Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, your captain for this flight is...
We have a chance to fly the British Airways Boeing 777 simulator at Heathrow tonight (it's quiet, being post-Christmas) and so the 4 of us who fly TG drive up late one evening to the deserted engineering sheds behind the airport where the £20 million full-motion hydraulic simulators are to be found. Despite the massive expense of these simulators they are the preferred method of airline line training and currency for two reasons: their per hour rate is 1%-2% of the cost of running an equivalent airliner, and you can simulate very realistically combinations of system failures it would be extremely dangerous to replicate in the air.
The simulator is a large box on jacks, but once seated at the controls and feeling the first expansion-joint bump of the taxyway this disappears: immersion is total and your senses are convinced you are in an aircraft.
First impressions are that the 777 is surprisingly sprightly in pitch and roll response, that the engines take a l o n g time to spool up but then produce a satisfactory thump in the back, and that the initial climb angle is steep; even steeper than the PA-32. 15° is normal, and whilst it takes a pull to get it to 10° it then tends to run away towards 20°, closing fast on the stall /AoA indicator in the Flight Director, the first time I've seen one of these (which surely should have shown the pilots of the Air France A340 that crashed in the mid-Atlantic that they were doing something wrong?).
We fly around for a while (heavy turbulence at 300ft over Newark, heading for the Statue of Liberty) and it's easy to fly using the Flight Director (a cross between an AH, a DI and an ILS: basically you aim to keep the white dot in the centre of the pink cross and you won't go far wrong: autothrottles attend to any power requirements), but if you try to fly it visually it can become disorientating due to the lack of feel.
Yaw is taken account of using a yaw damper, so you only really need the rudder for runway steering, and the dashboard works on the "dark display" methodology: if no lights are lit everything is OK.

We all find it very intense but no one crashes it; we all do a number of successful ILS approaches to big airfields and whilst our landings may have been heavier than one would expect in TG they were all on the runway and in the right place.
Of course, the question everyone asks is that given the highly unlikely scenario where both pilots are incapacitated but the airliner isn't, and the Stewardess asks if any of the passengers can fly a plane, could the PPL holder in seat 44D actually land a 777 safely?
I reckon, given a modicum of luck, there are sufficient automatics for an Instrument Rated PPL to get the thing on the ground. We were flying it manually, but the autopilot generally does a more efficient job and, if commanded, will actually land the aircraft using the radio altimeter and the ILS. So: a qualified "Yes".
We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and will do it again if the opportunity presents itself.

ANR
It's New Year 2012 and Pete wants to rattle the water out of his Mooney, warm the engine and de-rust his (and my) piloting skills.
He's doing an FI course, so there are plenty of good tips to be picked up.
Most important for me is the chance to test a prospective purchase: a loaned Lightspeed Zulu ANR headset. My existing Sennheiser HME-100 has served me well, but this represents a serious step up.
ANR, or Automatic Noise Reduction, is one of those clever ideas that we never thought would emerge from the boffindom of the 1980s. It's a clever way of reducing ambient noise levels within headsets whilst allowing important noises through. In the case of aviation headsets, this means radio messages, which you can sometimes struggle to understand above the high noise floor of engine, aircraft ancillaries and airflow.
Instead of simply adding increased insulation and/or clamp pressure to the earpieces, thereby increasing weight and size, a microphone on the outside of each earpiece takes the ambient noise, delays it by exactly half a wavelength and plays it back through the earphone inside the earpiece. This cancels out a huge proportion of the ambient noise, as nobly demonstrated by William Woolard on Tomorrows World a very long time ago (that ages me...).
Clearly a case of "more is less".
Obviously noise comes in a mix of different frequencies, so a fixed delay won't work: presumably they have a sliding delay depending upon frequency (and thus wavelength).
As Pete starts the Mooney's engine I deliberately keep the ANR turned off (to simulate battery failure) and the noise level through the light, low clamp pressure earcups is about equivalent to my Sennheisers.
So far so good.
Then I turn on the ANR and an uncanny silence descends: I must be going deaf after all? Then Pete speaks and the strength of his audio above the noise floor is such that I have to turn the volume way down.
Apart from a bass rumble, that I suspect I am feeling rather than hearing, the engine sounds a long way away indeed. The only issue seems to be strange transients occasionally on movement of the jaw, either through momentary displacement of the earcup seal, or opening of the Eustachian tube allowing unfiltered noise up from the back of the nasal passages.
The difference between ANR ON and OFF is just massive: it really does work, and I can hear Pete and ATC a lot more clearly. The claims made that you can't hear the engine properly are simply untrue: in many ways you can hear the engine more clearly.
What I haven't appreciated until now is the fatiguing effect of high noise levels: with this ANR unit an hour's flight is not exhausting in the same way it is without. It's hard to describe the way in which the noise fatigues but it certainly does: after an hour's flight I feel fresher than I normally do.
I'm sold on the idea of ANR and on the headphones: anyone want a pair of HME-100s?

