Well, we’re finally back in the skies and what a wonderful feeling that is. The last couple of weeks have been quite busy for me as not only did I need to make sure I was current and ready to take back students, I also had to organise the permit for Yankee Lima, or Harriet as we know her, and start to get to know the wonderful but confusingly named Zulu Lima.
I’m sure I’m going to mess that callsign up more than once…
Last week I had a few days off ‘work-work’ so that I could do some ‘flying-work’ and I spent a lot of time at the caravan – that’s something else we’re allowed to do now too – so that I was well positioned to take advantage of the excellent flying weather we enjoyed and could maximise my sky time.
What a great week its been!
Last weekend was my first flight in Zulu Lima, or Hazel as she’s known as she’s named after James’ lovely wife. Now I got the chance to really put some hours in to getting to know this awesome aircraft that James has built to add to the Attitude Airsports Fleet/Airforce *
* delete as applicable
With 100 horses, she’s no slouch and rapidly gets you up to cruise altitude with no fuss or strain. I enjoyed several local flights exploring the stall characteristics, side slipping, lots of cross wind landings (typical for up here) and also, I might add, thoroughly enjoyed myself!
Aside from this, I also refamiliarised myself with the EuroFox after I realised it’d been over 6 months since I’d flown it and James and I spent a happy couple of hours with him trying to catch me out with all sorts of forced landings in various parts of the circuit and throughout the North West.
Well, I presume James was happy as he kept laughing every time he said ‘Engine Failure!’
Also during this aviation themed week I addressed the one advisory from the permit inspection on Yankee Lima (that’s Harriet not Hazel right, stay with me) which required changing the throttle cable adjuster. James came to see what I’d done and said it was a great job (happy days!) before following up with “your wire locking is **** though”, which I knew anyway as I’m not the worlds best at that.
Anyway once all this was sorted and I performed my annual weight lifting event to position the 55kg ballast bag into the passenger seat I then checked and rechecked everything before undertaking the check flight. This is the exciting time of year when I get to fly my little AX3 at 90mph, which is VNE or Velocity Never Exceed in English. This year I made the mistake of looking at the wings during the full power dive just as we hit 90.
Never again…
Luckily there was no flux capacitor in Harriet and so instead of ending up in 1955, I reduced power, eased out of the dive and headed back to the airfield.
Check flight completed and paperwork dispatched, the BMAA turned my permit application around in 1 day.
Hurrah!
Harriet is now legal until mid-May next year.
In amongst all of this I also managed to take my first student pilots up since December last year and it was great to be back in the right hand seat and helping people progress towards their goals. I flew 5 hours with students at various points in their flying journey and it was just great to be doing what I’ve wanted to do for so long.
In fact, aside from some idiot pointing his aircraft straight at me during one flight and being where he really shouldn’t have been which resulted in us having to perform some sharp manoeuvring its been the perfect first week back really.
More of the same this weekend please!
Dan Roach Flying Author 