So I planned for two routes today:
- Solo Nav: J28 -> Witham -> Chelmsford -> J28
- Staplefords standard first solo nav
- Dual Nav: J28 -> Brands Hatch -> Sheerness VRP -> J28
- After a conversation with my instructor, we spoke about the scenario where you might transit a FIS ATZ, en route or while receiving a service from an ATC like Southend, so I planned a route to get that experience
Unfortunately the weather was not solo ready, Stansted and Southend were showing SCT around 2000/2100 but in the moment it seemed much higher than that. The wind was quite strong at 20kts with a risk of a crosswind on the runway.
* My instructor suggested as there was no reason to keep Southend Director on standby, I might as well have changed it to Rochester.
If I was on my own, I should have left a lot more space from London TMA, to avoid any accidental infringement.
As we reached Brands Hatch we could see that there was an event on, so I made a slight turn to avoid flying overhead, and continued my navigation with 1 minute taken off.
Temporarily changing frequency to Rochester Information on . Very friendly and much more casual, I advised them that I intend to pass to the North of their ATZ, and after passing my message, they let me know that there was no traffic that they believed would interfere with that. In the end I actually had ended up even more North than my intended track, so I was quite a way from their ATZ. Either way it was good experience.
Then changing back to Southend, to quickly request zone transit as I am fast approaching their CTR. It was starting to get a little bit tight, or would need to lower my altitude to 1500 feet. In this scenario I had my instructor to keep an eye using SkyDemon, and we were able to get the radio call and approval to enter controlled airspace. I went straight in with requesting the zone transit from the Sheerness VRP to Brentwood so that it was all organised.
Approved. Not below 2000ft, and actually this was easy with such great weather.
All round I think this is one of my best lessons recently, and really makes me feel ready for solo navs.
Once thing for improvement is to trim better, and focus on that altitude as there was 200/250ft of vertical movement and needs to be much smaller, obviously the wind didn’t help.
We tried to get SkyDemon on my phone to start recording but it didn’t seem to work well, splitting into multiple flight logs with gaps – iPad Mini is on its way!
I have a break now for 2 weeks as my insturactor is away, I’ll use the time to get 2 more exams done – Principals of Flight and Communications.