Second Leg Video – Part Two – Flying from Durham to near Carlisle
Written by David Pollard on October 10th, 2009First Leg Video – Newcastle to Durham Tees
Written by David Pollard on October 9th, 2009Apologies for camera angle and lack of ATC, which should be sorted for next clips…….
GPS Track of Solo Cross Country
Written by David Pollard on October 9th, 2009Legs as follows……
First Leg – Newcastle to Durham Tees Valley Airport
Turning Point – supposed to be Testos roundabout, but was Nissan Car Factory
Second Leg – Durham Tees to Carlisle
Turning Points – our house & Hexham Racecourse
Third Leg – Carlisle back to Newcastle International Airport
Fantastic Day’s Flying – Solo Qualifying Cross Country completed
Written by David Pollard on October 9th, 2009Flight 37 – 8th October 2009 – 1210 – 42 minutes – Total so far – 38 hours 4 mins
Flight 38 – 8th October 2009 – 1335 – 1 hour 6 minutes – Total so far – 39 hours 10 mins
Flight 39 – 8th October 2009 – 1530 – 36 minutes – Total so far – 39 hours 40 mins
I had a lesson booked for 12.30pm today, but when I looked at the weather forecast, it was crying out to complete the solo qualifying cross country I have to do as part of the PPL(H).
When I did my PPL(A) 20+ years ago, I remember waiting MONTHS to get the weather fit for these solo flights, so I rang Scott to see if it would be possible and he rang back after checking the weather and it was GO GO GO !!!
I was in the flying school for 9.30am to plan the routes. Scott advised me the route to take and left me to work out all the headings/speeds/timings given the 290/20 spot winds at 2000′.
The legs involved were Newcastle to Durham Tees, Durham Tees to Carlisle and then Carlisle back to Newcastle. Weather was CAVOK with occasional FEW at 3000 feet.
I filmed all 3 flights and got ATC recorded for two of them (cocked up the first one), so hopefully I’ll sort the video tomorrow and get that posted to the interweb.
After planning the legs, Scott had a big checklist to go through which left me feeling very prepared for the whole flight.
He offered me a choice of aircraft. G-MAVI (old faithful) or G-DOGI (new helicopter). I opted for G-MAVI because I’m more familiar with it.
We filled her to the top with fuel and pushed her 1/2 a mile from the bowser (it felt like 1/2 mile) to Papa West helipad. I rang Carlisle and Durham Tees to get PPR (prior permission required), Scott booked me out and I was ready to go after checking her over.
It took me 10 minutes to get all the kit setup and get the flight in my head. Runway 25, LEFT hand turnout (for a change), flying over Newcastle City Centre, the Tyne Bridge, aiming for Testos roundabout. Unfortunately the GPS was unserviceable. I was half pleased about that as it’s a truer test of navigation, but it would have been nice to have it from a peace of mind perspective. Ironically, it actually came back to life for the last 8 miles of the 135 mile trip. Great !!! 
I found the first leg the hardest. It’s a leg I’ve not flown before, and my heading didn’t take me to Testos roundabout, but to the Nissan Car Factory (near Sunderland). It didn’t matter, I knew where I was. I managed to find 3 or 4 indicators to show exactly where I was and in no time I was above Sedgefield racecourse. The R/T side of things took me from Newcastle Tower to Newcastle Radar, to Durham Radar and then Durham Tower. No problems at all with the R/T on this leg.
I was given a landing clearance at Durham Tees Airport to land north of the runway and at the same time, another aircraft was landing on the main runway 200 yards from me, which was fun 
I was asked to park at Stand 9, and as I approached Stand 9, they asked me to reposition to the very corner of Stand 9 as another a/c was coming in. Fine by me
As I shut down the helicopter, a van came to pick me up and take me to the Tower. I went up and took this photo……You can just see G-MAVI in the background.
Here’s the view from G-MAVI….
On the solo qualifying cross country, the air traffic controller grades your airmanship and your landing. The results of the Durham ATC controller was …….
Airmanship :- Good
Landing :- Good
Wahey !
I was happy with that. I would have graded my first landing as an 8/10 and the approach was very good for my first landing at Durham Tees. I was well pleased (SO FAR!).
After a trip to the tower, the lady drove me to the passenger terminal where I paid the landing fee (£29). Ouch!
She then took me back to the helicopter and it was time for the next (and longest) leg of the trip. Scott had told me that this was the hardest leg from a navigation perspective, but because it was flying over the Durham area (where i live), it was the easiest for me. I’d tipped Karen (wife) off that I’d be flying over the house and I could see her waving from the front.
At Carlisle, things didn’t go quite so well. There was a LOT of fast jet activity around Spadeadam, so I stayed high (3000 feet). About 20 miles from Carlisle, I came down to 2000′. I kept Tower informed at all times about my position and altitude. When I got to about 15 miles out, I was asked to stay north of the 25 centreline as both circuits were in operation and I would be landing on the 19 threshold. I did just that , but for some reason I didn’t come down to circuit height (1000′) until about 2 miles out. So when I called in that I was 5 miles away at 2000 feet, they asked me to descend to NOT ABOVE 500 feet. Fine by me. I pretty much auto-rotated down to 500 feet, not wanting to conflict with the circuit traffic. All fine so far. The 19 threshold transition was spot on and I was asked to taxi to 1B, which I did. All hunky dorey (or so I thought).
Here’s MAVI with the control tower in the background…….
