FA Cup Flying Adventure: Departure

With everyone strapped in, Northy in the Co-pilot seat, as he was the
heaviest, I ran through the pre-flight checks, briefed the guys on what to
do if we had to force land, and called the tower for my departure clearance.


Almost immeadiatley, unusual for Newcastle Airport, we were cleared to back
track on Runway 25 and given departure instruction to route south via the
Tyne Bridges. Perfect, I'd get to do the scenic departure over Newcastle's
St. James's Park Stadium on route to The Millennium Stadium.

We were soon heading over the Tyne and all my passengers were talking
excitedly and taking pictures.

For this Flight I was going to fly straight down the country over-flying
Leeds-Bradford then onto the Trent VOR (TNT) then onto the Brecon VOR (BCN)
via a slight dog-leg to miss Birmingham Internationale's airspace, and then
to Cardiff. I decided not to fly direct to Cardiff As I'd be forced through
the low-level corridor under the Manchester CTR, and I could do without the
stress!

I'd bought some helpful navigation aids,
VORTrack
plotters, that you clip onto your chart and they allow you to generate a
visual fix on the chart very quickly. I explained to Northy how to set them
if I gave him a bearing from a VOR or a distance from a DME, so I could ask
him to do it for me so that I could concentrate on flying when we got to the
clouds over Wales. They are such a simple device that he picked it up in no
time. I've never used VORTrack Plotters before and had spent the previous
evening sticking the press-studs to all the VOR's on my charts. For those
pilots reading this, I thoughly recommend them. The "picture" you get of
your position is instant and accurate, and you don't have to Fly the plane
whilst drawing on your map!

We overflew Leeds-Bradford at Fight Level 40 (4000 feet on pressure
setting 1013 m Bar)and the Air traffic controller said,
"Golf-Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah, are you going to the match?". "Affirm", I
replied. "I hope you win!", he said.
Presumably he was a Leeds fan and like most other football clubs in Britain was a certified ManU hater, who assumed that because I was flying from Newcastle that I was a Newcastle
fan. Unlike my Geordie passengers, I'm a ManU fan.
"Me too", I answered, smiling to myself

As we flew south, We had to drop down to 2000ft to cross the main
air corridor into Manchester Airport the Category A L975. It just so happened that this was
above the Pennine hills, and so we were whizzing through fantastic scenery at
500ft above the moors. The look on the faces of some of the hill walkers as
we flew overhead was priceless!

This for me was the best bit of the whole
flight, as it was so low that you could see all the details on the ground
and also get a feeling of speed and flying. I felt a bit Top Gun! :-)

The trouble started as we regained our cruising altitude after the
corridor and set course for Wales. We could see the weather ahead was very
cloudy, so I decided to climb to FL60 to fly above it. After 10 minutes of
holding my heading I looked down and was aware that a particular reservoir I'd spotted over my left wing hadn't moved very far. Now I know what you're thinking, reservoirs are large
bodies of water and don't tend to move around the country side, but you know
what I mean.

The Problem was the wind speed. It was clearly a lot higher
than forecast, and it was right on the nose of our little plane. I had to
drop down into slower air. I descended to FL40 and right into the clouds.

I wasn't particularly troubled by this as I hold the UK IMC rating
that allows me to travel IMC within the UK (with higher minima than the full
Instrument flying rating), and the DME to Brecon started counting down
nicely. However, it wasn't counting down as fast as I'd like and I my
workload went up. Not only were we flying towards Wales, a particularly
hilly country, in cloud but I started to re-do my Speed/Time/Distance
calculations.

We were behind schedule. By half an hour! In clouds and rain, with
the nearest suitable airport to land in bad weather the same distance behind
us as our destination was in front. At this rate I'd be able to land with 15
minutes of fuel remaining. just enough to divert to Swansea or Bristol if
necessary. I checked the ATIS for Cardiff and it was still above my
minimum's, so I decided to go for it.

In hind sight I should have turned
round and used the tail wind to help me back to Birmingham.

I continued on towards the Brecon VOR, all the time watching my fuel
gauges and re-doing S/T/D calculations. The wind had picked up again and we
were traveling slower again! By this point I didn't have the option to turn
back to Birmingham, it was going to be tight! I reckoned that our flight time
was going to be 3 and a half hours.... The same amount of time as the fuel
we had on board. Talk about stress! I had already leaned the mixture as much
as possible and adopted a slight nose-up attitude to increase my distance
per gallon ratio. My passengers were oblivious to the drama taking place in
the front left seat.

