Lesson 29, Controlled Airspace Nav

Blackbushe being close to London offers no shortage of controlled airspace to pass through or transgress depending on intent. To date I have only flown in class G airspace or through military control zones and kept below the London TMA (class A airspace), therefore the point of this navigation lesson is to get some experience of crossing a class D airspace along with loads of RT (radio) practice.

The navigation is also further afield than I have flown before, heading into the Cotswold's which features some pretty nice scenery. For those not familiar with the area, the Cotswold area is hills and valleys featuring many typical Old English villages many of which date back to the 16th century or earlier. Plenty of visual references along the route should make the navigation fairly easy and I feel pretty confident about the nav part of this (mistake).

I arrive for the lesson early so I can get the planning done. I also take it upon myself to annoy the instructors who I think have too little annoyance in their lives and therefore I felt it was my duty to add some. For this purpose I decided to wind my stopwatch for a long time.. "click... click.. cliccccck" and do other distracting things such as measuring my fingers in nautical miles on my ruler, other body parts were also helpfully suggested. The problem with using the aforementioned appendage is it came out at 75NM but then required reduction for exaggeration factor, personally I believe the CAA should regulate that non-standard body parts are not used when calculating flight plans. When informed that usually we just measure thumbs for quick reference on a map I then asked how many thumbs are consumed in weight of fuel over time at 90knts.

Anyway, enough of the foolishness.. on with the report.

Antonio returned and ran through my carefully devised plan, briefing me on the various calls I would need to make and also checking I had all the required frequencies recorded ready.

I pre-flighted LIMA SIERRA which incidentally is becoming second nature now although I still make sure to use the checklist once past the external inspection. We then set off by climbing to 3,000AMSL in the circuit, turning to the calculated heading and started the stopwatch.

The first part was good, we stayed pretty much on our intended track although fairly early on I needed to request permission to transit the Benson MATZ, I put in the frequency for Benson and made the call but got back a reply saying the MATZ was currently inactive therefore we were free to cross. The call I made was not perfect. I then tuned to Brize Norton Radar (LARS) and requested flight following, again not so good. During this period of rapid calls and responses I managed to climb higher than planned for and also deviated slightly from track. I could determine our position visually but didn't immediately correct to bring us back on track (Note to self: don't accept that situation, if the track is wrong.. correct it!) also during this period of time I looked at the time for a checkpoint and realised it hadn't increased from our last checkpoint. This raised several possibilities, either time itself had stopped, we were flying at the speed of light, or my stopwatch had broken. It turned out to be the later, damn damn.. I overwound it back in the club!

Shortly after this discovery it was time to request if the nearby Abingdon gliding field was in use, I made a request to Brize Radar and they informed us it was active and to avoid it. I then made a request to transition the Class D CTR around Brize Norton airfield and was cleared through at 3,000AMSL avoiding Abingdon and maintaining VMC. These calls were better and I managed to read-back the instructions ok although with some hesitation.

I did manage however to maintain track and altitude passing through the CTR which was good and also skirt around Abingdon. We soon cleared the zone and resumed navigation, Antonio managed to get the stopwatch to start again but pretty much my confidence in the timepiece had evaporated. Here I made a silly mistake, I became fixated mentally on finding a railway track I was expecting to see, I didn't spot it. Common sense dictated that ok I probably past it but I ignored that and convinced myself in my head that the wind was carrying us to the west of track (it wasn't) I therefore elected to fly at an altered heading to see if I could spot it.

I knew our position from visual references on the map but still didn't wise up to the fact that my planned heading was correct and I had deviated because of a single point of reference. Before long I realised we must have past our destination and glancing over my shoulder to the left I saw the destination to our East and behind.

Important lesson learnt and another note to self. Do not allow myself to become fixated on a single point of reference, if I can't see it it does not mean that it is not there and I should look at the plenty of other references around.

I flew to the disused airfield and circled above, Antonio gave me a diversion to another point on the map so I maintained position with the rudder and drew a new line on the map, worked out the heading given a 20knt tailwind slightly to the west and worked out the expected time we should reach the destination. Doing this in the air while flying is pretty fun, focuses the mind. One other thing, below us it appeared that the airfield was being used as a film set with what looked like bombed out buildings and an aircraft parked there. I wish now I had brought my camera.

Once armed with a new heading I continued and once again requested clearance through the Brize CTR, this time I was determined to get everything right. The call was improved and I maintained our track and altitude and airspeed successfully. We left the zone and I kept checking our position on the map ensuring no deviation from the heading, it became apparent that the tailwind was having more effect than I had calculated for the divertion so from that I worked out a new arrival time of 17 minutes which turned out to be correct. The track also was not to bad, although we arrived slightly to the right, again wind factor played a part.

I then transfered to Farnborough Radar for our home leg and Antonio instructed me to fly us home just using the map, this area I am pretty familiar with now so it wasn't a problem to pick out the nearby landmarks and set course for Blackbushe. We also practiced another PFL, this went textbook and I am silently pleased that it doesn't require too much thought on my part and is becoming second nature now. Although during the PFL I momentarily depressed the Press To Talk button on the stick as I was about to simulate a mayday call.. oops.. that could have had bad consequences had I not realised my mistake.

We arrived at blackbushe just before the tower closed and I carried out a pretty strange approach as a Piper Archer in the circuit before us flew an enormous circuit. I had to follow him around and I turned final and remained at circuit height for what amounted to a straight in approach. Antonio simulated an ILS approach with his fingers forming the two needles.

My landing was ok but not quite to my satisfaction (I want absolutely perfect landings everytime).

Anyway so ends an interesting an productive lesson, I made some mistakes but I will learn from them and generally it wasn't too bad. Lessons where I make no mistakes means I don't learn a whole lot. My aim now is to improve my RT confidence further, I am too hesitant and when I need to make a call I think too much about it magnifying the act when it really is no big deal. My other mistakes largely happened because I was spending too much brain resources dealing with the radio. My next lesson is tomorrow depending on the weather, another weather front looked to be moving towards us today so I am half expecting a cancellation.