Perranporth May 14 2011

Blackbushe Aviation had their first fly out of 2011 last week to Perranporth. It was a huge success and 3 aircraft with 8 people on board did the trip. Pics of the trip below and Jonathan Stockley, one of our PPL students, writes:

Blackbushe Fly out to Perranporth Saturday 14th May 2011

As a 7 hour PPL student I was excited at the prospect of actually flying somewhere rather than just going to the training area. To actually see how possible it was to fly ‘straight & level’ for 2 hours plus. My understanding is that S&L flight is the most important part of flying to master, as per Wolfgang Langewiesche’s book Stick & Rudder. An Explanation of the Art of Flying. Excellent book and should be read many times over.

Saturday morning arrived and I got to the flying school at 8.45. I met fellow student Peter, (3 hour student) and our host/instructor for the day, Lawrence Harley from Redhill. In total there were three aircraft flying. Two PA28s and a Cessna 152.

Peter and I followed Lawrence around while he checked out our PA28. Then a toss of a coin to see who was going to fly the leg to Cornwall. I lost! A quick discussion of the route that Lawrence had plotted and we were away. Departure about 10.10am just in time before the airfield shut a there was a model aeroplane show on. The only draw back with our aircraft G-JJAN was that there was no intercom connection in the rear. Peter had brought a hand held transceiver which allowed me to select the appropriate ATC frequency as we followed our route. Outside that it was a quiet journey over some beautiful countryside. Another benefit of being in the back was being able to watch all the instruments with no pressure. The PA28 was initially more complicated with the dials being in different places than the Cessna 152 but that aside it was most interesting watching the FREDA checks being carried out.

We arrived in Perranporth at just before midday and almost landed on the wrong runway. I’d heard ATC state runway 27 but for some reason Lawrence lined up on runway 23. I think he did this because we’d already seen another aircraft land before us also on the (incorrect) runway 23. Afterwards Lawrence did say, “If you think something is wrong, do say”. After a very tasty ham, egg and chips lunch at the flying club restaurant, we in JJAN took off to Land’s end as it was so close. This was my opportunity to fly though Lawrence did the take off as runway 01 had just been re-tarmaced and was only 3m wide at the beginning. We flew at 5000 feet which was the highest I’d been before and we flew through cloud on our way to Land’s End. 

We landed, paid our landing fee, had a coffee, re-fuelled and left to return to Blackbushe. We climbed out and headed back towards Perranporth to pick up our track. Lawrence had again worked out the appropriate headings factoring in drift from the wind. At each VRP we set a new heading and looked at our ETAs to see how close we were to our calculations. Just to the east of Rampisham at Cerne Abbas we found the chalk man carved into the hill side. We did look for this on the way there but it was on west facing hillside hence not being able to find it. Here I did a 60O bank, sorry Peter and circled while Peter and Lawrence got pictures. On route I spoke to Exeter Radar, Bournemouth and Farnborough LARS. I did get my TRPACER a little wrong when talking to Exeter saying we were a Cessna! But I did correct this.

All in all a brilliant trip. It compounded all that I had learnt so far with the school into a great flight. And so quick. Blackbushe to Cornwall in less than two hours! What a way to travel and so exciting at the same time.

Can’t wait for the next one. Highly recommended.

Jonathan Stockley

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