’s full day landaway, today’s Bank Holiday Monday flight was intended to be a shorter local flight focussed on IMC practice. I didn’t want to have a full lesson with an instructor so instead had arranged to make a local flight with another club member (Dave). He would act as  safety pilot on our flight from Kemble. Kemble was fairly busy – it

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