Five airfields

It’ll probably come as much of a surprise to anyone reading this in the UK as it did to me, to find out that just in my local area alone, there are loads of little privately owned ULM airfields. And that just includes the ones that are officially listed and shown on the charts, because there are also many others that are not. The weather was lovely yesterday, albeit with a layer of bluish ground-hugging haze, so I decided to set up a flight that would allow me to discover five of the ones to the south-east of Galinat that I knew were there but had not seen before. Here’s a pic of the chart showing the route I had planned and the five airfields in question.

As an added bonus, my planned route would also take me past the town of Gourdon, which I flew to a few months ago when the weather was more favourable, but not close enough to to get any decent shots of, and I hoped to partially rectify that during my flight.

The quality of the pictures that I shot unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired. That’s because for the time being, I’ve had to revert to my trusty old Pentax Optio camera that’s a bit lacking in the megapixel department by current standards. The reason for that is because my rubbish ‘new’ Pansonic DMC-SZ3 has had to be consigned to the scrapheap after just over a year’s use (the faults it suffers from actually first became apparent within the year but unfortunately I didn’t recognise them for what they were) and I’ll be going into that in more detail at some other time as a possible cautionary tale for others possibly considering a camera purchase.

One thing I would say is that I found all of the airfields that I was looking for with absolutely no problems. The reason for that, of course, was that I was using my trusty GPS system which has proven its worth time and time again and on this occasion brought each airfield and waypoint up ‘on the button’. I now never fly without it, except for very short local excursions, because I know that with it in the cabin with me I’ll never be uncertain of my position, no matter what transpires during the flight.

Airfield 1 was only a short five minute hop from Galinat. I easily spotted it as I approached, and here are a couple of shots of it.

It looks as though whoever flies from there has got it made, with his house at one end of a fairly long, flat grass runway and a very tidy looking hangar at the other 🙂

Then on to field 2, which only took another three minutes or so. It consisted of a very long, slightly undulating grass runway that was neatly cut out of the trees and nicely outlined with white markers. I think that this was the one that Wim told me about before the flight that’s owned by an Englishman who has gardens that are open to the public during the tourist season. I’m pretty certain that it was the right place because after flying past the runway and main house, I did spot what looked like a large specially laid-out decorative garden of some sort.

Then on to airfield three, which was the one that gave me the biggest surprise. As shown in the following picture, it consisted of a fairly long grass runway cut onto the side of a steep hill, and when I say steep, I mean it! Although there was a run-off area at its bottom end, I do seriously wonder whether, given the runway’s gradient, it would be possible to pull up before, or on it even, in the event of an aborted take-off.

Airfield four couldn’t have been more different, as the following pictures show. It was just a short, flat, rather untidy looking runway outside a small house that looked from the air to be a good match for the runway! I do wonder, actually, if the house is a holiday or secondary home that the owner hasn’t visited for a few weeks or months and if it and the runway are both now due their spring spruce-up.

And finally airfield 5. This was just a large bare field containing a long, slightly sloping grass runway. The reason for why it was so long became clear as I approached it, for as the following picture shows, under covers close to the road passing the field was a Robin Group A aircraft.

So that was my main mission accomplished – five small airfields and all of them located – and then it was time to continue on towards the town of Gourdon. Unfortunately, neither the direction from which the sun was shining nor the camera I was using did me any favours, but in any case, here are a couple of the best shots that I managed to take.

When I took off, the ground temperature was around 13 degrees Celsius and I found that the air aloft was quite a bit warmer than I’d expected. For example, I was quite comfortable flying with my glove off for quite long periods in order to take pictures. I also found that there was quite a lot of lift about and as a result, lots of large birds of prey soaring over the areas that were tree-covered. The whole flight lasted for 1 hour and 45 minutes and at the end of it I felt very pleased with how it had gone.

It was a pity, however, that when I’d uncovered 56NE earlier I’d found that the mouse, squirrel or whatever it is that has taken up residence in it while I’m not there is now not only using it as a winter home but is also enjoying its meals inside it and using the seats as a toilet. For the time being I’ve tried moving the aircraft to a different parking spot but I fear that ultimately, as recommended by various local people who, being country folk, are less sentimental about such things than I am, more drastic and direct measures will be necessary in order to deal with the problem more permanently 😐