First flight of year

“And what a shame that it is completely irrelevant to real world flying….”

Quite!!

Started this year with an engine failure in cruise (on a twin). Ominous?

The Concorde Sim sounds fun. Where about is that?

In my bedroom :-) Its the Flight Sim Labs one, and on the same PC as the PA28. All the switches and knobs work, and it takes me about an hour to get lined up on the runway, but fun. I have flown the ex British Airways Concorde training simulator at Brooklands Museum, UK, but at £100 odd pound for 15 minutes, its a bit out of my league sadly.

Finally got my first flight of the year in yesterday

My plane has been at Bournemouth being re-sprayed. With the 90 year record of prolonged rain we have had in England, yesterday was the first flyable opportunity for me to get it back. The winds at Bournemouth were something like 240 20/G40kt according to ATC as we lined up, so with flaps down, the PA28 was up in a small number of seconds. There was a front closing in behind us, and visible CB’s, so by the time all of the other aircraft in front us in the hanger were moved out of the way, I was already taking off in a rain shower. After 10 minutes, it was back into clear air ahead of the front, and being pushed along by a 40kt winds at 2000 ft, the greatest ground speed was a pleasant 142kts (very good for a PA28). The TAF at Luton was suggesting winds gusting up to 30kt, being a complete crosswind at Panshanger, so the plan was to have 2 attempts to land, or else divert to Fowlmere or Cambridge, where the runway direction would have been more favourable. At least the plane would be a bit nearer to home than Bournemouth. Luckily the front had not caught us up (due to the legendary lightning speed of a PA28 no doubt, lol), and the Luton ATIS was suggesting no gusts, so I was able to land with something like 15knots crosswind.

Glad to be flying the real plane, and not the M$ Flight Sim.

PiperArcher,
I think I know what airplane you’re flying, as mine is currently with Airtimepaint as well – congrats, love the scheme! You should share some pics!

So the first flyable day in southern UK was a day with howling winds, CBs, rain showers and a front moving in?

Niiice.

Hi Denopa,

Thanks. Here is a photo taken today by my Wife. Airtime paint, and the corresponding maintenance organisation did a very good and thorough job. They presented us a number of designs. To be honest, I favoured a more modern swirly type design, but others in our group didn’t. The finished product is similar to how it was before, but with some of the grey striping thinned out.

So the first flyable day in southern UK was a day with howling winds, CBs, rain showers and a front moving in?

Yep, that pretty much sums it up Southern UK recently. I had plans to be elsewhere today, hence I cautiously took a calculated risk yesterday, but my other plans fell through so back down to the airfield I went to do some more flying

Looks good to me. Not exactly exciting, but good. Was this a “bare metal” respray? Willing to give us a ballpark number for the cost involved?