VFR flight to Sandown, Isle of Wight

Since passing my PPL Skills Test in August 2014, a trip on the top of my list was the Isle of Wight. Having last visited when I was a child by Ferry the memories were all but gone.

Over 2 years later I still hadn’t made the trip so I decided to ask a fellow Pilot from my flying club to join me for a trip to Sandown for a quick bite for lunch on Sunday 7th May 2017.

Graham who was in the right hand seat for the outbound journey is someone I have worked with on a number of projects for the flying club over the last couple of years, but we have never flown together, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

As I have never flown the route before, we decided that it would be best if I did the flying for the outbound flight. We completed all the necessary paper/online work, refuelled the plane and we were ready to go.

We didn’t get off to the best of starts when I got a bit lost while taxiing to the runway at Biggin. This was extremely frustrating as Biggin is my home base and I know the airfield very well. A mixture of misunderstanding instructions from ATC and missing a turning were to blame.

If found myself blocked by a number of large jets and needed to turn around to get back to where I was meant to be.

With the mishap sorted, I taxied to runway 03 where we departed to the north.

Just after take off I made a left turn taking us to the West, passing abeam Kenley gliding site where we changed radio to Farnborough LARS West. We continued west until reaching Guildford where we turned onto a track heading south, avoiding Gatwick’s controlled airspace. We continued south until we reached the coast with the Spinnaker Tower and Portsmouth on our right as we proceeded to cross the Solent.

With the runway in use at Sundown being 05 and a left hand circuit, I decided to join cross wind by following the Isle of Wight coast past Bembridge and descending on the dead side.

Sandown was quite busy with other aircraft joining the circuit and we were informed on the radio that an aircraft had overrun the runway earlier in the day and was still stuck in the marshes at the end of the runway, this all added to the extra concentration needed for the approach.

Although the visibility wasn’t great for the majority of the journey, we landed on runway 05 after an extremely pleasant flight.

After shutting the aircraft down and paying the landing fees at the top of the radio tower, we had a quick lunch and a chat before Graham flew us back to Biggin Hill.

Thanks for the lunch by the way Graham!! 🙂

   

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While we were busy nattering and eating, the wind direction had changed, and after some walkers who were crossing the runway had cleared, we departed from runway 23, to the south.

It was then that I noticed that I had not secured my window view camera properly and it had turned around to film the luggage compartment of the PA28 for the entire duration of our flight back home. There was absolutely no footage that could be used.

Graham had planned to take a different route back to Biggin passing around the southern and eastern sides of Gatwick’s controlled airspace.

We headed directly for Selsey Bill from Sandown taking us south of Goodwood and north abeam Worthing and Shoreham. We continued east until reaching Grahams house where we did an orbit and a ‘wing wave’ in the hope that his Wife might see us.

Our route then took us overhead Tunbridge Wells, and Sevenoaks where we then got in contact with Biggin Approach. At this stage, the one remaining GoPro camera ran out of battery, so didn’t manage to capture the remainder of the flight.

Although the wind had changed at Sundown, it had remained the same at Biggin Hill. So we joined from the east, for runway 03 with a usual left hand circuit.

I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Sandown and really can’t wait until I can go and visit again.

View the video on my YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/QuXSRXLdltk