VFR to Duxford with my Wife and Stansted Class D zone transit

Since gaining my pilots licence one of the airfields on my list to visit was Duxford to visit the Imperial War Museum and it has taken me just over 4 years to actually make the trip. It hasn’t been for the want of trying, over the last 4 years I have attempted the trip 4 times with either the weather or technical issues with the aircraft (including a frozen shut door and a faulty altimeter) cancelling the flights.

So on the August bank holiday Monday (27th August 2018), we managed to get some baby sitters so my wife and I could spend a day at Duxford. We took the Cessna 172 G-ATWJ for the trip and plotted a route that I know would challenge me more than most of my recent flights.

My wife was a great help taking some of the workload off of me by programming radio frequencies and looking after the transponder along the way.

We departed on runway 28 at Headcorn and left the circuit upwind and shortly after made a right turn towards Maidstone where we made contact with Southend Radar for a Basic Service. Initially we could only climb to 2,100 feet due to some low cloud that was hanging around. As we routed towards the Dartford crossing the cloud cleared slightly and we could climb slightly higher.

After passing over the River Thames and entering the county of Essex our most direct route to Duxford was to pass directly over the runway at Stansted airport. The alternative meant flying around the controlled airspace which would add another 15 minutes to the journey.

With this in mind, before we even departed, I used the online service provided by NATS (https://aup.nats.aero/classdtransitrequest) to pre-notify of my intentions to transit the Class D airspace above London. Knowing that there would be a high possibility that my request would be denied en-route, I also planned a back up to route north east towards Earls Colne and fly around the controlled airspace.

On reaching Brentwood I requested a frequency change to Essex Radar to request a zone transit. They offered me a Traffic Service and coordinated my request with Stansted Director before requesting that a call them on the radio.

To my surprise my request was approved by the really helpful controller on the Stansted Director frequency who requested that I transit direct to the threshold of runway 22 to get me through between inbound commercial jet traffic.

On approaching the Stansted overhead, I was in for a treat as a Boeing 747 took off underneath me and a Ryanair Boeing 737 was on final approach.

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After passing the airfield we continued routing towards the Barkway VOR where my Radar Control service was terminated and we changed frequency to Duxford information to get the details for our approach and information to join the circuit.

We joined the circuit on the left hand downwind leg for runway 24 left and at the time the circuit was relatively quiet. As we descended and turned onto final approach I had to battle to help the plane stable as we experienced some wind shear and turbulence.

After touching down, we vacated at the end of the runway and then taxied past the hangars and displays of commercial airliners where we met a marshaller who guided us to our parking stand.

Our day at Duxford was great fun and great value for money. Entry to the Imperial War Museum for both my wife and I was included in the £15 landing fee. After a nice lunch in their cafe we set off exploring. It was great to see Battle of Britain aircraft such as the Spitfire but the highlight for me was walking through the cabin and getting a sneak peek of the flight deck on the Concorde.

There was so much to see and do that we eventually ran out of time before we needed to return the Cessna back to Headcorn, so there is definitely have an excuse to visit again soon.

I was really impressed by everything Duxford had to offer from the helpful and informative controllers on the Duxford Information frequency, a nice long tarmac runway and everything that was included in an extremely reasonable landing fee.

View the video on my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQSYDNNlU7o