It was an early start at Gloucester, departing by 0900h to get in the air. PPR for Yeovilton had been sought prior and a quick phone call to let them know we were departing was made. We booked out to the south with a time en route as an hour and fuel endurance as two.
When your initial licence issue application goes away to the CAA, you can only fly supervised solo, do further training (hence the R44 TRE) or fly with an instructor. I didn’t know how long the wait would be for my licence to come back, so when I booked the dates to take the R22 away, I pencilled it in as dual time regardless. As it transpired, my licence had arrived by the time I was next back in the UK to fly but I still took Doug with me. (More so because I wanted to show him the Royal Navy Historic Flight Collection, and he loves Nav)
After getting caught in a torrential downpour whilst fuelling Uniform Charlie, we were away and following the M5 south from Gloucester. It wasn’t as windy as we expected, and we changed from Gloucester approach, after reporting abeam Dursley onto the Bristol listening squawk on 5077. Skirting under the easterly step of airspace at 1400’ on the Bristol QNH, routing directly towards Shepton mallet.
I was sent the visitor instructions for Yeovilton a fortnight before the flight and had gone through them to prepare the radio calls and frequency switching. We had agreed I would fly the approach and Doug would switch frequencies as we flew in. We had to report not above 500’ on the Yeovilton QFE, on entry to the MATZ. Which was a different approach to normal, being at 500’ for 5 miles on the run-in to the field.
When recovering back to Gloucester, we arrive into Heli North or Heli South, I hadn’t ever flown directly down the runway before and the Yeovilton runway is huge. No other movements seemed to be happening, and the R22 looked so out of place! We were instructed to land just outside the tower. The Royal Navy refueller slightly shocked that we only needed 7 gallons of fuel, possibly the least he had ever distributed from the huge fuel tanker he arrived in.
We spent a good hour or two with the commanding officer of the Historic Flight, seeing the Swordfish, Sea Fury, Sea Vixen, Phantom and Harriers before departing for Kemble for a lunch stop.
The wind had picked up on arrival, and to top it off.. the roof had blown off their cafe in October and the only way to get food was from their improvised catering van (which was actually a pretty good setup!)
Pulled pork roll and cheesy chips later and we were off back to Gloucester, with a round the tower arrival to heli south and a black coffee to end the day.
2.4 hours total
(1.2 1st Leg)
(0.8 2nd Leg)
(0.4 3rd Leg)
Hourbuilding Adventures 