One thing has come up in discussion recently with Steve: the issue of checking the CO detector.
This is simply not in my normal list of things to check on a regular basis, and whilst the detector is checked at the 50hr service that's not really the point of the thing, which is to check on a minute-by minute basis that poisonous fumes are not being released from a leaky exhaust manifold in to the cabin.
The effects of CO poisoning are insidious: you can't see or smell it but in sufficient concentrations it can affect decision making and eventually cause unconsciousness.
So I think we should be FREDAC-ing every 15 mins or so (Fuel, Radio, Engine, DI, Altimeter, CO).

We fly out over Blenheim palace, then Gloucester, then I turn us North (I love the Mooney, it's all-pushrod and there's no wooliness about the controls whatsoever) for Evesham. A large hammerhead - shaped freezing rain cloud is lurking South West of Oxford but passes safely. We're not FIKI-equipped and IR or no IR Pete's not going in there and neither am I.
We finally recover back to Oxford from Banbury and I shoot the ILS from the right seat, which is interesting but stable despite a 20Kt crosswind until the wind veers at 1,000ft and I drift 1½ dots off to the right. As I am correcting Pete calls 800ft and we go visual, which goes to show that 1½ dots deviation is quite easily recoverable from: a quick left turn and there's plenty of time to "get it in from here". And we have 2 reds and 2 whites so the height was just peachy.....

Why can't I do ILSes?
My IMC needs revalidating before April or I lose it permanently (some daft EASA wonks in Europe, jealous of our ability to fly in clouds without 14 exams and the knowledge of exactly what the weather is like in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and detailed knowledge of how a jet engine works, has decided We Must Not Be Allowed To Fly On Cloudy Days - a likely story in the UK).
Some IMC rust removal is called for before I do my revalidation (plus I haven't flown for 2½ months), so I borrow Pete and we plan a complex and demanding All-IFR flight to Coventry for an ILS, a missed approach and an ILS back in to Oxford.

I know something will go wrong, me being rusty in all sorts of different ways, I just don't know what will go wrong....

We do a full pre-IFR A Check, then with foggles on we take-off and I turn on to my intercept course for a 315° Moreton Departure without cross-checking DI and Compass (mistake #1) so we end up drifting back over the airfield and in to the Beacon outbound procedure area, starting to impinge upon a business jet's approach comfort zone, so Pete vectors me back towards where I should be, we get the DI showing what the compass is showing and it all starts going better once more.
Apart from the old "blowing through the VOR track whilst concentrating on getting the NDB tracking right" trick things get better, except that my scan is all wrong and I'm expending way too much mental energy keeping straight and level. Rust!
We make Daventry without further ado and the vectors on to the ILS go just peachy, then as I start down the ILS I just can't seem to get it nailed: the descent rate is is OK but I can't seem to keep the bloody localiser. We drift left and right in larger arcs until we both know it's a mess and we throw it away at 1,500ft. I never even see the runway. We're in and out of bumpy cloud and I don't know whether Pete even sees it either.
The Missed Approach procedure is complicated by the fact that we have mistuned the radio so we are not getting anything from Coventry Tower, and the close proximity of the Birmingham Zone prevents us from climbing above 1,500ft, but we do it OK and re-establish on the correct DTY radial before sorting out the radio, departing Coventry and calming down as we swap back to Oxford, then hunt and establish the Honiley 151° radial for an ILS back.
I then miss the Localiser and have to swing back through to get established, which upsets my pre-landing checks and desire to get stabilised on 100Kts with 1 stage of flap before hitting the glideslope. It does come together eventually but then I'm swinging left and right of the Localiser again: I can do this normally, it is so frustrating.
At 1,000ft and at half-scale deflection we go visual: we're quite a long way off to one side of the runway. Pete suggests nicely that we may want to go Missed but actually I reckon we can get it on from here: 19 is very long for a determined C182 driver.
With some immediate and judicious juggling of throttle and flaps we get back over the runway at a sensible speed and a huge descent rate, flare nicely half way down and we're on really smoothly and gently.
"Oh, OK, maybe we didn't need to go Missed after all.... I wouldn't have got the Mooney in from there".
So I can do the easy stuff, just not the bloody ILS.
But rust firmly removed.

IMC Rust removal Part Deux
After lunch (and I feel so much less exhausted with this new ANR headset; wish I'd changed years ago) we go again: this time for some vectoring, plus some partial panel and unusual attitudes work.