When I walked in to get my grading, the Air Traffic controller wanted to speak to me on the phone. GULP. He said I should have joined the circuit at 1000 feet and not 2000 feet. He was right of course. I apologised and explained why I’d done what I had done, but acknowledged that I SHOULD have joined at 1000 feet. I’m really not too sure why I stayed high for so long. I think I had a mental picture of a very busy Carlisle (which it was), with both right-hand and left-hand circuits in operation and in my head I was staying clear of it. Dumb really, because I have to get to the ground to land, but it was my bad and I’ve been kicking myself since yesterday about it.
This time, the Carlisle scores………
Airmanship :- Satisfactory
Landing :- Satisfactory
Well, I’m not very happy with that, but it’s enough for a pass. The landing was actually good (7/10), but I think I’d ticked him off. He WAS right about the airmanship score, that’s my bad !!
Anyway…..time for a bacon buttie and a cup of coffee. Whilst I was ordering my refreshments, I noticed that Prince Harry had flown in a few days earlier (probably in an RAF helicopter) and had signed the guest book…….
Here’s the picture of him in the guest book with the cafe ladies
The last leg from Carlisle to Newcastle went very fast, because of the 20 knot tailwind. It’s a leg I’ve flown a few times and the one time I didn’t need the GPS, it sprang back to life. Sod’s Law !
As I approached Newcastle, they were changing the runways from 25 to 07 and I was told to expect 07. The wind was coming directly from the north, so it was a cross-wind landing. I tried to get as much a northerly direction on my approach to minimise the cross-wind element. But, although it felt right, I wasn’t sure if there’s a certain way I should have approached, so I’ll need to check this with Scott next time.
All in all, a great day’s flying with a dp cockup which is still bugging me. I have to accept that I will make mistakes, but it bugs me that this was such a basic one. Heigh Ho !
Onwards and upwards.
Here’s MAVI back at Papa East Helipad at Newcastle…..
Video to follow when done (hopefully today, but not sure how to combine ATC comms with video clips at the moment).
Lesson 36 – 5th October 2009 – 1310 – 54 minutes – Total so far – 37 hours 22 mins
Written by David Pollard on October 5th, 2009Well, I’m used to seeing myself type “Great Lesson” a lot recently, but not today. No fault of Steve who did his utmost to boy me up. I just wasn’t in the zone.
It started off ok. I had worked out over the weekend how to record the full ATC communications and I brought that setup with me ready to rock’n'roll. It was the new aircraft today G-DOGI (Doggy). It is a beautiful machine. Metallic Blue and everything looks very fresh and new on it.
So, I checked her over. I spent 5-10 minutes setting up the camera and ATC recording unit and it all tested fine.
All good so far !!!
With only the final LOW RPM Horn to check, I waited on Steve. When Steve arrived, he plugged in his headset and then we realised it didn’t work with my headset. BUGGER !!!!! So, with the rotors turning and everything setup to work with my headset, I made the snap decision to just swap mine out for the school headset, which means no video and no ATC 
I was gutted.
The insides of the new helicopter are a little different. There’s more buttons on the cyclic for changing the frequency, swapping channels and it took me a few seconds to realise that to talk on the radio, there is a button where the fire button on a joystick would be ie a trigger button.
The aircraft felt different. It’s funny how accustomed to G-MAVI and G-BZBU I have become and how different a new machine can feel. But it was easy to get used to quickly.
Today, we did some advanced autorotation practice. We flew out north past Morpeth and did a variety of different types of autorotation……
Standard auto (60/5 knots)
180′ auto
Range
Max Range
and a new one……
Not sure what the name is but basically we reduced the speed in the auto to zero knots. So basically, we are in a rapidly descending hover, the idea being that we don’t need to move forward much to reach a field. When we are at about 400 feet, we bring the speed back in, so we have it for the final flare.
The last few autos we did at the plateau so we could do it all the way down to a 5 foot hover. There was virtually no wind today, which made the autos much harder for the final flare. Steve reckons we’d have rolled over on one of them. I reckoned we’d have done somersaults personally It wasn’t pretty, not enough speed shaved off and a messy flare and bit of pedal work.
But, I don’t think anything would have felt right today. I just wasn’t in the zone. After we’d done about 5 or 6 autos, we headed back to the airport. As we taxi’ed in, I was close to asking Steve to do the final landing next to the bowser, as my previous performance was so poor, but my gut told me to do it. And it went really well. One of my better landings (8/10), so was well happy with that for what had been a pretty dire lesson. Gutted there’s no footage and audio. But maybe next time.
I did take a photo of Doggy…..
And totally unrelated to helicopters, but I just LOVE this youtube video…….
No flying today :-(
Written by David Pollard on October 2nd, 2009Lessons booked for Mon, Tue, Thurs and Friday.
Managed to get a start on Radiotelephony theory revision. Hope to take 2 tests in 1 day next week some time if I can get it all revised in time.
Fingers crossed
Mock “Human Factors & Pilot Perfomance” test done
Written by David Pollard on October 1st, 200967.6% is the result. More work required.
What a shame today didn’t come off !
Written by David Pollard on September 30th, 2009Was offered a cracking opportunity to get some R44 time at £120 an hour today. The R44 is a 4-seater sibling of the R22 and at a quarter of the normal price, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Unfortunately, some film work that was destined for friday which required the R44 to make this trip today, had cancelled and the knock-on effect was no R44 time.
But, as a friend commented, onwards and upwards
dp
