Frequent Flyer

“Can we do tight turns in this one Dad?”

This one, being Yankee Lima my 1995 AX3 microlight.  I could see how this was going to go.

“Ok Elektra”, is probably what she wanted to hear, but instead she got the rather more boring – “well yes we could, but I’m still getting used to the handling, and she is quite old, so I’d rather not.”

She didn’t even try to mask the disappointment on her face. Nine year old kids eh?

However apart from that devastating disappointment for my youngest, last week was a rather enjoyable week of flying, as I managed to get airborne on 5 separate days; albeit that the last occasion was the Sunday of the next week, but that’s detail.

I’d been earthbound (apart from being inside big jet powered aluminium tubes) since the middle of July – which is also, as an aside, one of the reasons this blog has been so quiet – so when I returned from my summer break and had one more week off work I was determined to fly, lots.

However, cue the Great British weather.  Arriving as punctual as ever, without an appointment, to put in yet another unwelcome appearance and flush any thoughts of flying from my mind.

For one whole week, I looked out of the window, checked the wind speed, and sulked.

On the occasions when it was flyable, we had other commitments or my girlfriend was having her own flying lessons which I wasn’t a bit jealous of… honest!

By the way, isn’t it great when your other half suddenly realises what all the fuss is about and gets the flying bug?  She even came up to me the other day and said the most amazing sentence I have ever heard, or think I will ever hear.

“Dan, you know those savings I’ve got that I was going to invest, can we just put it towards an aeroplane?”

I mean, Carlsberg don’t do girlfriends, but if they did…..

Back to my “not flying” – so I had a whole week off and no flying, then at the weekend I managed to go up in Yankee Lima on the Saturday.  This was perfect as I have been wanting to get more flying in in my little AX3 and everyone else was busy doing their own thing giving me the chance to get my eye back in sans passengers and with no pressure.

Heading for Fleetwood in lovely flying weather

I just went for a little local flight around the Fylde coast and then headed back for a cup of tea, happy to have had the nerve to do my first landings on runway 28 at Rossall, or as I call it, the short one.

It’s not actually that short for my AX3, at 260 metres, but the hedge at the far end is very visible as you push the throttle forwards, especially to someone like me who learned at Barton and had over 600 metres of runway to play with.

My first landing, was actually rather more of an “arrival”. So, jumping straight back on the bike seemed to be the best plan and I decided to immediately back track and go up for another circuit  This resulted in a much nicer landing which I was happy with so I decided to call it quits for the day.

Never finish on a bad landing is my motto.

Anyway, cobwebs well and truly blown away, I then arranged to take my eldest daughter flying on the Tuesday evening from Barton in a C42.  The mission was to take in a tour of the North West and some familiar land marks, and also to talk with Warton Radar for the duration of the flight to ensure I got some radio practise – instead of just lurking and squawking 3660 (Warton’s listening squawk).  We transited the controlled airspace of the MATZ and as I turned at Rossall and informed the friendly controller he chirpily replied

“ah, that’ll put you nicely into conflict with my IFR traffic on an eight mile final.  Would you mind doing a couple of right hand orbits for deconfliction?”

No problem, I didn’t want to get in the way of any big twin engine aeroplane and it was all good practise, and the controllers couldn’t have been more helpful.

Transiting through Blackpool’s ATZ over a runway slightly longer than runway 28 at Rossall

The other reason we were in the C42 and not “Harriet” was because I needed to maintain my currency, and I’d also promised my youngest daughter (not the one flying with me) she could be my first passenger in the AX3.

Never promise kids anything.  They never ever ever forget anything.

Ever.

EVER.

Fortunately, the following day (Wednesday), I did get to keep that promise, and took Elektra flying in “Harriet”.  We arrived early in the evening and it was quite windy, so whilst I thought about whether to fly or not to fly she waved her arms around in front of her phone videoing herself on something called “Musically”??

I was hoping the wind would drop as has been predicted, but it didn’t, well not much anyway.

In the end I looked at the windsock, which was fairly horizontal, but also fairly constant, and fairly straight down the runway and decided to go for it as I’m a fairly optimistic sort of chap.

She enjoyed herself, but was a little cold, and also slightly confused as I explained to her that “no, this plane doesn’t have a heater, and even if it did, the holes in the front and back that are there for the ‘manual air conditioning system’ would ensure that the hot air would blow straight out of the back of the cockpit anyway.”

Suffice to say, she will wear a jumper next time we go flying in YL on a day that is not a hot summers day – so pretty much any day in the UK then.

We flew around similar landmarks to the previous day’s flight, but from the North rather than the south, and also enjoyed a basic service from Warton again.

Piers as far as the eye can see

Thursday evening. And it was my eldest daughter, Isobel’s turn to experience AX3 flying for herself.  Her own particularly memorable quote of the day came as we cleared the runway and began to climb.

Isobel “Oh, it actually flies?”

I mean what do you say to that at 150 feet?

To be fair to her, I had reminded her during the pre-flight briefing that she had helped me to put the wings on but nevertheless she must have had seriously low expectations when she strapped in next to me.

Anyway, to my surprise she actually seemed to really enjoy herself, particularly when I took her over my sisters house and they were waving to one another (I’m not sure my sister could actually see us in the cockpit mind).

To set up this unlikely rendezvous I’d texted my sister earlier on and asked her if she was in and if, by any chance, she knew the co-ordinates to her house (who doesn’t?) Strangely she didn’t but I managed to find it anyway by looking it up on google maps and then correlating the position of the house to the roads and mixing it with a large dollop of basic finger in the air guesswork.

Still, it worked out ok, and Izzy also enjoyed broadcasting a Facebook live feed from the passenger seat too, although it wasn’t quite Rory On Air quality.

My fifth and final flight for that week was on the Sunday, when Kaz and I took to the air for her first AX3 flight as well.  This was particularly enjoyable for both of us because as I mentioned earlier in this post Kaz is learning to fly now and understands what is going on.

I took us out down the coast, flying low level down Pilling Sands which was fantastic.  Really thrilling flying and all at a speed that wouldn’t get you arrested for speeding on the motorway too!

Patrolling the coast in the early evening

At this point an untimely learning opportunity presented itself during the climb over Fleetwood. I noticed quite a bad vibration coming from one of the engine support struts (not sure if that’s what they are actually called), so I throttled back a little and thought about my options.

I wasn’t that keen on losing the engine off the front of the plane as I kind of like it where it is. It’s not that I was particularly worried about a power off landing, what was more on my mind was that I suspected that losing a big chunk of weight off the front of the airframe might have affected the centre of gravity and consequently the handling somewhat…

With all this in mind the only realistic option was to cut the flight short.  On returning to Rossall and with the vibration worsening we did a straight in approach to 02 and I made my best landing to date in the AX3 – I’m pretty sure not wanting to go around and risk full power probably had something to do with it.

Once on the ground I had a look to see if it was anything obvious and on inspection I could see there was a problem with one of the engine mounts. I suspected this was causing the vibration, so definitely a good decision to cut the flight short.  Its not a costly fix, so I’m hoping it will be all sorted by this weekend as I want to continue to get to know my aircraft.

So five flights in eight days, four of them in Yankee Lima.

Flying it seems, is at times, a bit like waiting for a London bus…