Day: March 27, 2011

I’d planned a return to the Isle of Sheppey today to do the same as I did last week-end at Hastings – fly around the island at sea level. However, while I was getting prepared Clive took off from Linton in his Quantum and as we watched him receding into the distance to the north, we saw him turn around. He joined overhead and landed back not much more than ten minutes after leaving reporting that the vis was not too good.

I decided that I’d have a look for myself and sure enough, there was quite a bit of haze but it was well within the VMC limits. That makes it legal but it doesn’t make it fun. I flew north-eastwards on track and when I got about half way to Faversham the cloud approaching the North Kent coast became thicker making it cooler below trapping even more mist and haze. It was doubtful even so that the vis would have fallen below the VMC limit (1500 metres vis while remaining clear of cloud and in sight of the surface for an aircraft like MYRO flying under 140kts airspeed below 3000ft altitude) but it was pretty obvious that the reducing vis would not be a lot of fun. So time to turn back, and anyway, what’s the point of flying around burning up fuel when it’s not fun and there’s very little to see.

Here are a few shots I took shortly after taking off.

So I turned round and headed back to where the murk and haze was not too bad doing a circuit round Leeds Castle on the way followed by a bit of local flying nearer to Linton. It was strange because further south, in the area where I’d taken off, the sun was still brightly shining – it just shows what can happen when the air pressure is quite high, the air is moist, the ground is cold and there’s a layer of lowish cloud. A perfect recipe for high pressure fog, which is what we had today.

Just to finish, here are a few more shots I took heading north east before I turned round (the vis did actually get quite a bit worse than this…)

So instead of a flight round the Isle of Sheppey it was an up and a down in 45 minutes. Good to be back up again but not fun enough to stay there. Let’s hope things are a bit better next week 😐