Adventures on Dinosaur Island
{mosimage}To show how the views of the passenger and pilot are vastly different we present here a journey to Bembridge from the point of view of both.
The Pilot
I don’t like last minute changes! I like to plan things ahead of time. That way there are fewer surpises. But guess what! Even carefully developed plans have to be changed at the last minute.
Plan change 1. I had planned to take my son and friend to Bembridge to the dinosaur museum. Unfortunately the granted permission to take the friend was revoked the evening before. Single pilot operations are not to be trusted apparently. Ah well! Another marketing challenge. So it was a daughter instead of a son.
Plan change 2. The last stage of my planning is usually the personal briefing. What’s this! The Red Arrows in my path! And at the same time as I would be there! Another last minute change. The extra workload in changing the pilot log and uploading to my GPS and eyeballing the route all added to the time to leave.
Still, having learnt my lesson from the last trip to avoid the renter’s hurry up, I allocated an extra hour to my booking, which should allow plenty of time for a visit to the museum, a leisurely lunch and relaxed flight back (now avoiding those Red Arrows).
The weather was as good as could be expected. Light winds from the North, and no significant weather. Luckily I was recently re-familiarized with the 35 grass runway at Wycombe and was getting some ‘greasers’ in (can you have greasers on grass?)
The down-side, of course, with good weather is that everybody else is flying as well. There was even a queue at the pumps. A bit like real life? Soon after departing Wycombe with my passenger nicely ensconced (and now getting fairly blase about the passenger briefing “Of course I know not talk when air traffic control are talking”).
Changing frequency to Farnborough radar for the FIS was sensible (especially with the Red Arrows about – and everybody in the air). Then the problem for the day became clear. Farnborough were so busy that all I could hear from them was
“G-ABCD, standby BREAK BREAK, G-WACY Standby, BREAK BREAK, G-RGAP Standby”.
You get the picture. This poor air traffic controller was completely flooded with calls. I Stood by as requested and kept silent, patiently waiting my turn (See Figure 1 – Circling Reading). Did I dare squeeze past Farnborough with the Red Arrows squeezing everybody to the West into a small funnel of traffic without speaking to Farnborough? No way. I waited. And waited. And waited. And called again. Eventually Squawk assigned and 2,400 set I made it past Farnborough. A good lookout was of course mandatory here. No sign of the Red Arrows however.
My daughter seemed intrigued by all the football matches she managed to watch from above. I asked here who was winning.
“The red ones just scored”
At the end of her duty shift the Farnborough controller went of shift (and got many thanks from pilots, who couldn’t understand how she coped).
With Farnborough far behind and Bembridge beckoning we made a smooth right base approach to runway 30. Nearly made it without having to backtrack to the taxi way. Maybe next time.
The Isle of Wight is packed with attractions, but we just headed for one. The Dinosaur museum. OK it’s not the Natural History museum, but it has some good exhibits and is near to many other attractions, including a beach if you have the time.
{mosimage}The journey back was timed to avoid the Red Arrows in time (we would be nearest to their area after their show had finished) and in space (we were at least 10 nm from the zone designated for their use). The best part of the journey back was the sleeping passenger. This is the passenger who many moons ago inspired me to start Flying Families by screaming her head off on an abortive flight to Jersey and distracting me enough to get me into the London Zone. This very same person was sleeping like a baby, while I brought my Cessna steed gently back down to earth to sweetly kiss the grass.
“Oh have we arrived”.
“Yes, we sure have”