After this morning's rust removal everything goes a great deal more swimmingly: my scan has got better and the whole thing feels less frenetic. Our Moreton departure works better now I am cross-checking the DI against the compass and I can hold height and heading with less mental effort (and less death grip on the yoke).
We do some vectoring, which is easy, and then some timed turns (helped by us now having a decent timer on the transponder box), then it's time for Recovery From Unusual Attitudes. It's weird that I have always found these the least scary part of IFR aviation, and whether full or partial panel have always been able to recover easily, so we whip through the rollercoaster ride and move on.
Now I've done IMC for a number of years the scariness is retreating: I could never go back to being "just a VFR pilot": clouds have lost their dread and I quite enjoy the challenge of relying on the instruments. OK, I'm not the worst best instrument pilot, largely because I don't fly enough IFR stuff, but I am confident I could, with all cylinders firing, do an Instrument let down for real. My Holds may be messy and my bumpy cloud work a bit inaccurate but it's just practise.

IMC comes in many forms
The February snow has finally relented and a bright blue sunny but freezing cold Saturday allows us to finalise the IMC rust removal.... if we can get the aircraft out and going. I need to get my ILS's better.

At first glance the aircraft appears to be parked behind a wall of compacted snow generated by the snow-clearance guys, but they have left us a way out.

However, the aircraft has been covered in snow which has melted and re-frozen, so the wings and tail surfaces are covered in solid, compacted, icy snow several inches thick.

We move the aircraft round in to the sun, but even with its help it takes Pete and I two hours to remove with a broom, scrapers and de-icer fluid, mindful of the fact that even sandpaper-textured ice stuck to the lift-generating surfaces can reduce lift by up to 30%, increase drag by 20-30% and, most importantly, raise the stall speed by 10Kts.
We also take pains to reduce any ice from control surfaces and hinges, then lower the flaps and work the ailerons and elevators to ensure the control runs are free and clear. Freezing level is "000-005" so anything left is going to freeze and could jam the controls if we're not careful.
This is the first time I've ever had to do this and it's a learning process, like much in aviation. Professional pilots and Instructors have long ago got this under their belts; it's handy to have a Mentor to learn more about the art of running an aircraft for yourself as opposed to just flying with a club. I have certainly learned more in the last 52 hours and calendar year than I learned in the previous 2 or 3 years.

After a spot of lunch and some planning (I now know the little chevrons against runways on the 1:500,000 chart means "Instrument approach available" not "ILS available") we try to start the poor, frozen beast, and whilst it kicks and runs feebly a few times the battery is too weak and soon it won't even turn the prop.
I learn something more about the Cessna 182: where the 12V ground charge socket is (just under the oil inspection hatch on the left side of the engine: needs a flathead screwdriver to undo). Hats off to the Fire Service guys who have a neat electric charger and have us going in a trice (to be fair, they have to start everyone else as well...).
And finally we're taxying out ready to go. We leave the cowl flaps only half open to accelerate warming the engine and by the time we have done our power checks the oil temperature is in the green.

We'll re-run the last session with the emphasis on the ILSes: one at Coventry, and a second one on our return to Oxford.
Off East to track the 070° radial to the Westcott NDB (check the DI matches the compass), which as the air is clear works perfectly except one instance of me reading the compass backwards and adjusting the DI by 10° in the wrong direction (that becomes quickly obvious). Get a good cut over WCO and turn North to pick up the 348° radial to the Daventry beacon. I manage to blow through the radial and as we're getting close have to do a radical 60° cut to recover the situation, but that's OK, and swap to Coventry Approach who vector us in to their ILS Localiser. On the descent towards the Localiser we slow down to 100Kts, stabilise and trim the aircraft to reduce workload. This works better.
Turning to capture the Localiser we are VMC on top of the haze but as we descend in to sun and haze it becomes obvious that no foggles are required: this is IMC for real. I'm not looking out at all, but the haze is so bad Pete can't even see the runway at 1,000ft. It's only at 800ft and Decision Height do we both look out and see the runway vaguely through the haze, enough to land off if necessary (and satisfyingly on track).
We go missed and climb out, climbing through the Missed Approach procedure (complex here, as you are below Birmingham International's Airspace and mustn't climb above 1499ft) back towards Daventry and can relax: it's a beautiful day and the country is covered in a flat white layer of haze around 2,000ft thick: no day for visual navigation or landings. In the distance we can see a lump in the haze that can only be Didcot power station.
We pick up the Honiley 151° radial and switch back to Oxford, then capture the Localiser and attain the glideslope. This feels better: get the aircraft slowed down and trimmed stable in to the landing configuration first, then get on the ILS. Concentrating hard on the ILS we drop down the approach and like Coventry the runway simply doesn't appear until virtually Decision Height. We go visual, drop flaps and flare on to the runway centreline.
Despite this being a nominally VFR, if a little cold, day this landing would simply would not have been possible visually: I was head down on the ILS but the haze was so thick Pete didn't see the runway until we both looked out at Decision Height: real IMC on a sunny day.

