The Planning
Another whistle stop weekend to pack in as much flying as possible! I had to formally revalidate on the R44 this weekend now my licence had arrived back with the endorsement on it, ‘if you haven’t flown an aircraft in the last 28 days, you need to do at least half an hour with an instructor, including practice forced landings’. Ace! Let’s take the R44 out and do some interesting flying and visit some new places.
A lot of planning had gone into Saturdays flying sortie, which turned out to be a learning experience from the get-go. So let us wind back the clock a little… Around the time I started my PPL, I noticed my cousin had recently taken over the management of The Ivy Inn, in North Littleton near Evesham. It’s a gorgeous and quaint country pub in the heart of a little village. I looked it up on google maps, out of curiosity to see if I could fly there in the future. As quick as I’d googled it, I put the idea to bed. There was no realistic place to put a Helo down so I thought no more of it.
As the weeks went by, I mentioned it in passing to my cousin, that I’d had the idea to visit by helicopter. She simply suggested I landed at Bidford Gliding Club, 10 minutes away, where some of her locals flew regularly. Then she would come out and pick me up, and take me back for lunch at the Ivy. Ideal! I had a date in mind and made sure she was available. More importantly checked that they were open for lunch! (It was the highest rated in the area on trip advisor, and I wasn’t going to miss out!)
This is where things got tricky. I planned the route quickly on SkyDemon to get an idea of timings from Gloucester to Bidford, and boom.. Bidford sits inside the EG R204 Restricted airspace boundary, which protects the Long Lartin Class A prison. A restriction only applicable to helicopters, not a great start. I mentioned this to the Chief Pilot at the school, and he said I’d need an exemption, and that was the end of that. How I’d go about getting one I hadn’t a clue. So I set about that week to look into it.
I quite like a challenge, especially when it comes to flight planning and taking the aircraft into somewhere new or somewhere particularly exciting. I’m almost sure I can hear the flight school rolling their eyes when I call up with a plan. So this was quite fun. I’d looked up the R204 zone in the online Aeronautical Information Publication, and it stated to call the CAA AR Ops (+44 20 7453 6599).. I did, and surprisingly they were super helpful. In fact the phone call lasted all of 30 seconds and the email they requested with all of the pertinent details was on its way to them. I had to fill in a special form to be processed and, as it was a private flight, there was no charge associated. Job done!
In my excitement I’d realised, I should probably request permission from Bidford! I’d checked their website and had read the pilots notes for powered aircraft and had convinced myself it was straight forward. Until I received a reply from the club a day later letting me know that ‘Bidford didn’t accept helicopters’. Nooooo!
Well that sealed the deal on that. Plan B! I’d seen that HeliAir had recently visited a place in Bibury, called The Classic Motor Hub (https://classicmotorhub.com) From their posts on Facebook they seemed hugely welcoming to helicopter visits and secondly a morning of drinking decent coffee, surrounded by Classic supercars sounded right up my street. One simple email and we were set to arrive Saturday!
I had all but put the idea of Bidford and Lunch at the Ivy to bed, when the CAA replied with a signed exemption to the Long Lartin EG R204 Airspace! I fired off another email to the gliding club, exemption attached and with a promise of biscuits for the club members. After consulting the airfield landlord they replied letting us have permission to land for the Saturday not before 10am.
Now the Saturday plan had really got packed! I’d only booked the R44 from 1000 – 1530 so this would be a tight arrangement especially with the lunch stop scheduled in too!
The Flying.
I took the R44 for an outbound, around the tower departure to the South, after being cleared for take off down Rwy 09 at Gloucester. The Classic Motor Hub sits just outside of the Brize Norton military air traffic zone and not bumblng into that was my task for this morning. Including startup and departure, I was on the ground at the Classic Motor Hub within 20 minutes. (Without busting the Brize Norton MATZ! Just about!) Which really is a testament to the speed at which the R44 does everything.
The landing area to the rear was easily big enough for multiple helicopters. We were greeted by Richard after we had shut down, who offered us all coffees and showed us around the incredible collection. Simply put.. if you’re visiting by road or by air, just make sure you go and see this place!
We were only on the ground for 45 minutes, before we had to hot foot it up to Bidford for our lunch sitting! One of the exemption rules from the CAA was that I needed to call the Long Lartin HMP guard at least 60 minutes before each movement through their airspace. It all seemed very formal for the sake of a good sandwich and a coffee!
The outbound flight from Bibury took me over the Cotswolds on a direct course for Bidford, the exemption cleared me to approach from the North only and the gliding frequency used by the field is shared with Bicester.. it was a torrent of blind radio calls from me, to make sure there was no doubt to any gliders in the area about my position, whilst I was approaching the field.
As I was tracking along the southern side of runway 06, it was apparent not everyone gliding that day was briefed a helicopter would be arriving! Everyone was either pointing, staring bemused or videoing on their phones. I tucked the R44 as far up into the north easterly corner of the parking spot, close to the road and shut down.
Bidford is a very well presented grass strip airfield, with a friendly team and a youth development fund worth contributing to. They have accommodation on site and provide gliding to all ages. I dropped off a box of celebrations, paid the £6 landing fee and contributed to the Youth fund before we were courted off to lunch at The Ivy.
Lunch was actually great (and I’m not just saying that). It really was a thumbs up all round and with decent coffee to compliment it. We stayed for a little under 2 hours and I popped out to call the HMP guard to give him the departure heads up.
The departure from Bidford is an involved one which we’d studied beforehand and again in the cockpit before we started up. Blind calls were made at the 24 threshold for a 06 departure and we were away and out to the north, en route home to Gloucester.
Practice Forced Landings were completed on the way back, we joined the left hand circuit for runway 04 and landed into wind at heli north west.
Total 1.3 Hours.
(Leg 1: 0.4)
(Leg 2: 0.5)
(Leg 3: 0.4)
Hourbuilding Adventures 