From Wycombe Air Park the journey is quite straightforward and as it is within driving distance it is ideal as a ‘Plan B’ destination when weather wipes out flying trips elsewhere. Only by air can you appreciate the overall plan of the site, only on foot can you feel the atmosphere and touch the stones. Ideally you should do both.

Archaeologists tell us that prehistoric Avebury took shape over 600 years, eventually becoming a huge monument consisting of two small stone circles surrounded by a large stone circle of at least 98 stones, some weighing more than 60 tonnes. This outer stone circle is surrounded by a ditch with a high bank. The circle of stones is visible from the air, but more striking is the huge ditch and its accompanying mound. Excavations have shown that the ditch is now only a third of its original 30 foot depth, while the earth work surrounding the circle would have towered a good twenty to twenty five feet above that, a huge project for people who had only primitive tools to mould their monument from the surrounding chalk.

Stonehenge, which is now so famous that it is impossible to visit or fly over, would fit inside the Avebury circle approximately 130 times.

Avebury suffered in the middle ages when local people found a way to break the huge standing stones and carried them off to incorporate in buildings. Other were virtually buried under the rubbish of the era, yet enough remained to leave the site impressive, and King Charles II visited it and walked up nearby Silbury Hill early in his reign.

Two avenues of stones completed the monument and linked it with others which (although no longer visible) made up a huge Neolithic complex, such that some have speculated that Avebury was the capitol of the country in prehistoric times.

The mystery of Avebury is its purpose. Although it is possible to find many astronomical alignments in relation to the stones, no-one is certain what the circle was for especially since at the time of its construction its most striking feature would have been the ditch and surrounding mound, not the stones themselves. It is strange to think that when the Romans conquered Britain, bringing with them roads and other aspects of ‘civilisation’, the stone circle at Avebury was already unbelievably ancient, dating from around 2500 B.C

Later legends have associated Avebury with King Arthur, his father Uther Pendragon and the earlier kings. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the originator of many of the King Arthur stories does not distinguish between Avebury and Stonehenge. Given the age of the stones it does not seem surprising that if Merlin were to choose a place of great significance to declare the young Arthur King before all the lower Kings of Britian, Avebury may have been that place. Hence the stones take their place with Tintagel and Glastonbury in the Arthurian legend, fuelled further by the existence of Merlin’s mound, where the legendary magician was imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake, just a few miles away in the grounds of Marlborough college. Marlborough itself, one of the most ancient boroughs in Britain, supposedly takes its name from the hill or as it was known, Merlin’s Barrow.

We all learn about the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans in school history. We learn about the Norman’s, the War of the Roses, the Tudors, the Stewarts and onwards to modern times, but the ancient peoples of this island are largely ignored, their culture still shrouded in mystery. Avebury is a site which reminds us of this islands long history, the builders of Avebury laboured long before Boadicea, before Rome, before even Homer, yet the monument remains relatively unknown, in the shadow of its smaller sister at Stonehenge.

It is likely that in the future this monument, like Stonehenge, will be fenced and protected. We suggest you visit while you still can.

so have business and family priorities. Still slowly Flying Families emerges
from under the pile of work and begins to reestablish itself.

Flying Families will start in the US with a new web site called
FlyingFamilies.net. Go and have a look. The articles from FlyingFamilies.com
will slowly be amalgamated and adapted. I’ll try to include video as well as

pictures and give the site a more dynamic feel.

Cessna 182

As I’m not in the UK I will have to rely on you to keep me in touch with news
and routes from the other side of the pond. I’m especially interested on
anybodies opinion on how the new LARS is impacting everybody. I’ve already had
some negative feedback!

An FAA sectional section

Is this due to years of looking at CAA charts? Who knows. If you look on the example fragment of a sectional you’ll see an airport depicted. This is the magenta circle with bumps at the 3pm, 6pm, 9pm and the midday positions. The white line indicates the rough orientation of the runway. The fact the the circle is filled in indicates that is is a hard runway with a length between 1500 ft and 8069 ft. The colour magenta for this airport indicates that it does not have a control tower. If it were blue then the this would indicate that it did have a control tower. The tick marks around the outside indicate that services are available during normal working hours. What constitues normal working hours is accurately defined in the Airport Facilities Directory, but by default means 10am until 4pm Monday to Friday.

