No matter which way I looked, all I could see was cloud. Well that’s not strictly true, I could also see rain, spray and gloom. And that was just on the road in front of me.
“I don’t think you’re going flying Dad.” uttered the 14 year old insightfully, barely perceptibly switching focus from the phone that seems permanently tattooed to her face these days.
Almost immediately she resumed, with an outstretched arm, moving her lips and posing/pouting in the trademark style of a teenager making yet another video of themselves. Ah well, she seems to like it…
It’s not an exact science, being a part time flying instructor. As I’ve written previously, lining up your own availability, your students and the weather is a bit like the Swiss cheese model from human performance, but applied in a more positive use case.
You need lots of things to go right (as opposed to in an accident scenario where lots of things go wrong).
For those of you that don’t know, the Swiss cheese model is an analogy that accidents rarely happen because of one factor, its a combination of many factors and all of those ‘holes’ lining up that lead to many of the accidents you read about in the popular press. Here’s a handy link to Wikipedia to explain more.
However, for the most part, especially during the summer, we do get a lot of good flying at Attitude Airsports – especially here in Morecambe Bay where we benefit from the ‘Bay Effect’. Even so, the winter months, particularly lately, seem to drag deeper and deeper into the year. Its nearly May, and last night I went to the shop and was wearing gloves and a goose feather jacket for goodness sake!
Or maybe I’m just getting old? Nah, can’t be that…
Still, we are now seeing the first positive signs that winter is over, spring is doing its thing with daffs popping up and buds appearing on trees, and a Summer of aviation feels like it’s just around the corner. The farmer has moved the winter sheep off the airfield and James has started cutting the runways. Most of the lakes, erm I mean, puddles, have drained away and the Bay Flying Club‘s winter talk series has come to an end this week. All we need now is for someone to tell the weather and it’ll be game on!
But what does a pilot do when they’ve planned their day around a day of flying and somebody forgot to cc the weather gods on the email?
When you’re learning to fly, we cover a lot of different topics in the NPPL syllabus including, how to fly safely, how to find your way around and not get lost, I mean, ‘temporarily uncertain of your position’ (spoiler alert, pilots don’t get lost, ever!) We also discuss the technical aspects of how your aeroplane works, how you work (or what can happen when you are not at your best) and even the weather. But what we don’t cover is how best to use your time when you planned to fly, made all your arrangements and the weather just isn’t playing ball – which happens a lot in winter in the the North West of England!
Invariably the clubhouse ends up full of people drinking tea like its on tap, force feeding themselves Hobnobs like its their last chance to eat anything ever, punctuated with intermittent glares at the wind sock with a look of utter disdain and finished off with a really good moan about, well, anything that comes to mind. But usually this involves taking the mick out of any fellow pilot who isn’t there suffering like they are – fair game really.
I’ve found the best way to use my time is to think about my day ahead and how I’m going to modify the plan for whichever students we do manage to fly with. Or, as in the case of today, commit my ramblings to this blog – although there may be a split opinion on whether this is a good thing or not. And no, I won’t be doing a poll on that!
Anyway, the weather may have put paid to any hopes of aviating today but I’m optimistic that the Summer, is almost, here…
Dream of light winds and blue skies everyone!
If you enjoyed reading this you can read some of my published work on other pages on this site and my book, Inside the Cyclone, is available on Amazon at the link below.
Dan Roach Flying Author 