We pop TG to bed with well-charged battery, wheel chocks and dried-out-on-the-fence-in-the-sun cover, double-check "Mags off, key out, Master off, brakes on, fuel off, lock door", recover broom and de-icer spray and go home.
A long day for 1 hour's flying....

Revalidated at last...
After a long delay due to examiner non-availability and some misty weather an appropriate Saturday appears and I arrive at Oxford in the pouring rain. This does not look promising: even my examiner thinks I've cancelled.
I chant the pilots' chant: "but it's forecast to clear....".
Doesn't look too much like it from here, although my first rule of "can I fly today?" is "look up at the clouds, if you can see uniform grey it's below 1,000ft and not flyable. If you can see features in the undersides of the clouds it's above 1,000ft and may be flyable". By this rule, features are appearing, so it's lifting. If it gets to 780ft and is above freezing to the tops and does not contain CBs, then it's IMC-legal.

They've moved us to front and centre of the apron, so we're very visible from the Tower. I think I preferred our little hideaway but this is less walking, it must be said.
Strip off the soaking cover, preflight and go back in to Ops to await my examiner. For once, the weather does more or less what it's forecast to do, and it becomes IMC-legal as we prepare.
Starting-up and taking-off, we climb to 3,000ft through the clouds. Once at cruise height and satisfied I can hold a height and heading in the murk he masks the DI and AH and we fly partial panel for a while, doing timed turns. Glad I did the de-rust: these actually work out remarkably well, despite me being a bit fumble-fingered with the timer on the transponder, and so we do some climbing turns and descents through the sometimes bumpy clouds.
Next he vectors me in for the ILS, so we slow the aircraft down, do pre-landing checks and establish on the Localiser for 19. My preflight guess at the wind-corrected heading to steer to retain the Localiser turns out to be very close and only 5° corrections either way are needed.
We slide in under the glideslope and we're almost there when another aircraft comes up behind us and we have to do an orbit for spacing, which gets a bit messy.
But part of this exam is not to panic, to be flexible, not to lose situational awareness and to get things back together again, so once the orbit is complete I re-construct the approach, re-establish the localiser and once more start to slide down the glideslope, trying for less than 1 blob error in all directions.
We have a large map and a cushion over the windscreen so I have no idea if we are in Oxfordshire or Cornwall, but at 780ft I declare visual, the obstruction is removed and there is runway 19. No need to touch anything, we just slide down towards it and flare.
Despite the gusty crosswind I am absolutely determined to give him the decent landing I should have given him on my PPL Skills test 5 years ago, and we land flapless with barely a quiver (just not on the bloody centreline; that's a work in progress), roll out and park.

He's happy, which means I'm ecstatic: I'm now IMC-legal for 2 years and a month and I've beaten EASA's new pilot licensing rules by a month or so.
What I do know is that I will use the IMC Rating in anger much more in the next 2 years than I have used it in the preceding 3. In a way, the increased number of hours and experience I have and our rust removal sessions have resolved many of the issues I had surrounding it.
I also discover the portable radio that's always been in the glove box is a transmitter as well as a receiver (and a pseudo-VOR), so my "total electrical failure" procedure can be amended to "use portable radio for calls", not "use mobile phone for calls".
It never ceases to amaze me just how well this aircraft is equipped.

Isle of Wight
One of my clients has a house on the Isle of Wight and needs assistance with the wireless I installed so on a cloudy, gloomy day we meet up, hop in his plane and take off. Bembridge is 25 minutes away and we climb up through the gloom until at 4,000ft we break free in to the beautiful spring sunshine. The fluffy mat of clouds spreads as far as the eye can see in all directions. It's just us up here, as good an excuse for an IMC as I can see. TCAS shows others grinding along just under the cloudbase: gloomy, bumpy stuff.
20 minutes later we drop back through the mat in to the gloom and he sets up for a low wind-check pass for 30 at Bembridge, cranks it round for the approach and scares a couple of cars passing the end of the runway by coming in very low, putting the wheels on the threshold (nice landing) and we rumble to a halt.

A couple of hours later, fresh IoW crab in hand, we fire up and take off again, accelerating into the murk mid-Solent and emerging once more in to the sunny upstairs for the run home.
The cloudbase at Oxford is below MSA so we will recover on the 19 ILS Procedure - but they're busy and need us to Hold. It's interesting to watch someone with many thousands of hours experience doing this. We agree a WCA and an outbound leg time and fly it, first at 4,500ft above the clouds, then at 3,500ft in the clouds, watching the TCAS showing the aircraft 1,000ft below us roughly paralleling us around the racetrack. As good situational awareness in a procedural stack as you'll ever get. Eventually we are released outbound and go visual at 2,300ft as we turn for the Localiser and I work as Safety pilot for a heads down ILS followed by a smooth landing. Good experience.