If the airport runway is outlined in solid color with no circle around it then this is a big runway (greater than 8069 ft. Seabases are shown with the magenta anchor inside a circle (the one on the chart, without a circle indicates it is for Emergenct seaplane operations only).

Abandoned runways are shown in the same way as on CAA charts with a cross through them. Strangely enough they are all magenta in color.

Military airfields are shown with a double circle either with the tabs around them, indicating they are civil / Military or withour indicating, you probably shouldn’t land there unless you’re flying an F-15.
Airfields with an “H” inside the circle indicate heliports. Aerodromes with a “U” inside the circle indicate “Unclassified”, i.e. Area 51 or aliens please land here. An “F” indicates an “Ultralight Flight Park”.

That’s about it for the actual symbols. Next time we look at the numbers which can be written in the vicinity of the aerodrome. There’s a lot of those!

Big Runway

Checklists are not Do Lists! I’ve heard that a lot recently. Especially from American instructors. What the heck do they mean? You have a checklist. It has a list of items on it. You go down the list and make sure you’ve carried out all the items right? Don’t misunderstand me but the last time I was demonstrating my flying skills to an American, they watched me set up the aircraft for Take off, finger on the checklist items. Mixture (Full Rich), Throttle (quarter inch) etc. After an hours flying in the local area, she was convinced that I could fly alright, I’d just learnt to use the checklist all wrong. She had been thinking

“Jees. Can this guy even fly? He has to read all the items to start the engine!”

It is a common mistake, I’m told (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it) that Checklist are used as do lists. Even high hour pilots do this. Eventually they discover their mistake and correct it.

Here’s an example from the commercial world. The handling pilot (not feeling well) had set up for approach. The captain read out

“Altimeter 992 millibars”

The First Officer read repeated

“992″.

Unfortunately the First Officer had 29.92 inches set on the altimeter.

That’s a difference of 500 feet. The verbal prompt alerted the captain to the error. Something that the Do List would not have.

One option for getting out of the Do List mentality is to get your instructor to read out the checklist after you’ve set up the aircraft, I know that’s not practical for a flight test (or check ride), but it starts to get you into the right frame of mind.

So set up the aircraft from memory (certainly important items should be memorized) and then check against the checklist. That’s why it’s called a checklist!

Anyone For Tea

I’m a great fan of London Information. Despite the name’s implication “London Information” is available all over the South of England and all over Wales. I remember the first time back from Alderney it was the first friendly voice after navigating across that great body of water called the Channel. It felt like a returning spitfire approaching the White Cliffs of Dover.

“London Information. Algie, here. Put the kettle on, looks like I’ll be back in time for afternoon tea”

“Glad to hear you’re back Algie. I’m putting the kettle on now.”

I recently had to use them flying to Caernarfon. Squawking 1177, which identifes you to all radar agencies as talking to London Information, which then allows them to get in touch with you. Talking to London also gives you a great insight on what else is going on in a huge area. From North Wales all the way to the south coast! At the end of the day it was good to hear that many pilots were “coasting in” – which was a phrase I had not heard before, meaning that they were crossing the coast at some location, such as Shoreham.

“G-ABCD, coasting in at Shoreham”

It sounded friendly. It sounded like they’d  put the cards in their spokes had cycled up to France and now they were just coasting in back down to good ‘ol blighty. That’s what it sounded like. And they were busy. Very busy. So busy that I didn’t notice that they couldn’t hear me when I tried to talk to them. Even though my radio was working before we left Caernarfon it was not working, or at least working intermittently by the time we were 10 minutes out. Luckily another useful transponder code 7600 came in useful. This alerted Distress and Diversion that somebody was flying an aeroplane with a failed radio. I could hear what was going on, but nobody could hear me. I could hear Swansea, talking about me. Discussing what type I might be a how fast I was and where I might be. Luckliy, after changing head-sets I finally fixed the communication problem and was able to assure Swansea that I was clear of their area. I was also able to pass on a message to D & D, who had found a 7600 and were trying to identify me. I’ve mentioned my visit to D & D in another article. Yet again I was grateful that somebody was looking out for me and that the system works.

So now all we need is a new transponder code to tell ATC when to put the tea on.