Today’s lesson was a cross-country navigation exercise. It was a round trip from Newcastle, flying overhead Seaham, Durham Tees Airport, Hexham and then returning to EGNT (Newcastle Airport).

It was in G-BZBU, the HP variant of the R22.

I was kicking myself before we even got started, because I’d charged up the camera, brought “film”, even got windscreen wash to clean the helicopter bubble window, only to find I’d forgotten the mount which straps the camera to my head ! Gutted !!

Quite an uneventful flight as flights go, but good pratice nonetheless.

We departed south over the Tyne Bridges, and headed to Seaham. I’d plotted the route the day before and updated the headings with the Spot Winds earlier in the day. The route was a very easy route. Halfway between EGNT and Seaham is a windfarm. In fact, each of the 3 main legs had windfarms half way along the legs, which made navigation a breeze. I held headings ok, but my altitude varied +/- 300 feet depending on how much there was to distract me on the ground.

The only eventful things were some amusing R/T banter. Someone had had a bird strike at EGNT after we had took off, and someone sounded like a 12 year old girl, which we found amusing and then someone else sounded VERY laid back, not so funny when you just read about it, but funny to us. Oh, and while I remember, EGNT Tower hadn’t received our booking out form, so I had to book out on the radio, which was a first.

On the leg from EGNV (Durham Tees) to EGNT, Steve said something like……..

Steve :- Do you remember the adverts about Martini ?
dp :- Anytime, anywhere, any place, that’s…………
Steve :- Engine Failure, Engine Failure, Engine Failure.

Well, by the time, I was answering him, my heckles were up, and I was ready for something unexpected, so I don’t think he even got his second Engine Failure fully out, and we were autorotating. It still took me a bit by surprise though, ‘cos I hadn’t thought through what I had to do, so although I had rammed the collective down, I’m not so sure I would have caught the rotor rpm if Steve hadn’t done his spiel where he reminds me about that and balance.

But, I caught the rotor rpm, I even caught the balance, but then as things were going so well, I started doing the Mayday call, and then I lost track of the balance, and the speed “appeared” to drop off, but that was soon corrected.

When Steve asked which field am I going for, I had a nice one into wind, but it was an uphill slope, so when Steve told me of this, I chose another next to it. Lesson learned !  When I used to fly microlights, I would often land on uphill slopes, but I expect this is much trickier in a helicopter.

We did a power recovery at about 500-600 feet and then continued to Hexham. On the way back, I called Newcastle Radar, and their reply didn’t make any sense. I think they told us to not go any farther south than Blyth. Well, we were 30 miles south of Blyth when we called ?!

A little later, it was very clear that he had us confused with another aircraft, even after I had told him we were over Tow Law (10′s of MILES south of Blyth). Eventually, he asked our intentions, once I told him what they were, he seemed happy with who we were.

We had to hold for about 7 minutes overhead the Northern Boundary as some a/c landed and departed, but then we were cleared to land on Taxiway Foxtrot (not the runway), which was nifty. It was the first time I’d done this, and it was nice to do a transition that carries on in the same direction as a taxi to the stand.

Sorry there is no video footage, my bad.

Here’s a photo of Steve about to fill up G-BZBU.