It is my intention to use a Cirrus SR22 for the trip, with an economy cruise of 155knots and using 12 – 14 US Gallons of AVGas per hour, the flight should last for approximately 2.5 hours and consume roughly 30 Gallons (113 litres) of fuel, costing about GBP 120. (Aircraft rental adds another GBP 300 however).

Compare that to driving (which a number of the guys are doing) and they are planning on leaving Wednesday to arrive Friday, and then driving home again Sunday morning to arrive in London some time Monday afternoon.

Just the lost productivity alone would cost me (or rather my business) in the region of £2,000 of billable time were I to take 3 days off, let alone needing to hire someone to provide additional emergency / out of hours cover. As a result, not only does this plan to be a “fun” trip – it also promises to be a handy cost saving exercise!

Having just gained the IMC rating, I know I have a lot still to learn, however I am looking forwards to the additional freedom which this rating is going to provide – and I am already working towards attaining the FAA/IR which will then mean I can fly under “instrument rules” outside of the UK, and in Class A/B/C airspace within the UK.

Being IMC rated means you can fly under instrument rules within the UK, but only within Class D/E/F/G airspace. This means no airways, and you’re still limited to a ceiling around the London area which in places is only 2,500 feet high!

So, having decided I’m going to fly myself, I now need to plan the route there. I’ve already decided to stop off in the Isle of Man on the Saturday in order to attend Rushen Round Table’s Charter – something which would have been almost impossible if I was driving or going by commercial routes (and would have cost more than flying direct too!)

There is a lot of class A airspace between Denham and Scotland. Once in Scotland it becomes somewhat easier, but trying to decide how to get there, and specifically to navigate from London North through and past Manchester isn’t an easy decision.

The added complication is a number of military low flying areas which you need to avoid (unless you want to end up being a hood ornament on an F16)

So that’s the thought process and “fear factor” out of the way … now how exactly do I route there?

The planning involves 3 charts, Southern, Northern AND Scotland! (These are the CAA 1:500,000 navigation charts).

Being in the SR22 I have the benefit of being able to use GPS navigation rather than being limited to just VOR/NDB tracking; this will reduce the total distance somewhat and mean there should be less conflicts to worry about with traffic all using the same “road”.

There seems to be some advice on the forums, such as

Denham -> Harrogate -> Pennines -> Carlisle -> West of Glasgow -> and on up through the Highlands

or

DCS TRN FULMA drct STN

The question is, what would you consider / advise?

A total of 2,993 people died in the attacks, one of the most cowardly and desperate attacks on freedom and civil liberties of the modern age.

They will always be remembered …..

I?m hopeful that this is in fact the problem, and its not a case of something more serious (either RAM or mother board failure).

Having now done 2 clean installs onto the MacPro both of which have a similar problem of display corruption when scrolling and performing random functions.

This problem started to appear just after the EFI update went onto my Mac Pro last month, and has become worse having installed 10.5. In fact, booting back into 10.4 the problem is hardly noticeable but can be seen when you look for it.

On 10.5 its very very noticeable However when I try and take a screen shot of the problem it seems to clear up – as though a redraw happens which removes the corruption.

Being even more stupid? (brave!) I went for the upgrade option instead of the customary Archive and Install.

To my surprise it worked well, and within no time I had Leopard running on my Mac Book Pro. Now all the way through the beta programs I?ve had 10.5 betas installed on the MBP and then removed them and went back to 10.4 because of compatibility issues with things like my XU870 3G data card, and some weird hangs with Mail.app and so on.

Much to my surprise (dismay), Mail.app still hangs .. but no-where near as often … and after some fiddling I managed to get the Novatel XU870 card working with the built in drivers, and so don?t need to worry about waiting for 10.5 specific drivers to be made available from Novatel (woohoo)

Next came the upgrade of my media centre (mac mini) from 10.4 to 10.5 .. that too went remarkably smoothly and happened in no time. And I can now watch DVD folders straight from within Front Row – excellent! The Kiss DP-1600 is well and truly consigned to Silicon Heaven (bids accepted for that brief encounter with media centres – I certainly won?t be keeping it!)

Then came the problem … 6 hours spent (wasted) trying to get 10.5 to install (boot even) on my Mac Pro (Dual Core Dual Xeon 3Ghz) … would it go past the language selection on the first screen? Most of the time it wouldn?t even get THAT FAR!

Microsoft has the last laugh!

Eventually, I managed to track the problem down to what would appear to be a conflict between my Microsoft cordless mouse and Leopard. Unplugging the mouse meant the installer booted fine. Down side was that all of my spare Apple mice are in storage … but some fiddling and tinkering with Bluetooth mice eventually meant that I was able to get something jerry rigged and we were off!

More to follow

I?ll post more tomorrow, once the data migration (370Gb of data!) has completed on the Mac Pro, and I?ve had more of a chance to test the final release version of Leopard. Initial impressions are however that it?s much more stable than any of the betas we?ve been privvy to over the last 3-4 (6?) months, and with the exception of a few last minute ?surprises? on the whole its as was released in October as the ?ZBB? version.

sitting here bleary eyed at 8:30am … what do I find in my email .. but a picture of Colin and several Belgian Circlers

1191

Not what I wanted to see this early in the morning I an assure you!

