Lesson 31, Thruxton
Good things that happened today; I landed on my first grass runway. Bad things that happened today; the plane was unable to fly us home from aforesaid runway. Fortunately (surprisingly?) through no incompetence on my part/
We are running late again today due to schedule problems and lack of aircraft, fortunately the delay gave me more chance to run through with Antonio all the various radio calls I will need to make. Getting it straight in my head before the flight is a good idea. I prepared the flight plan earlier today along with the route and timings, today’s flight was to Thruxton and is a very easy navigational route. As soon as Lima Sierra was back we went out and carried out the checks, over the past few weeks Lima Sierra has been having a minor problem, when the nav lights are switched on the Low Volt warning light comes on and the Amp meter shows a negative charge. This is still the case today, we started up and taxied with just the Anti-Collision Lights and soon the Low Volt warning light went out.
Once in the air the flight started well, I climbed in the circuit as usual and this time made radio calls for Flight Information Service and MATZ penetration earlier. We were identified on radar just leaving Blackbushe circuit. Excellent, now I immediately entered the frequency for Thruxton ready in advance. My planned heading was to be 261 which I maintained for the next ten minutes, after that time Antonio checked the GPS and pointed out it was also showing 261, all was well. Next I had a brief moment of insanity and once again convinced myself that a small village to the starboard side of the aircraft was a point on the map, telling me we were off course. I therefore decided to break from the planned heading and try to correct the track to what I perceived was to the port side. Dumb.
After a couple of minutes of this lunacy I noticed that other interesting points on the map looked closer than they should be and the stopwatch was reading the time we should be over the village I thought we had just passed. I glance to port and notice oh.. there is the village, requiring us to head back to the track I was originally following. Lesson learnt now I hope, trust my headings and stop fixating on individual navigational points (twice now I have convinced myself that what I am seeing when I look outside matches up to the map based on one single reference).
I place a call through to Thruxton which goes well and proceed to descend to circuit height, we are informed runway 31 is active today which is a grass runway, cool something new. I fly an ok circuit giving myself plenty of downwind time seeing as this is the first time landing here. My approach is pretty poor but then it is a weirdly distracting final to 31, you fly firstly over a small hill which gets pretty damn close then the ground drops away again below before rising again right before the runway. The wind is reasonably strong also and reported gusting to 30knts. I stay on centreline and flare a bit to high as I misjudge the distance to the grass, however the landing is very soft, had that been tarmac we probably would have bounced. Antonio briefed me on the grass runway technique of maintaining back all the time to keep the weight off the front wheel also keeping full flaps set whilst on grass taxing. The grass runway was a new experience but a good one, I am looking forward to doing more grass runway landings, Antonio suggests we come back here and do some touch and goes here to get more practice at the technique.
Thruxton is a nice airfield which has the bonus of being situated in the middle of a race circuit, I imagine bringing my Z4 here for a bit of fun. We head over to the Charlie point and book in and out again then we have to head back again as sadly no time to grab a coffee (also the club here looked closed).
We are all set to leave, turn the engine.. prop spins once or twice and then nothing.. hmm, try again and turn off everything other than the battery, same result. Once more.. and the prop turns a quarter of a turn before running out of juice. Battery is dead.
We leave Lima Sierra on the grass and head back to the tower. They have witnessed our trouble starting her and offer some help, the Katana sadly has no external power point they can attach a jump lead to so we remove the cowling to get to the battery. Soon some rescue services guys arrive and offer to help but we have to bring the aircraft near to the fuel depot to get access to a power lead and charger. We push Lima Sierra the fairly short distance to the pumps and a standard 12Volt charger is attached to the battery, it reads 50% and is set for “quick charge”. Antonio calls the guys back at the Cabair office and lets them know of our problem, they will send another aircraft to pick us up if needed but we are hopeful that the charger given enough time will enable us to start, so we agree to wait for 30 minutes with it charging then try again.
During this time several other aviators come over to ask what the problem is and offer sympathy and their ‘good luck’s. The guy in the tower especially was helpful, lending us the use of his telephone and some advice. We continue to hang around on the racetrack area laughing and lamenting the situation. After awhile we decide to give it another try, as Thruxton is about to close service as a licensed aerodrome, meaning that no rescue or radio services will be provided, we notice that the charger is still reading at 50% and doesn’t appear to have increased at all in the past 40 minutes. We detach the charger and replace the cowling and jump back in. Nope no good, dead battery for sure.
