Bembridge and RNAV
I have been hoping for a break in the weather this week for a chance to show my dad Lima Sierra and also admittedly just to fly, and today I got it. The low cloud of the past few days eased away to leave blue skies albeit with pretty hazy conditions, good enough! I called dad to see if he wanted to come flying this afternoon and also my youngest brother Matt who had a day off today from school due to an interview with a college he is planning to join. Both wanted to fly so this afternoon we all headed down to Blackbushe.
Matt has never flown on a light aircraft before and in fact only flown once commerically so this was to be a new experience for him. I told him what to expect and he seemed fairly relaxed about the flight.
Earlier in the day I had planned a trip down to the Isle of Wight again, mainly because it is good for sight seeing with it's steep white cliffs, bays and harbours. Matt is a keen and competant sailor therefore he has sailed around the solent area adding to the attraction of flying there again. The only problem in the planning was the visibility, the weather office was reporting 25km however I suspected that it would be much less due to the haze visible on the ground. Haze is something I am getting very used to right now having spent the last few flights in thick haze which mostly has been barely VFR, therefore I decided to back-up my normal mode of navigation of pilotage with using the RNAV on Lima Sierra. RNAV stands for Area Navigation and works by allowing you to create 'phantom' VOR stations over waypoints along your route, an example is finding the closest VOR station to your intended waypoint, finding the radial your waypoint is on and measuring the distance to the waypoint from the VOR. You can store up to eight waypoints on the unit in Lima Sierra in this way and then using the standard CDI/HSI follow the needle directly to the waypoint with other usefull information such as ETA, ground speed and distance to go. This flight would be the first flight I have used it properley.
The last time I visited Isle of Wight I landed at Sandown so this time I chose Bembridge which has a asphalt runway rather than the grass at Sandown. I heard it is a good place to land and the approach to final on runway 31 is crossing the tall cliffs, however today the runway in use was the reciprocal 12.
We took off with Matt in the right seat and dad in the back, the flight out was pretty much directly into the wind therefore progress would be slow which suited us as they picked out familiar landmarks. The haze towards the South was very bad, made worse due to flying towards the sun however it was still VFR, I estimated around 10km. I selected the first waypoint overhead Farnborough, set the OBS to point the needle to the bearing and gained permission to cross in their overhead. The next waypoint was Haselmere and enroute I climbed out of the fairly rough air to around 3000ft, this was lower than I wanted to fly but we were crossing underneath class A airspace used by the big boys coming out of Gatwick and Heathrow therefore was restricted to fly under 3500ft. The rnav took us perfectly to Haslemere so I changed again to the next waypoint which was just off the eastern shore of the Island. Once clear of the class A I climbed to 4000ft which was at the top of the haze layer giving us a horizon of sorts, the air was much smoother here and once trimmed she flew hands-off with no tendancy to turn either left or right.. nice stability.
Crossing the coast we could only just make out the shore of the Isle of Wight, a mere 7NM away, the sea and the haze blended into one and I am glad I had some visual reference otherwise it would effectively be instrument conditions which is beyond the priviledges of my license at the moment.
Flying out we saw several large ships along with many yachts scooting around. I began a gradual descent towards the coast of the Isle of Wight, I had original hoped to take my passengers on a sight seeing trip right the way around the island however the low level turbulence and the haze made this not so attractive so I called up Bembridge for joining instructions. There was another aircraft taking off from Bembridge so I chose to scoot past and then join from the West, giving me time to find out whether the other aircraft was staying around for circuits or departing somewhere. He departed so I joined overhead and carried out a circuit to land. The approach was quite bumpy but not to bad although somehow I managed to make it a bit flatter than I would have liked. The landing wasn't too bad but not perfect, at least it was just past the numbers.
We stayed at Bembridge awhile drinking coffee and chatting about flying. Bembridge is surrounded by nice scenery with only a short distance to the coast and rolling hills all around.
The route back was much faster due to the tailwind, it took us over an hour on the way out and only 40 minutes on the way back. The return flight was pretty much the same as the flight out although the haze had definately worsened, I didn't want to rely totally on the RNAV therefore frequently checked our position with map to ground comparisons and standard VOR radials. I should have had more faith though as the RNAV once again brought us directly to each waypoint.
Back on the ground at Blackbushe, Matt and dad both helped me to put Lima Sierra back under the covers and collect my assortment of gear used on the flight. Both really enjoyed the flight and Matt expressed his gratitude for taking him up, I enjoyed it very much also.. certainly much more fun having passengers along.
