Flying on a Wednesday evening, who would have thought!

I normally only go flying during the day and at the weekend, but as I missed last Sunday’s due to the British weather and Katie was kind enough to stay late so I could make it after work, I thought I would give it a go!

It was a lovely evening, wind was around 5 kts some cloud at around 3,500ft and it was very smooth, perfect!

We started with me flying a couple of circuits with Katie; immediately after the first take off Katie closed the throttle and declared an engine failure! Nose down and select a field form those in front, all going well so far, the field I selected was possibly a little to near the edge of the gliding range and to make matters a little worse I put a stage of flap on before I knew for sure we would make it! As it turned out we would have made it, just! I powered up and climbed turning back towards the circuit for runway 24.

Downwind checks done, turning on to final and we can see smoke rising in the middle distance, its direction told us that the wind had changed direction a little and was now favouring runway 19. So I made a call to say Base leg 19 and we switched runways.

On the next circuit I left the power on longer and tried to sideslip  on the approach, it worked, but not as well as I have done it in the past, I allowed the speed to drop a little too low, as pointed out by Katie, I need to practice this some more!

Back on the ground there was just time to grab a couple of Jaffa cakes before I went solo! Paul had just got back from flying up to King’s Lynn and back via Wisbech and March and this sounded like a fun thing to do, so I asked Katie what I should do on my solo and she was happy for me to do the same.

I set off and followed the 16 Foot Bank (another drain!) which runs up to King’s Lynn and as I got near to Lynn there was a prohibited area on the map, gas venting (GVS/2.6) as i was about the same altitude 2,600ft I decided to fly wide of it. Just passed Lynn it got a little bumpy and looking at the time I decided to turn around and head for Wisbech. I trimmed for 80 kts and flew between Wisbech and Emneth and on to March. I decided to join the circuit as I had on my cross country by continuing on towards Chatteris town and then descending to join the circuit downwind for 19.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was one of my most enjoyable flights so far, I guess because I was solo and “just” flying as opposed to practicing for my looming GST, But I will be back to doing that this Sunday!