First landaway (lesson 27) PPL
17 Jul 2005Two flights today, and my first ever landaway at a different airport, on a perfect day for flying.
Flight to Bodmin
As we started to taxi out from the flying school there was a bit of a clunk, which neither me or my instructor knew what it was. We completed the rest of the pre-flight checks and there was nothing out of the ordinary, and so my instructor assumed it may have been a small stone that was kicked up as we applied power, and potentially blown into one of the landing struts (which can happen and isn’t really a big deal)
We took of an set a heading straight to Bodmin, checking the engine params thoroughly, and again, nothing unusual, so we continued. Once we got there, called on the air/ground radio, for the airfield information, and joined the circuit via an overhead join (as it gives you the best view of other traffic at an uncontrolled airport)
As it was a grass runway, my instructor demonstrated how you’d do a runway inspection prior to committing, which essentially involves doing an approach and then flying along the runway, slightly offset from the centerline, about 100ft over it, before then applying power to climb away and go around.
After that I flew a normal circuit, and landed, next to a tractor that was ploughing the field adjacent to the runway, which was pretty strange as with all the bumps in the runway, we seemed to get airborne again a couple of times after we’d touched down.
After landing my instructor opted to taxi it into the parking area as the taxiway was also pretty bumpy and quite tight, with the wingtip very close to the hedges at times, we shut it down, paid the landing fees and had some food in the club house before heading back to the aircraft.
preflight
Before every flight you always give the plane a quick once-over, which includes a manual check of the fuel level. With the C152, you have to climb up so that you can unscrew the cap on the top of the wing, and physically look into the tank. When I did this at Bodmin, I was very surprised to find both the fuel caps missing entirely… that’ll be the clunk we heard back in Plymouth then!
Despite doing it many many times before, this time i’d clearly not manged to tighten the cap fully, and then when we’d applied power to get moving on the grass, the wash from the prop had just blown them off!
After a bit of discussion about how that could have happened & the situation we now found ourselves in, my instructor decided that as we didn’t have full tanks, we should be ok to fly back without the fuel caps, given we’d flown down without them, and we had the expected amount in the tanks, so none of it had sloshed out of the open holes! So, while not ideal by any stretch, we’d just be very careful not to make any sharp or out of balance turns, which should ensure the fuel stayed in the tanks.
(older me editing this post: given there’s quite an active GA community at Bodmin, I suspect we may have been able to borrow a fuel cap from another aircraft to fly it back, or just had a replacement driven down, which would have been a bit safer!)
Flight back
I did a short field takeoff, using flaps, and then flew back to Plymouth, trying not to turn the aircraft by more than 15 degrees of bank for the whole flight, we joined right base for 13 and landed not too bad and taxied in and parked in a different spot (so we didn’t risk running over the caps if they were on the ground)
After we shut down, we had a look at the original parking spot, just behind where the wings would be, and as suspected, there were both fuel caps lying in the grass - which were promptly returned to where they should be, on the aircraft! - it’s not a mistake I’ll ever make again! (though I’m still not sure how I did in the first place)