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Scotland Trip: Part 1: LFSB (Basel-Mulhouse) to EGSC (Cambridge)

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this is the first part of a series of trips undertaken september 2015 to visit the highlands of Scotland.

the idea to visit the highlands rose from seeing those beautiful landscapes, forests and islands in the telly series Outlander. mind you, very cheesy stuff, with lots of horses. as my girlfriend is a rider, i proposed to take the winged horse (Turbo Arrow IV, analogue IFR with GNS430W/RNAV/LPV and Century III one-axis autopilot) and organize some riding at a stable near Loch Ness and do some VFR day trips while up there.

looking at the available airfields in Scotland, it became apparent that EGPE (Inverness) would be a good choice for a base. in the highlands, fully IFR, car rentals, close to Loch Ness, long opening times, self-handling, fuel.

autorouter proposed a route with just 6% overhead direct to EGPE:

nevertheless, i rejected the idea for various reasons:

  • while legally possible, flight time of 5:15 (without alternate) too close to endurance of 6:00 for my taste:
    • old steam-fuel-gauges, no totalizer / LFOB
    • IFR alternates (Wick, Aberdeen) quite far from Inverness. VFR alternates short grass strips with PPR.
    • no need to provoke an unnecessary early diversion, especially should one encounter unforeseen elements (wx, wind, airport closure)
  • long stretch over water off the UK east coast, out of glide range
  • it is recommendable to take a break :)
  • chance to experience additional airfields
  • first time flying to the UK, so why not collect experience with IFR arrival and departure in the thick of south UK

as such i planned for an intermediate stop. EGSC (Cambridge) seemed like a good choice:

  • about in the middle from LFSB to EGPE, on the route
  • cheap fuel
  • fully IFR with approaches to both RWY directions (ILS, RNAV)
  • while OCAS close enough to airways for minimizing OCAS
  • a chance to see Cambridge university from the air.

Preparation for flying in the UK

while i have flown IFR to many european countries, the UK was a first. having read “horror stories” about IFR outside controlled airspace, flight plans getting dropped, airspace busts, etc, i spent quite some time preparing. my main source of information was Flying in the UK (German only) – what a great site, thanks a lot! – specifically the IFR + phraseology parts and the linked videos were of great help. YouTube is otherwise strangely void of flying videos IFR in the UK. another very informing source was the UK AIP and CAA safety leaflets.

after reviewing the above, i came to the conclusion that it is all quite manageable, and every coin has two sides:

  • new possibilities with airspace G up to FL195, VFR in IMC and IFR in G (no flight plan, no ATC contact)
  • maintain airspace awareness, specifically transitions from/to CAS, even under IFR and let go of the spoilt continental attitude of being taken care of by ATC
  • maintain assertiveness towards ATC as a UK beginner
  • concept of ATC services provided (basic service, traffic service, …) and their impact on radio phraseology
  • VFR: joining procedures, slightly different radio phraseology, QFE, …

other than that i purchased the AFE and Pooley plates in SkyDemon, each IFR route was programmed to SkyDemon and Jeppesen FliteDeck, airspaces were carefully reviewed. airspaces were only of true relevance in England, not in the scottish highlands where only a few restricted areas (cancelled for good by NOTAM just as the voyage started) for low flying military were found.

Flight LFSB to EGSC

PPR for EGSC was obtained 48 hours in advance (same-day PPR possible) with no hassle. no PPR number was provided, as the eurocontrol flightplan was sufficient for them. The alternate EGTC (Cranfield) did not require PPR. flight plan was filed using autorouter at the same time, including the automatic submission of the GAR form (thanks autorouter).

The weather situation was quite clear well in advance. Initially the flight was planned for a saturday, but i decided to bring it forward to friday, as a cold front would move over the UK and France on Saturday. Friday looked clean:

autorouter proposed a route with 17% overhead at 3:00 hours:

on the day of the flight, the weather looked clear. while being close to the second leg to EGPE later on the same day, the cold front to the west behaved quite stationary, held off by the high-pressure area over finland:

i had been observing this since days and it was confirmed by the COSMO EU weather model forecasts (clouds, precip, 3-day “meteogrammes”) obtained from German Weather Service (DWD) (pay site).

i filed for a 0700Z departure for FL160 with the intention of a stop climb earlier, depending on the wind (mind you, i need to manually enter data into the GNS430 to calculate the wind). the windyty animation showed headwinds at FL160 with almost no wind at FL100 for the intended route:

departure was smooth on the SID GTQ6Y, which is the longest SID i know (87NM in one leg to GTQ) with a steady cruise climb at 105kts IAS/500fpm to keep the notorious CHT “a few millimetres” away from the end of the green arc (there’s only a green arc, then a white line) up to FL160 after ~30 minutes. the head wind of ~8kts didn’t seem to vary greatly across the climb. after a while i descended to FL140 to see whether the GNS430 wind calculation was accurate in the climb versus during level flight. it was, same wind at FL140. cruise was done at 65%, peak leaning, 122 kts IAS.

enroute weather presented itself like this (note Brussels airport):

starting from DIK i tried to get a shortcut to GOLEX to avoid the detour over LNO. this was denied due military activity previously seen in a NOTAM. enroute ATC was friendly, efficient and professional. Brussels radar was staffed by a thick UK accent :) despite the flight planned route mandating progressive descents FL140 could be maintained without asking. not proffering the descent as flight planned could be considered “impolite” – but then again ATC will manage your profile as they see fit, so better to leave it to them in continental europe.

every transition saved is less workload. a single smooth descent towards the destination is always preferable. i calculated 42 track miles needed for a 3° descent (140/10*3) at a rate of descent of 650fpm (130 kts IAS * 5), when London Control had me descend at 80 track miles. i thus halved the rate of descent which worked out nicely with the continuously assigned descents, reducing power to 55% maintaining 130kts from cruise for slow engine cooling.

the weather over UK presented itself with with SCT CU in italics, which should have given me enough hints about the turbulence situation:

penetrating the top of the first CU resulted in quite strong turbulence, requiring to immediately reduce to Va, requiring a drastic power reduction (i was a over gear extend speed), with the CHT dropping like a stone. a true mistake, the picture above clearly shows strong lateral wind combined with updrafts. see also this post about turbulence. especially since i could have easily flown around the CUs. maybe it had to do with hearing “you’re leaving controlled airspace, basic service” after many frequency changes through london airspace, plus a traffic announcement at 20 track miles to go. sometimes the destination arrives quicker than anticipated, doesn’t it? a case of being behind the airplane.

lesson learned. once outside the cloud i manoeuvred around the others and re-established a sensible power setting and dropped the gear. soon i was offered a visual approach which i accepted. i always set the OBS on the GNS430 to the RWY heading, making it exceedingly simple to intercept the final track and have distance to airport and on final information. it also makes it easier to become visual with the airfield in unknown territory. the area around EGSC is very flat and uniformly rural, hard to spot anything. an instructor once told me: “look for the hangars, not the runway”, and sure enough EGSC has a huge hangar which was easily spotted light gray on green. no photo unfortunately.

landing was on RWY 05 with a wind of ~110/12, quite bumpy. we requested fuel on lading, the truck arrived while we were climbing out of the aircraft.

handling was done by the Cambridge aeroclub, they let us eat in their canteen, no landing fee due to our fueling. very friendly staff.

Distance: 432 NM (exactly as predicted by autorouter)
Flight Time: 3:06 (vs 3:04 predicted by autorouter)
Fuel: 39.4 USG (vs 43.6 predicted by autorouter), 12.7 USG/h / LFOB 32.6 USG

LFSB
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