Four flying days of Easter – Day 4

Today was another almost cloud-free day but conditions were a bit different from the previous three days, being a bit cooler with a brisker wind from the north-west. I got a phone call early on from Ken saying that both he and Peter wanted to get some time in the X’air today, so that became the plan. Peter wanted to talk about training and adding the ‘M’ rating to his PPL the same as I did, so we decided to nip up to Stoke to see if Chris was available to do that. When we took off we could see that it was again quite hazy but conditions were well within the VMC limits and a GPS was not necessary as I now know the local area like the proverbial back of my hand. We flew up to Stoke via the western side of Rochester which gave us fine views of the castle and cathedral and although we took off from runway 29 at Linton, we found that Stoke were using runway 06 rather than 24. We joined overhead and the landing went well until the roll after the touchdown when I had the most incredible experience that I need to share with anyone who flies X’airs in case anything like it happens to them.

We were taxiing quite quickly because with other traffic in the circuit, we wanted to clear the active as quickly as possible. I was wearing quite light trainers today and at this point my right toe became caught under the right toe brake. The results were rather alarming to say the least. If I pushed on the right rudder pedal my toe became more trapped and I almost lost steering control. First we swung alarmingly to the right towards the highish bank that separates the taxiway and runway from the salt marshes. Then as I yanked my toe out from under the brake and effectively had no right rudder for a few moments until I adjusted my foot position again, we swung to the left straight towards all the hangars. Fortunately I then brought things back under control. But not before Karen spotted what had happened, so my landing exploits will be all around Stoke before you know it. Will I ever be able to hold my head up high again I ask myself 😯

Peter and I had a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich and we were able to have a few minutes with Chris as we’d hoped, which gave Peter some food for thought. Then we took off again to return to Linton. By the time we got back, the wind had picked up so it wasn’t possible to take off immediately with Ken. We waited for a time, until shortly after 4.00pm, before the wind dropped a bit and we decided to go. The haze which had got thicker while Peter and I were returning from Stoke had reduced a bit by then and in fact the flying conditions were not too bad. We decided to do a circuit around Maidstone which is something I seem to have done a few times lately and all went pretty smoothly. We landed back on runway 29 and the landing was pretty busy due to the cross-wind, which we seem to keep getting just lately, but nothing that I couldn’t cope with.

As we put the X’air to bed, our 4 flying days came to an end. I was very pleased that I managed to get four out of four because I know that many others in other parts of the country were not so lucky. We were very fortunate ourselves in the South-East to get four consecutive days that were all flyable and I regard myself as very lucky to have got a total of 5 hours 40 minutes in during them. In three days time we will have the same all over again. I wonder if I will be just as lucky again? 😉