Channel Islands flyout post ppl
10 Sep 2010A club flyout to the Channel Islands, there were 6 people in total split between two aircraft, me, an instructor, and another person in one aircraft, and an instructor and 2 others in the other plane. I was a passenger for the first flight down to Jersey. It was my longest flight over water, and as we were well out of gliding distance to land for most of the flight, we had to carry and wear life jackets for the duration.
The flight down was nice and smooth, we climbed up for 7500ft, which was the highest I’d been in a light aircraft, and we were surfing the tops of some scattered cloud which was really fun. On the way down, the navigation was quite straightforward, as we just tracked the Guernsey VOR all the way and then tracked it outbound to Jersey. As we passed over Guernsey, we were still high up, and it felt a bit like being in an airliner looking down from that high up! Once landed in Jersey, we went into the airside cafe and had some lunch while watching the commercial traffic coming in.
After lunch, it was my turn to fly. I hadn’t flown for a few months again, so this first flight was another club currency check flight, it was pretty short one, taking off from Jersey, turning north and just flying directly to Alderney. It was a great little half hour flight, and as we were only cleared to 1000ft it felt like we were skimming the water flying very low, totally opposite to what we’d done on the way down. Great landing at Alderney despite the length of time since my last flight, and the flight back to Plymouth went very smoothly as well.
It was a bit more interesting navigationally as we were too far/low to be able to get a good signal from the Berry Head VOR, so I just had to fly a heading and then use the Guernsey VOR, checking our distance from it as we crossed various radials to see if we were still on track. A bit ominous just heading out to sea, hoping you’ll end up in the right place!
We could have opted to fly a path that meant we intercepted a radial from the VOR, i.e the opposite of what we did on the way down, but as Alderney is further up, we would have had to set off on a heading that would not have been towards any land, and if we then weren’t able to pick up the signal we really would have been lost at sea. So the safer option was to fly a heading and verify it with radio nav when able.
I climbed up reasonably high again, as I figured the more height we had, the higher chance we’d have to solve any engine problems if they happened, and or tell someone exactly where we were. There was certainly a bit of a sense of relief once we could see we were within gliding distance of land again as none of us really fancied getting wet, but those are all the kinds of things that need considering when flying over water like this!
It was an incredibly clear day, and as we came back in, given we were much higher than I usually fly, I could see the runway at Plymouth from about 40 miles out!
My instructor filmed the landing back into Plymouth