You make it look easy...
A prospective passenger needs a local flight to familiarise herself with the whole light aircraft thing before we take her to Scotland, so on a beautiful spring evening we book out and fire up. It's 5.45pm by the time we take off and the thermals have settled, the winds have dropped and the air is like silk.
We tour over central Oxford, watching the University lawns and gardens, then follow the river down to Abingdon. The light is so much more interesting at this time of day, as well as the smooth air. Across the inactive airfield and visit the house for a low pass followed by a low pass at a friend's house in Marcham before climbing up and away back towards Didcot, then on to Ickford for a promised low pass there and a climb out back in to the sunset.
We have a Seneca behind us for a left base join and stabilise on the approach, trim for 80Kts, turn Final at 1,000ft and float down, a few joggles as we cross the road in front of the threshold, then we're over the runway and settling. Float on, keep the nosewheel up as long as possible and roll out, taxy in and park. I manage to get it right this time and don't have to heave the aircraft around with the towing bar as I did before....
My passenger says I make it look easy. Sometimes, of course, it is easy!

"Nah mate, I'm from Sarfend, innit....!"
I'm off to France tomorrow for lunch, so the aircraft needs a little fuel and maybe some exercise. Flying one-up is dull, so I borrow a PPL student client and we opt to zip up to Wellesbourne for tea. We had planned to go to Membury, but no one answers the phone, so Wellesbourne it is.
It is murky and by the time we get going it's 4.00. Judging by the radio everyone has either gone home or never come out at all. The radio is dead quiet apart from us. Where is everyone?
I have never used 36 at Wellesbourne, so the approach feels weird: you come in over a quite considerable hill and, like Shoreham runway 20 you need to get what feels like very low over the high ground to not be trying to force the aircraft on to the ground half way down the runway. I do a half-reasonable effort with full flaps and taxy in.
Visiting the control tower to book in is interesting: apparently because I've flown in from Oxford I'm "posh" so the landing fee is "£167+VAT please, my good man?".
"Nah mate, I'm from Sarfend, innit bro...?".
I can be "down wiv da kids"; that raises a laugh and reduces the landing fee to a more sensible figure. Much jocularity in the Tower.... We can't take this Aviation thing too seriously!

Zen and The Art of Good Approaches
After a darned good piece of cake and some tea we line up to take-off again and this time I'll do a short field take-off: flaps to 20° as measured on the panel, not to the stop (I find this more accurate) then full beans, rotate at 60Kts and wheeeeee... it's helicopter time.
We do the required noise-abatement turn to 030° and climb back in to the circuit, then once we are assured of a positive rate of climb and trimmed for 80Kts we lose the flaps in stages and climb to 1500ft, heading out over Stratford upon Avon where we do a couple of orbits for photos.

Home is 20 minutes away so Ann flies us back and we cruise-descend for a crosswind join for 01. It's interesting watching her struggle with the mental picture of the circuit: I found the CAA-approved standard overhead join picture very helpful when learning and if in doubt I draw the circuit on the AFE book diagram: messy but helpful.
I am analysing my approaches at present: the old saying that "good landings come from good approaches" is very true, and whilst it is also true that bad landings come from good approaches (!), good landings rarely come from bad approaches, so I've got a bit "Zen" about approaches. Plus passengers like a smooth consistent approach, it's vital in IMC and reduces stress all round.
I would add: "a good approach is where you can fly down to the last 100ft hands off". You shouldn't, but it's a measure of whether you have the aircraft correctly trimmed, so at some point on the approach I usually go hands off for a second to check the trim. Also, I try to give a bit of extra back trim at about 100ft which reduces the flare loading: there are some strong springs back there in the tail.
So I've concluded my approaches are a bit high and am concentrating on knocking 200ft off the height I turn Final at for a more relaxed Final. That said, you could argue a high approach is more of an engine-out insurance. The argument begins here....
We taxy to the pumps, pump in plenty of AvGas and leave the aircraft with no cover and no tie-downs: I'll be using it in 12 hours.

Blackbushe at last
As usual I'm out of bed and checking weather, NOTAMs and flight plans at 6.30am. Over-excited, you see: sad, isn't it?
When I was learning to fly, apparently I was so excited every day I'd come back to the office on an absolute high with a huge smile, saying "it was brilliant, I was completely crap!". It's still fun...

Blackbushe is one of the few Southern England airfields I have not yet visited. Today's the day, and I'll be in there twice to boot!
Under a bright blue sky we're off pretty quickly via CPT. It's so hazy Blackbushe is invisible until we are virtually on top of it. Join crosswind LH for 25 and try to make a decent job of it: I am meeting not one but two people this morning...

