Learning To Fly: The Vale Of York

Today's lesson would consist of more navigation - both in the planning and the execution. I was given the option of a few places to fly to and chose Castle Howard, or to be more specific the villages of High Hutton and Low Hutton. Fortunately this is a route that I had planned as my homework.

The instructor also introduced me to backstops en-route to identify features that would show we had overshot our target, and also gross error check points that demonstrated that we were heading in the right direction at the start of a leg.

I marked a half way point on each leg to identify en-route. Finally I drew the wind vector on the chart so that we would always be aware of the general wind direction.

I'm biting the bullet now with my radio talk and did most of the work during taxi, take off and departing the zone. Remembering too to do the T&P check, setting the squawk and noted the time just before take off.

Routing out of the zone via Eccup, climbing to 3000ft with focus on altitude and direction for this leg. We climbed at the cruise speed in order to maintain timings.

The flying towards Castle Howard / Hutton was easy but lack of features makes the navigation more challenging. Railways and major roads are a great help. We arrived bang on target time of 17 minutes and positively identified the market town of Malton as the backstop.

Today I learned another new acronym to remember, and to use when overhead a way point on my journey. The 4Ts: Twist, Turn, Time, Talk.

Twist the heading bug to the new heading, turn the aircraft onto the new heading, make a note of the time, then talk to ATC to give current known position and expected time at next position.

En-route to our next way point, Easingwold we flew over the disused airfield at East Moor and recognised it from our visit on the previous day. It still didn't look much like a disused airfield but we now know where it is and what to look for it was much easier to spot.

Easingwold appeared as the only conurbation ahead of us, but didn't see the rivers that were on the chart. I confirmed identity of Easingwold based on a significant fork in road and a disused railway line - lined with trees. We were satisfied that we knew where we were so informed ATC we were moving towards Ripon for general handling.

Soon I found that I was flying over Fountains Abbey, which is always a great sight from the air. It was time to practice stalls in clean configuration, approach configuration - full flap - and base to final turn configuration.

I hadn't done this for quite some time so I needed to be guided once again. My recovery attitude a bit too steep but doing OK. HASELL checks and HELL checks came back to mind as we practiced the drill.

Then on towards what I believed to be Brimham Rocks for a demonstration of a PFL - Practiced Forced Landing.

It is easy to instigate a PFL. Gain a decent amount of altitude, perhaps 3000ft and then simply cut the power. Remember during the exercise to apply power every now and then to keep the engine warm.

Using the 5Ss : Size, Shape, Slope, Surface, Surroundings and we identified a great field for our practiced forced landing. The instructor took me through this maneouver one time and it would be something we will be practicing in the coming hours.

Finally heading back to Leeds - I did the calls, entered the zone, switch to Tower, orbit over Eccup to wait for a Robin on R27 approach, with a Cessna above us. Then in for the landing. I'm still to the left of the centreline, there was a small amount of crosswind and this made me do a 'positive' landing that probably didn't help the suspension much. Then back to Multiflight via foxtrot and golf.

Homework for next time is to plan my own route, looking for good examples of road / rail / river intersections.