I called Cardiff early and asked for a vectored ILS approach. I
wanted to shave off the distance that going to the Brecon VOR then south
would add. Thankfully Cardiff put me on a heading straight to them. I was a
bit worried that there would be loads of traffic into Cardiff and I would
then have to request that I jumped the queue, thus announcing to the world
and my passengers the situation I was in. As it turned out we were straight
in and I reported that I was established on the ILS. At 700 feet the we
became visual with the runway and I made a perfect crosswind landing, just
touching down as the stall warner sounded.

Phew!

In the confusion of landing at an airfield that I've never been to
before in heavy rain and what with my brain desperately trying to shut down now that we
were back on the ground I missed my runway exit point and had to taxi all
round the airport to get back to the GA(General Aviation) side of the field, whilst simultaneously taking abuse from the Tower. I didn't mind though. The Cardiff radar had helped get us down safely

Outside it was pissing down! As forecast! The lads were still applauding me
and wanting to get out of the plane for a piss themselves, but I stopped
them until they had taken a picture of the fuel gauges (both reading zero), for posterity! :-)

We jumped out and the ground controllers had thoughtfully sent a
minibus to pick us up, however we all had to line up behind the bus for a 3
and a half hour power piss on the taxi way before we could depart! ;-)

A 5.30am start, a three and ahalf hour flight in bad weather with not enough fuel.

I was knackered!

Now, on to the Match!

FA Cup Flying Adventure: Pre-flight

5.30 am 17th December 2005. My alarm clock went off and I was out of bed like a shot.

Today was the day of the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester United (my team) and Newcastle United at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium.
The reason I was up so early, I was due to fly myself and three Geordie mates to the match. Kick off was at 3pm and we had an arrival slot for 11.08 BST.
We didn't have a backup plan to get to the game if the flying was out as that would have meant leaving Newcastle before 5.30am in order to make the long journey by car.

I was exceptionally nervous.

I'd been watching the weather reports for a week and they had consistently predicted bad weather on Sunday, Today.
I looked out of the window to be greeted with a perfect clear blue sky! I logged onto The Met Office to check the TAF's.

TAF
CARDIFF EGFF 170310Z 170413 150 11KT 9999 SCT025 BECMG 1012 700 RA BKN014
NEWCASTLE EGNT 170309Z 170413 17003KT 9999 FEW020 TEMPO 0410 4000 BR

METAR
CARDIFF EGFF 170450Z 12009KT CAVOK 03/01 Q1006
NEWCASTLE ENGT 170450Z 00000KT 9999 FEW035 01/00 Q1006

My fears were realised. The weather in Cardiff was due to rain, but that wasn't due to start until sometime between 10am and 12pm, the report for the return leg looked better with Newcastle having just broken clouds at 2000ft and 4000ft.

As I really wanted to go to the game and didn't want to let my mates down, I concluded that the weather would be above my minimum's and so it was all systems go! (note to self, this is very bad practice for pilots, and I should be just as happy not to go if the weather looks bad!)

It was 6.15 a.m. I was up dressed and had had some porridge and bananas for breakfast, I figured I needed the energy for the flight ahead, and I was half way through updating my flight plan and vectoring in the current forecast high-level winds, when my phone rang.
It was my mate Jonny, too exited to sleep ringing up to check if the weather was OK and tell me he was coming round to meet me.

I told him the weather was OK but it'd be close and we had a headwind all the way there, so that would add half an hour onto our flight time. We'd best get going so that we could take off at 8.30 sharp in order to make our arrival slot.

I'd faxed through my flight-plan the previous evening, with flight time estimated at 100 knot airspeed and no wind. At that speed we should be taking 2 hours and 15 minutes. With the current wind added we'd be taking 2 hours 45 mins. With 4 blokes on board we couldn't have full tanks due to weight and balance and I'd been at the airport the night before making sure that we had enough fuel on and were within limits.

We actually had 3 and a half hours of fuel on board, (which was slightly overweight but still in balance) and I figured that with both Newcastle (EGNT) and Cardiff (EGFF) having such long runways we'd be OK for takeoff and with two airports (Bristol and Swansea) within 15-20 minutes flying time from Cardiff we had enough endurance.

After picking up the other two passengers, Northy and Stuz, we were off to the Airport.

Everyone was in high spirits, and Stuz who was nervous of flying was even exited. I was trying to shut out the chatter and get my head into pilot mode. I wasn't having much luck and kept doing the time/speed/distance sums over and over, worried that I'd miscalculated.

We arrived at the GA terminal of Newcastle. It was a lovely day!

I pushed the Piper out of the hanger and began my walk-around checks. Stuz took one look at the size of the PA28 and went for a cigarette! :-)

The walk-around ritual had the usual meditative effect, and by the time I called the guys over to get in the plane, I was fully focused for the task ahead.