Ian is a PPL student at Blackbushe - he flies Ikarus C42s which look a bit flimsy in a crosswind and I reckon are twitchier to fly than a C182. Hats off to him for mastering them: I struggled with a heavier and more docile PA28. I reckon if you can fly a C42 you can fly a C182 with your eyes closed. Go for it, Ian.

For some obscure reason AFPEx has failed to send Blackbushe our flight plan so we beg a terminal off the flying school reception and re-send it. I then ring the Tower and they confirm it has turned up. Bloody computers....

Simon is my oldest schoolfriend and a property developer in London. We don't see enough of each other, so this is an excuse to catch up. He's not been out before and knows me well enough to be worried about whether I know what I'm doing. This is an interesting phenomenon: I work with a man who won't fly with his (commercial pilot) brother because he remembers how irresponsible he was when he was small. So I'd better be professional!
Lifejackets on, full cross-Channel safety brief, we each take an EPIRB beacon and I ensure he knows he's in charge of the liferaft after we've er..... landed.
Then we hop in and Go.

Le Touquet
Left turn out, squawk 0433 for Farnborough, switch to Farnborough, whizz through their ATZ and settle down for Midhurst at 2300ft. At this point I can see another plane in front of us and he's obviously on the same route doing exactly the same speed at exactly the same height. If he were coming the other way we'd collide.
At Midhurst he continues and we turn for Seaford, then coast out and switch to Farnborough East as requested and climb through some light clouds to 4,500ft and VMC on top. Over the sea it's smooth and calm.

Change to London Info, then just before the FIR boundary (to stay legal) we descend through intermittent clouds and hug the base (I like to be high over water), changing to Le Touquet who offer us a left hand circuit for runway 32 which is weird as they normally do all circuits over the forest, not over the town. They also have traffic on a right hand circuit, which is a bit of a mistake as by the time me and the Dutchman in his PA28 are on Base leg we can see each other. We speed up, he slows down and I'll to expedite my runway vacation so he can land after me.
We get a bit of a wiggle over the dyke 200ft up, then we're over the threshold at 60Kts with full flap and flaring. Nice arrival, keep the speed up, then exit first left listening to the Dutchman dropping on behind us.
Simon is impressed by my professionalism, which is pleasant. You can fool some of the people some of the time!

Back to Blackbushe
I love Le Touquet: they are so laid-back. Within 90 seconds of walking in to the terminal we are out the other side with bicycles, which is part o the attraction of travelling by GA.
After a bicycle tour of Le Touquet, a walk along the beach and a damned good French lunch we cycle back to the terminal, drop the bikes, pay our very reasonable landing fee, file a flight plan via the quirky French PC (try getting a "_" out of a French keyboard... I have my laptop and my iPhone does a mean hotspot but everything's in the plane, so this is marginally easier...) and call for start.
Taxy out, wait for ages for a PA28 doing power checks and (I reckon) his make-up, watch a C172 on approach have a serious wiggle over the dyke, line up and take off straight out on runway 32. As we rise above the dyke we get a bit of wiggle: I reckon that would have been "sporty" in a C42!

Lydd is straight on, so we need do nothing but climb, change frequencies and stick the autopilot on. The clouds have cleared and it's smooth at 4,500ft.
Coasting in at Lydd we cruise-descend to slot in below the London TMA, divert slightly to avoid parachuting at Headcorn, then again to avoid Biggin Hill's ATZ, and follow the M25 West towards Blackbushe. It's quite bumpy and hazy at 2,300ft: I'd prefer to be higher but we can't here. Join deadside for 06 at Blackbushe and slide down the approach.
Typically, I choose today to flare a mite high and bang it on the runway with a bit of a bump. Bugger.
Still, Simon's happy and wants me to take his son, my Godson, out. So I didn't scare him stupid: phew...

And home...
After a cup of tea I say goodbye to Simon, fire up once more and trundle off home. The bumps have smoothed out as they always do after 4.00pm (useful tip that: if you're faced with a runway out of crosswind limit wait till after 4.00pm to tackle it - the wind will have dropped a lot) and it's but a short hop over Reading and Greenham Common back to CPT and Didcot power station where I swap from Farnborough, get the ATIS from Oxford and request a Right Base join VFR for 01, keep the speed up at 130Kts all the way to the Pear Tree roundabout, then throttle back, slow the plane and slide down Right Base then Final, round out and land neatly, taxy in and shut down.
It's time to really clear out the plane, empty the bins, tie it down and pop the cover on.
What a nice day out.