Some suggestions were made whether we could hand crank the prop to get it started but sadly the katana has a Rotax engine which cannot be started like that. We are asked what we are going to do by the tower man, he says we can put the aircraft in their hanger over night as the weather tomorrow will be crap so Antonio and me try and push Lima Sierra into the hanger, the hanger contains several aircraft already but there is a single space available, we soon discover that support beans at the front of the hanger are not wide enough for the Katana’s wings. We spent about 20 minutes trying to fit her in at different angles but it just wasn’t going to work.. so we ended up leaving her half in the hanger and half out the front. Meanwhile, Thruxton tower called Blackbushe on our behalf and reported that it was a no-go and could they come pick us up.
Shortly afterwards we remained sitting on a bench aside a race track looking across an airfield while the sun slowly began to set. The helpful airfield staff had now gone to were helpful airfield staff go at night and Antonio is having a breakdown of some kind. “There.. there is a rabbit! Look!.. I saw it.. I promise.. can you not see it?”, “Look aircraft on final! See it? Can you see the lights?”… ten minutes later.. “ah it was a bird”. What with the events of the past couple of hours and Antonio’s imaginary rabbits it was turning into a funny surreal night.
After awhile the clubs Piper Warrior arrived with John flying and Peter as instructor (John is getting his check for the Warrior), we jump in and soon are back in the air. Flying as a passenger again is strange but funny thanks to the constant bantering from Peter and Antonio many insults are exchanged in good humour. Everyone has had a pretty long day today I am grateful to them for working late to come pick us up.
The Piper is a very comfortable aircraft I find out, it is fairly new (2001) and has a nice GPS and Avionics system. I think I will try and get checked out on the Piper after the PPL.
At one point during the flight Peter starts to pitch the Piper up and down rapidly to watch Antonio and Me rise and fall in our seats without any power to do anything about it which was pretty funny. The sun now has almost set and we land back at Blackbushe.
Today was good if for no other reason than to see a side of aviation I haven’t seen before also to see the helpfulness of other pilots and the staff at Thruxton who were pretty amazing. Perhaps the value of the lesson was in itself better than a normal lesson.
We are running late again today due to schedule problems and lack of aircraft, fortunately the delay gave me more chance to run through with Antonio all the various radio calls I will need to make. Getting it straight in my head before the flight is a good idea. I prepared the flight plan earlier today along with the route and timings, today’s flight was to Thruxton and is a very easy navigational route. As soon as Lima Sierra was back we went out and carried out the checks, over the past few weeks Lima Sierra has been having a minor problem, when the nav lights are switched on the Low Volt warning light comes on and the Amp meter shows a negative charge. This is still the case today, we started up and taxied with just the Anti-Collision Lights and soon the Low Volt warning light went out.
Once in the air the flight started well, I climbed in the circuit as usual and this time made radio calls for Flight Information Service and MATZ penetration earlier. We were identified on radar just leaving Blackbushe circuit. Excellent, now I immediately entered the frequency for Thruxton ready in advance. My planned heading was to be 261 which I maintained for the next ten minutes, after that time Antonio checked the GPS and pointed out it was also showing 261, all was well. Next I had a brief moment of insanity and once again convinced myself that a small village to the starboard side of the aircraft was a point on the map, telling me we were off course. I therefore decided to break from the planned heading and try to correct the track to what I perceived was to the port side. Dumb.
After a couple of minutes of this lunacy I noticed that other interesting points on the map looked closer than they should be and the stopwatch was reading the time we should be over the village I thought we had just passed. I glance to port and notice oh.. there is the village, requiring us to head back to the track I was originally following. Lesson learnt now I hope, trust my headings and stop fixating on individual navigational points (twice now I have convinced myself that what I am seeing when I look outside matches up to the map based on one single reference).
I place a call through to Thruxton which goes well and proceed to descend to circuit height, we are informed runway 31 is active today which is a grass runway, cool something new. I fly an ok circuit giving myself plenty of downwind time seeing as this is the first time landing here. My approach is pretty poor but then it is a weirdly distracting final to 31, you fly firstly over a small hill which gets pretty damn close then the ground drops away again below before rising again right before the runway. The wind is reasonably strong also and reported gusting to 30knts. I stay on centreline and flare a bit to high as I misjudge the distance to the grass, however the landing is very soft, had that been tarmac we probably would have bounced. Antonio briefed me on the grass runway technique of maintaining back all the time to keep the weight off the front wheel also keeping full flaps set whilst on grass taxing. The grass runway was a new experience but a good one, I am looking forward to doing more grass runway landings, Antonio suggests we come back here and do some touch and goes here to get more practice at the technique.
