Refresher and MATZ transition post ppl
21 Nov 2008Quite a gap since the last post on here, most of the flights in between had been relatively uneventful, mostly just short navigation exercises or circuit sessions to keep current. However, I have also genuinely had a bit of a gap as my SEP rating (which is valid for two years) lapsed, and frustratingly I had the hours to just get it renewed, but missed the date, meaning I’d now have to do another flight test to get that back again. So prior to that I had a few flights with an instructor to get me back into the swing of flying. This one was slightly more challenging!
At the time Newquay was still RAF StMawan, rather than a civilian airfield, and had a MATZ (military air traffic zone) surrounding it, as a circle around the airport, plus two rectangles extending out along the extended centreline of the runway.
We did a route down to Perranporth airport, which cut directly through one of those rectangles, meaning we’d have to be cleared through. We could have routed around it of course, but opted to go through for the experience.
St Mawgan was relatively quiet, so there was no problems getting cleared through. It reminded me somewhat of flying into Cardiff and dealing with the controlled airspace, as you knew you were being watched on radar while you were in their airspace. It all went ok, calculated headings and times all were as expected. The cloud was very low, keeping us not much higher than 2000ft for the entire route, but it was fine.
Once we reached Perranporth I called on their air ground radio to let them know we’d just be turning around in their overhead, and not landing, then we turned around and went back to Plymouth, transiting through the MATZ again in the other direction.