Shoreham
Two days later, and somewhat unexpectedly, I need to go to Shoreham to visit a client. This is becoming a milk run and familiarity breeds contempt so we need to be wary. The old story about aviation not being inherently dangerous but very unforgiving of mistakes comes to mind.
Today we have clouds at 3,000-3,500ft so will need to potter through the occasional one, which will be good practice. We will navigate down by VOR to CPT, GWD then on to Shoreham NDB.
It's a bit bumpy in the odd cloud as normal but smoother as we approach the coast. It's going to rain later so the pressure is dropping.
Between VORs I get a chance to ogle road layouts. I used to look forward to Geography lessons at school just to do map reading. I have always loved UK Ordnance Survey maps, and know of no other country that is so assiduously and bautifully mapped as the UK. Roads and railways have a beauty when observed from above by map or aerial photography they lose when observed from the driver's or rail passenger's perspective. This, for example, is Basingstoke.

Turning East at Goodwood I check in with Shoreham, who tell me Shoreham now requires landing permission (PPR). This is news to me, but apparently it has been NOTAM'd. My SkyDemon flight planning tool manages not to include this information which just goes to prove I should have done a NATS narrow route brief prior to flight... tut tut.
Flight planning has been revolutionised by the coming of the computer, cheap GPS units and the Internet. When I started flying, flight plans needed faxing, weather info was "watch the evening news" and plogging was done on paper with time and distance. Like the driving test (who actually drives with two hands on the wheel all the time? This is a pre-power steering anachronism from when the wheel could kick back and brute force was required to steer, especially at low speeds) the PPL syllabus is littered with anachronisms like learning VFR navigation with whizz-wheel and stopwatch. I know of no pilot who uses this method in anger now: they all use VORs/NDBs or, mainly, GPS. It's more accurate and easier.
Even the CAA have subsidised the Aware box to reduce controlled airspace busts.

I know of one Instructor who thinks GPS units are the work of the Devil because it encourages laziness, and I can see her point, but in practice Time/Distance measurement alone, like NDBs, is simply inaccurate: the winds are never as forecast, track and time errors creep in and you could be inside that Control Zone even though your plog says you're outside.
That's not to say Situational Awareness is not paramount: anyone who swans around just following a line on a GPS is asking for trouble. VFR you always need to do gross Nav checks with towns/railway lines/motorway junctions, and IFR you need to be up to speed with VORs, DMEs and NDBs as well as your GPS. But the sooner the PPL syllabus includes using GPS the better. At least they don't make you keep both hands on the yoke!
VFR nav by feature-crawling almost works in the UK but in France the distances are greater, the towns fewer and more homogeneous and it simply fails. So get used to VORs and GPS.

Descending, I join crosswind LH for 20, descend low over the hill above the Adur valley and sink gently on to the tarmac for a satisfyingly smooth arrival. It's warmer and sunnier in Shoreham!

Getting wet
Late afternoon, and I line up for 20. As this is a relatively short runway I'll do a short field take off with 20° flap and noise-abate at 500ft still over the runway, which should be more pleasant to the local residents.
We have a gusty crosswind which I reckon is 15-20Kts and as I roll the aircraft surges momentarily. It feels like we had a slap in the back, or the flaps haven't finished going down, or the engine encountered something it didn't like for a moment. I just don't know, but it's disconcerting and I'm ready to abort at the first sign of a repeat, but everything proceeds smoothly and at 60Kts we rotate and climb out steeply, mentally identifying fields for a landing if it all goes quiet. We cross the end of the runway at 500ft so we throttle back and turn along the beach (that's landable), climbing away until I breathe again at 1500ft and pop the flaps away, then steer on the GWD VOR and onwards.
The promised showers have arrived and befoe long I am in one, which washes the plane nicely, although it's a bit rough.
Turning at GWD we head North West, descending to stay out of the turbulent rainshower clouds, which then requires an Odiham MATZ transit before swapping back to Oxford, a downwind join for a wet 19 and taxy in.

Strong Wind Warning
Oxford, like many airfields, has an ATIS service: a semi-automated weather briefing radio frequency that is a 30 second announcement of runway direction, wind, clouds, rain etc. It's available to all and sundry on 136.22MHz but the transmitter is pointed at the sky as its intended audience is aircraft, so reception is only good within a funnel where the pointy end is at the airfield, so not as good on the ground. As I live a good few miles from the airfield I need to have a big FM aerial mounted vertically (aviation FM radio uses vertical polarisation) on the side of the house so I can check the weather before going flying.

Today the ATIS is including a "strong wind warning". Received wisdom has it that this means "don't go flying". But actually this isn't true: careful perusal of the wind direction and you, and your aircraft's personal minima, may mean that it's flyable, albeit a little bumpy.
The wind today is 29017G23 so we will have gusts of 23 Knots. Oxford has a 29 runway and Turweston is 27 so the maximum crosswind component at Oxford is 0Kts and at Turweston ¼x23Kts or 6Kts. So that's a Go provided Oxford are happy for us to use runway 29 (the alternative of using runway 19 would mean a) a slight tailwind and b) 100% of a 23Kt crosswind component). The maximum demonstrated crosswind for a C182 is 15Kts and I've landed it in 20Kts but gusting crosswinds are horrible so we won't do that.