Thruxton is a nice airfield which has the bonus of being situated in the middle of a race circuit, I imagine bringing my Z4 here for a bit of fun. We head over to the Charlie point and book in and out again then we have to head back again as sadly no time to grab a coffee (also the club here looked closed).
We are all set to leave, turn the engine.. prop spins once or twice and then nothing.. hmm, try again and turn off everything other than the battery, same result. Once more.. and the prop turns a quarter of a turn before running out of juice. Battery is dead.
We leave Lima Sierra on the grass and head back to the tower. They have witnessed our trouble starting her and offer some help, the Katana sadly has no external power point they can attach a jump lead to so we remove the cowling to get to the battery. Soon some rescue services guys arrive and offer to help but we have to bring the aircraft near to the fuel depot to get access to a power lead and charger. We push Lima Sierra the fairly short distance to the pumps and a standard 12Volt charger is attached to the battery, it reads 50% and is set for “quick charge”. Antonio calls the guys back at the Cabair office and lets them know of our problem, they will send another aircraft to pick us up if needed but we are hopeful that the charger given enough time will enable us to start, so we agree to wait for 30 minutes with it charging then try again.
During this time several other aviators come over to ask what the problem is and offer sympathy and their ‘good luck’s. The guy in the tower especially was helpful, lending us the use of his telephone and some advice. We continue to hang around on the racetrack area laughing and lamenting the situation. After awhile we decide to give it another try, as Thruxton is about to close service as a licensed aerodrome, meaning that no rescue or radio services will be provided, we notice that the charger is still reading at 50% and doesn’t appear to have increased at all in the past 40 minutes. We detach the charger and replace the cowling and jump back in. Nope no good, dead battery for sure.
Some suggestions were made whether we could hand crank the prop to get it started but sadly the katana has a Rotax engine which cannot be started like that. We are asked what we are going to do by the tower man, he says we can put the aircraft in their hanger over night as the weather tomorrow will be crap so Antonio and me try and push Lima Sierra into the hanger, the hanger contains several aircraft already but there is a single space available, we soon discover that support beans at the front of the hanger are not wide enough for the Katana’s wings. We spent about 20 minutes trying to fit her in at different angles but it just wasn’t going to work.. so we ended up leaving her half in the hanger and half out the front. Meanwhile, Thruxton tower called Blackbushe on our behalf and reported that it was a no-go and could they come pick us up.
Shortly afterwards we remained sitting on a bench aside a race track looking across an airfield while the sun slowly began to set. The helpful airfield staff had now gone to were helpful airfield staff go at night and Antonio is having a breakdown of some kind. “There.. there is a rabbit! Look!.. I saw it.. I promise.. can you not see it?”, “Look aircraft on final! See it? Can you see the lights?”… ten minutes later.. “ah it was a bird”. What with the events of the past couple of hours and Antonio’s imaginary rabbits it was turning into a funny surreal night.
After awhile the clubs Piper Warrior arrived with John flying and Peter as instructor (John is getting his check for the Warrior), we jump in and soon are back in the air. Flying as a passenger again is strange but funny thanks to the constant bantering from Peter and Antonio many insults are exchanged in good humour. Everyone has had a pretty long day today I am grateful to them for working late to come pick us up.
The Piper is a very comfortable aircraft I find out, it is fairly new (2001) and has a nice GPS and Avionics system. I think I will try and get checked out on the Piper after the PPL.
At one point during the flight Peter starts to pitch the Piper up and down rapidly to watch Antonio and Me rise and fall in our seats without any power to do anything about it which was pretty funny. The sun now has almost set and we land back at Blackbushe.
Today was good if for no other reason than to see a side of aviation I haven’t seen before also to see the helpfulness of other pilots and the staff at Thruxton who were pretty amazing. Perhaps the value of the lesson was in itself better than a normal lesson.
posted by Chris @ Tuesday, August 23, 2005
1 Comments:
At Wednesday, August 24, 2005 5:03:00 am,
Flyinkiwi said…
Its kind of wierd reading about peoples 'issues' with grass runways. At least 90% of all my landings have been on grass and I find that it is much more forgiving of my sloppy landings than tarmac. :)
However, some of the rougher strips I have been to have been challenging in their own peculiar ways. I am yet to land on a tarmac runway with rabbit holes in the middle!
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