1195

September 14th

Well, finally got to do the Qualifying Cross Country today. Initially had to do some familiarisation with Elstree’s patterns as it turns I’ve only ever landed there once, and that was under instruction. The Elstree circuits are “interesting” to say the least, so it was thought a good idea to do a bit of familiarisation with the local area before sending me off on a jolly jaunt

So off I started .. headed off towards Cranfield via Princes Risborough. Made a slight miscalculation thinking I was off track when I saw Dunstable Downs out of the corner of my eye, but realised before breaching the Luton control zone (just) and headed up to Woburn where I should have been.

Landed at Cranfield and decided a cuppa was in order to calm down after my near faux pas. Quick cuppa, dropped off a box of chocs to the tower from the flying school and got them to sign my certificate, then off I popped to Southend (via Bury St Edmonds).

On my way out, I bumped into one of the other controllers at Cranfield who’d nipped out for a fab break. He mentioned that there was a new radio code which had come into effect that morning, where by you make your first call with the “Student” prefix. He explained it was to help the tower know you were “new” and that they would adjust their instructions accordingly. Sounds like a good idea .. and only required on initial contact, or if you think they’ve forgotten.

Great I thought, I’ll remember that … and got ready to head off for Southend via the Cafe and a cup of warm Brownian motion

Radio was interesting. The lady at LFIS sounded very flustered and didn’t understand the “Student” prefix at all. Couldn’t understand the call sign “FlyTeam” nor why I had 2 (FlyTeam 55 – G-BNTD, a PA28 ….) say again “FlyTeam 28??” … so that was fun …. and I ended up trying to move to somewhat Wattesham ahead of schedule, which was pretty useless as they were asleep / had gone home .. so I called up Earls Colne, transited overhead and then on to Southend.

Marvellously on track, all the way down … could see the runway from miles out, so called in, got a join Base, nice and simple .. heading in, and then some muppet in a Mooney (or similar) decides he wants to perform various aerobatics just ahead of me. He breaks left, then right, then heads straight for me before he actually sees me, I now break right as I know which way he’s going (straight at me) … he sees me and also breaks right, so we don’t conflict.

Ok, so where’s the **** runway … start looking round .. it should be to my left somewhere .. I’m heading away from it … where is it … “FlyTeam 55 report your position?” “erm .. over the crouch, had to take avoiding action and lost sight of the runway, just looking for it again” .. “QDM 140 join left base for 24”

“140 .. aha runway in sight, joining left base, Flyteam 55”

And that was it .. landed quite nicely – possibly one of my best landings yet, parked, wandered in, signed in and then off for my second McDonalds in 5 years (and second that week sadly) as it was now 4pm and the Airport Cafe closes at 4 .. darn“. Quick burger, wander back, meander around the plane making sure the wings are still intact, check fuel, check oil, tyres, etc, I’d said I’d be departing at 17:00 … ended up being 16:50 but they didn’t seem to mind.

Back to Elstree overhead Stapleford … the radio at Stapleford sounds bizarre .. almost as though its on the end of the bar and anyone who’s passing makes a quick call. So I reported I would be passing overhead and keeping a listening watch, then overhead and buggering off to Elstree as quickly as possible” to hear the guy in the bar report to someone on final “there’s a bit of a tail wind, but that’s how we do it here … land at your discretion” … “I’m sure I heard the guy on final report ”gulp“ wilco”

Landed at Elstree .. and boy what a smooth and effortless landing .. all my nerves and worries were unnecessary … back, parked, and engine off at 17:25

So now just a couple of written exams to do, the RT Practical and the skill test … then .. so fingers crossed!

… getting downstairs I found part of the kitchen ceiling .. on the kitchen floor. It seems the leak from the bath hasn’t stopped and in fact has continued to the point that the plaster gave out.

So .. time to redo bits of the kitchen!

Pictures to follow

Another flying lesson, and yet another lesson learnt!

Rather than the anticipated brush up on landings in the circuit, the instructor (Ches) decided we should do some navigation. Great I thought, although it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve flown and I was a bit nervous .. anyway .. nav has always been easy, so I figured what the hell .. get out, get some hours and the idea was to do it as a solo nav exercise after a brief dry run to prove I knew where I was going.

So I drew the lines, jotted down the headings, did the calculations .. .decided I’d use the “school approved” pilot log rather than my mini A5 log (which I admit I prefer as it means less clutter in the cockpit), so I copied the headings across onto the school’s PLog and we were ready.

However … 255 degrees suddenly became 215 degrees when I copied the heading across. Add to that the fact that I misread 155 as 165 on another leg, and I was going to get lost. I checked it, it looked right. The instructor checked it, he thought it looked right .. so off we go.

Anyway .. there we are en route to Buckingham, I was convinced we were en route to Buckingham, however we were 50 degrees to the left of it and ended up over Winslow .. and I still thought it was Buckingham.

Oops

So, back to the drawing board … and next time .. double check the angles, and as we’re pottering along, don’t blindly look out of the window and assume that features match – when they quite obviously don’t.

Add to that the fact I was finding it hard to maintain 2300ft … 2100ft – 2600ft seemed to be the order of the day … I felt like a bloody newbie again, not someone who’s clocked up over 50 hours

Must try harder!