Quite a day!

Remember the old saying, ‘Better to be down here wishing you were up there than the other way round…’

I’d been waiting for nearly two weeks for a weather window (yes, in August :shock:) to get MYRO check flown for Permit and according to the weather forecast on Tuesday, there would be enough of a break in the weather yesterday for a half hour or so ferry flight from Linton to down near Canterbury, the check flight, and a flight back before more weather arrived.

In fact the forecast on the day suggested that the weather would be arriving by about mid-day and I was ready to call it off again, but I decided to go to the field anyway and check things out. Local conditions at Linton were good and Grant said that the most recent forecast was that the weather window had moved back again to about 4.00pm – plenty of time. So off I went.

I know the strip I was flying to very well and the flight was totally uneventful and it was great to be back up for the first time since my GST in June. These are a few shots I took along the way. The first is looking out towards the north-east and the Thames Estuary shortly after I took off.

This one is a view showing the Kent Gliding Club site at Challock in the distance where a bit of gliding was going on.

Here’s a shot looking east again with Canterbury and the coast in the far distance.

But then things began to happen. Before the check flight, we found that the cooling cowl on the engine had come loose and there was a delay while I sorted that out. Then Rosie got away.

The check flight was successful and it was then just a matter of doing the paperwork, which took a few minutes. Here are a coule of shots of MYRO parked up while Rosie was doing that.

You can see that already the weather was beginning to worsen. After the check flight I found that the top of the screen was tucking under because of the air pressure it had been subjected to and my first thought was that I’d need to put some extra cable ties in after I’d got back to give it more support. Trouble was, when I went to take off to return to Linton, it did it again as soon as I put on full power, so I aborted, taxied back to where someone was working on their aircraft, borrowed a drill and did the job there and then. But it was another half hour lost.

By the time I was ready to go it was spitting a bit at Canterbury but vis was still very good and the wind very light. I phoned Linton and was told it was bright with a good cloud base and vis in occasional very light showers, so I decided to go for it.

I could see the weather coming in a wide front ahead of me so there was no way of dodging around it. I guess by that time the base was down to about 1800ft and by Ashford I was in pretty steady light rain but with fair vis and good sight of the surface. I got to abeam Headcorn where not unsurpisingly there was no flying going on and knew that Linton was only a few minutes further on. But remember, this was my first flight out of there so I haven’t had a chance yet to get to know the local features and after doing one orbit where I expected Linton to be, the base was down to about 1500ft, the rain was still light but steady and I still had no real idea where the strip was. I thought there was little point in flying around in those conditions looking for a needle in a haystack in the hope I might find it when I could head back and land safely at Headcorn.

So that’s what I did and MYRO is now parked there, where I guess it’ll remain for a few days. A hangar guy showed me where some tie downs could be found and a very kind chap gave me a lift back to Linton to pick up my car and engine cover as an alternative to sitting in Control moaning about not being able to fly.

It’s an inconvenience because I’ll now have to make arrangements to pick MYRO up over the weekend or whatever. But I think it was the right decision because within 20/30 minutes of landing, vis closed in completely and a chap went off for some IMC training without needing a hood!

The upside as well was that because I diverted to Headcorn in an ’emergency’ because of the weather, I didn’t have to pay a landing fee. Silver linings and all that ….. 😉

I have put a little video clip taken on my Pentax digital still camera of MYRO’s check flight with Rosie HERE in the video section.