First flight of 2020! Family sightseeing trip to Beachy Head
With the weather at the tail end of 2019 being fairy wet, keeping current has been a challenge. The problem with your home base being a grass airfield at this time of year, when you have a few days of rain it has a knock on effect often meaning that we have some flyable weather but the airfield is waterlogged. This has been increasingly frustrating as of late and has made me look back on my time based at Biggin Hill where I never had these problems.
Knowing that I needed to keep current I speculatively booked out the PA28 G-SEXX on Saturday 4th January but was prepared to have to cancel given the weather forecast of rain in the preceding week.
It just so happened that my wife’s uncle Nigel was visiting from Germany for the festive period. He has been an aviation enthusiast his whole life and has been an ambition of his to fly and sit at the controls of a light aircraft. He was keen to join me on this flight but I didn’t want to get hopes up either the weather or a waterlogged runway likely to cancel the flight.
On the morning of Saturday 4th January, the weather was definitely not a problem, we had clear blue skies and very little wind. So I gave the air traffic control a call on the phone to see what the state of the airfield was like following some heavy rain the night before.
It was good news. Although parts of the field were waterlogged, the manoeuvring areas and runway were boggy but operational. So Nigel, my father in law Roger and I all set off on our way to Headcorn.
On past visits to the UK Nigel has often visited Eastbourne and I know he likes the area. So I plotted a flight to take us along one of my favourite sightseeing routes in the south of England – Along the Seven Sisters cliffs to Beachy Head.
Before departing, I got a briefing from Air Traffic Control just to make sure I wouldn’t get stuck in the mud. With the aircraft already fuelled, we were ready to go.
The conditions meant that only 2/3 of the runway was usable, so we entered runway 28 with the maximum permitted length possible and after a long take off run, departed towards the east.
After passing 800 feet we made a left turn towards the south and departed the Headcorn ATZ. This is where we changed frequency to Farnborugh LARS East to request a Basic Service.
It wasn’t long before we had the coastline in our sights and our track had us heading towards the seaside town of Hastings. As we got closer to Hastings we made a slight right turn taking us overhead Bexhill-on-Sea and on a direct track towards Eastbourne.
At this point I decided to alter our route slightly. It was mainly so that I could get some good shots on the GoPro’s of the Seven Sisters cliffs and Beachy head and had only at this time did I realise that I had mounted the window view camera on the left hand side of the aircraft.
Buyers viagra stores in canada have the opportunity to choose the kind of flavor they need. generic viagra pill Safed Musli is another powerful herb to improve stamina, male potency and strength. Since today’s market gets to be more likely to smoke or use recreational medicine viagra for women uk compared to their older counterparts. How MRgFUS works? The MRgFUS is a special medication came in the market known as ‘caverta’. cialis generic overnight
This meant that if I continued on my current track all I would get footage of is the lifeless sea view. So I decided to route directly to Seaford and might a left turn going slightly out to sea so that we all got a good view of the cliffs and Beachy Head as well as capturing the footage on the GoPro. The scenery was stunning!!
We continued on to the town of Easbourne where we made a left turn to head back in land and back towards base.
On our way back to Headcorn, I decided to pass over Bewl Water reservoir. It is a great landmark when navigating visually so treated my passengers to an orbit of the reservoir as we were descending back towards Headcorn.
After completing the orbit, we requested a frequency change back to Headcorn Radio to get the airfield information for our approach. They were still using runway 28, with a left hand circuit.
Our track took us over the town of Staplehurst which positioned us nicely for a left hand downwind join. The approach was uneventful and we touched down smoothly on the the rather soft grass of runway 28.
This was a great flight with family and one of the pleasures I get out of flying is taking passengers who really get immersed in the experience, especially when they are also aviation enthusiasts. All of this made the trip even more special.
Watch the video on YouTube now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSweEZd0_nQ