The aircraft hasn't flown for a month because the weather has been just so awful, which means a sluggish starter (but it does actually start OK first go) and the AH takes a very long time to become "erect" as they call it.
We taxy out and request runway 29: taxying straight is hard with a huge crosswind, it's not just me drunk again!. We hold at the runway 29 holding point and enter the Active rolling for what turns out to be an extremely short take-off roll: we are off 100m before the 19 intersection which comes up at 350m. So that's 250m flapless with 3 up and nearly full tanks: not bad. I keep the nose down for speed as I know it's choppy and at about 300ft we hit some strong windshear: real stop-to-stop yoke movements with the stall warner cheeping intermittently. Ah, I've done this before, and it's nothing the aircraft and I can't cope with. It calms down as we climb through 800ft and we climb out North, avoiding D129 and heading for Brackley.
Willie is doing the radio for me, which is very relaxing as I only have to go where he points me and monitor the aircraft: I like this multi-crew experience.
Turweston have an oversized, 1300ft circuit to the North of the airfield and we go what seems like a very long way North of the field before descending to 1300ft and 100Kts, get blown along the downwind leg then have to slow for traffic landing on the runway ahead. Whilst it looks OK to me, Willie reckons we're low. Well, actually the land slopes downwards to the threshold here so you need to be a bit low, but I have let it decay a bit much, so a bit of power to stabilise and we float down through the windshear, keeping 80Kts for controllability, and as usual it calms down as we approach the threshold, so flare and hold...... hold......, kick off the crab a little too late and we touch down still slightly offset, but under the circumstances not a bad arrival.

We all use GPS for navigation, but our various GPS units (Garmin 196 and 296) are what they call "uncertified": in other words you may not legally use them for navigating published IFR GPS (for some reason they call them RNAV) approaches.
This is for several actually very good reasons: they aren't physically attached to the aircraft so could well fall off the coaming during a bumpy approach, which could be a little disconcerting to say the least; they don't actually have the published approaches loaded on to them (you could do a DIY job, but would you bet your life you had done it right?); they don't have RAIM (a self-check diagnostics system for GPS kit) and they don't offer vertical guidance in a useable fashion (so they don't drive a VOR/CDI gauge you can follow down the approach). There are other more technical reasons but these are the reasons that matter.
For real-world GPS approaches (rare in the UK, ubiquitous in the US, officially unsuable for us mere mortals in Europe) you have to have built-in "Certified" GPS kit that offers all of the above. This is, inevitably in aviation where paperwork, needless triplication of regulatory regimes and the common misbelief that all pilots are wealthy and IFR pilots massively wealthy, more expensive....

Garmin are the kings of the GPS navigation world. 15 years ago, while other avionics manufacturers desperately tried to catch up, Garmin simply took over the avionics world. Their integrated 430 and 530 Nav/Comm suites truly revolutionised aviation navigation, especially IFR "in cloud" navigation, where they allow you to see where you really are, not where you think you are. Given the availability of this kit, quite why even commercial aviation is still using NDB-derived published approaches eludes me.
The irony is that Oxford, because it trains commercial pilots who may be asked to work in places like Africa whwere NDBs are common, is likely to be one of the last airfields in the UK to dispose of its NDB.
But Oxford is getting radar in the next few months and we are likely to see a shake-up in the approaches available as a result; the likelihood is that some sort of RNAV approach is in the offing and we need to respond to that change. Hence our desire to look at a Cessna 177 (think "172 with retractable undercarriage and a slightly bigger engine") that has a Garmin 530W and slaved Sandell EHSI.

The 530W is awesome (see the review) and the Sandell is an electronic DI-replacement that loks like a normal round gauge, but at the touch of a button transforms itself in to a GPS-derived HSI (I dreamed of an HSI when I was doing my IMC), CDI or various other displays. It has the disadvantage of being not very visible from the right hand seat, which could theoretically be an issue, but it's not an AH so I'm not sure it's a show-stopper.
But the cost installed is liable to around £12,000 (phew!). For what is, in essence, a satelite radio with the same innards as my £700 Garmin 296. Time to start saving, I think....
The IMC course includes no RNAV instruction whatsoever, so we will have to learn how to do this ourselves. Should be fun!

Willie flies us home again and I learn something new: apparently when taxying with a tailwind, which we must do to backtrack Turweston's runway, you should keep the yoke fully-forward Here's why.
Returning to runway 29 at Oxford the view is beautiful: as a pilot it's really nice to sit in the back occasionally (the back of a C182 is extremely comfortable) and enjoy the view.