I am not sure at the moment when I will next fly, the weather over the weekend and into next week is forecast to be non-VFR. My next flight will likely be on the 4th of April.
Matt has never flown on a light aircraft before and in fact only flown once commerically so this was to be a new experience for him. I told him what to expect and he seemed fairly relaxed about the flight.
Earlier in the day I had planned a trip down to the Isle of Wight again, mainly because it is good for sight seeing with it's steep white cliffs, bays and harbours. Matt is a keen and competant sailor therefore he has sailed around the solent area adding to the attraction of flying there again. The only problem in the planning was the visibility, the weather office was reporting 25km however I suspected that it would be much less due to the haze visible on the ground. Haze is something I am getting very used to right now having spent the last few flights in thick haze which mostly has been barely VFR, therefore I decided to back-up my normal mode of navigation of pilotage with using the RNAV on Lima Sierra. RNAV stands for Area Navigation and works by allowing you to create 'phantom' VOR stations over waypoints along your route, an example is finding the closest VOR station to your intended waypoint, finding the radial your waypoint is on and measuring the distance to the waypoint from the VOR. You can store up to eight waypoints on the unit in Lima Sierra in this way and then using the standard CDI/HSI follow the needle directly to the waypoint with other usefull information such as ETA, ground speed and distance to go. This flight would be the first flight I have used it properley.
The last time I visited Isle of Wight I landed at Sandown so this time I chose Bembridge which has a asphalt runway rather than the grass at Sandown. I heard it is a good place to land and the approach to final on runway 31 is crossing the tall cliffs, however today the runway in use was the reciprocal 12.
We took off with Matt in the right seat and dad in the back, the flight out was pretty much directly into the wind therefore progress would be slow which suited us as they picked out familiar landmarks. The haze towards the South was very bad, made worse due to flying towards the sun however it was still VFR, I estimated around 10km. I selected the first waypoint overhead Farnborough, set the OBS to point the needle to the bearing and gained permission to cross in their overhead. The next waypoint was Haselmere and enroute I climbed out of the fairly rough air to around 3000ft, this was lower than I wanted to fly but we were crossing underneath class A airspace used by the big boys coming out of Gatwick and Heathrow therefore was restricted to fly under 3500ft. The rnav took us perfectly to Haslemere so I changed again to the next waypoint which was just off the eastern shore of the Island. Once clear of the class A I climbed to 4000ft which was at the top of the haze layer giving us a horizon of sorts, the air was much smoother here and once trimmed she flew hands-off with no tendancy to turn either left or right.. nice stability.
Crossing the coast we could only just make out the shore of the Isle of Wight, a mere 7NM away, the sea and the haze blended into one and I am glad I had some visual reference otherwise it would effectively be instrument conditions which is beyond the priviledges of my license at the moment.
Flying out we saw several large ships along with many yachts scooting around. I began a gradual descent towards the coast of the Isle of Wight, I had original hoped to take my passengers on a sight seeing trip right the way around the island however the low level turbulence and the haze made this not so attractive so I called up Bembridge for joining instructions. There was another aircraft taking off from Bembridge so I chose to scoot past and then join from the West, giving me time to find out whether the other aircraft was staying around for circuits or departing somewhere. He departed so I joined overhead and carried out a circuit to land. The approach was quite bumpy but not to bad although somehow I managed to make it a bit flatter than I would have liked. The landing wasn't too bad but not perfect, at least it was just past the numbers.
We stayed at Bembridge awhile drinking coffee and chatting about flying. Bembridge is surrounded by nice scenery with only a short distance to the coast and rolling hills all around.
The route back was much faster due to the tailwind, it took us over an hour on the way out and only 40 minutes on the way back. The return flight was pretty much the same as the flight out although the haze had definately worsened, I didn't want to rely totally on the RNAV therefore frequently checked our position with map to ground comparisons and standard VOR radials. I should have had more faith though as the RNAV once again brought us directly to each waypoint.
Back on the ground at Blackbushe, Matt and dad both helped me to put Lima Sierra back under the covers and collect my assortment of gear used on the flight. Both really enjoyed the flight and Matt expressed his gratitude for taking him up, I enjoyed it very much also.. certainly much more fun having passengers along.
I am not sure at the moment when I will next fly, the weather over the weekend and into next week is forecast to be non-VFR. My next flight will likely be on the 4th of April.
posted by Chris @ Thursday, March 23, 2006
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