Yesterday I took my two boys over to France for lunch – following in the footsteps of thousands of UK pilots 
As is often the case at this time of the year, LFAT started the day fogged in…
LFAT 160800Z AUTO 11003KT 070V140 0300 R14/0900N FG VV/// 05/05 Q1033=
LFAT 160900Z AUTO VRB03KT 0300 R14/1000N FG VV/// 05/05 Q1033=
LFAT 161000Z AUTO VRB02KT 0250 R14/0750N FG VV/// 06/05 Q1033=
Some of the above can’t be legally attempted as they are below the “approach ban” ~800m min vis figure (reducing to ~550m with HIAL lights and an autopilot, but LFAT does not have much in the way of lights, never mind HIAL) and the last report shows it actually getting worse. Actually, I don’t recall whether the approach ban is a UK only thing, or is Europe-wide… Also, one Class G ATC airport, which doesn’t report an RVR figure, informed me that it doesn’t apply there, so long as one doesn’t go below the MDH (well, obviously).
The TAF showed a possible improvement
LFAT 160800Z 1609/1618 VRB02KT 3000 BR OVC005
PROB40 1609/1611 0200 FG VV///
BECMG 1611/1614 8000 NSW BKN013
PROB40 TEMPO 1614/1617 BKN020=
Around 10:30 I phoned them up and the man said it was slowly improving.
So off we went, with 8hrs’ fuel in the tanks for a 40 minute flight, and under Eurocontrol IFR to get a direct handover from London Control to Lille for the ILS.
Route: EGKA LYD LFAT FL080
Once in range of the ATIS, around 1040, it was 2700m vis, BKN001, wind calm.
Unknown to me, the next METAR was
LFAT 161100Z AUTO VRB02KT 1900 BR BKN002 OVC024 07/06 Q1032=
Anyway, no problem with having a go at this one because 2700m is loads and one can always go around at the DH and go back home where the wx was fine
EGKA 161100Z 1612/1620 33004KT 9999 FEW020
PROB30 1612/1617 8000 BKN014
BECMG 1617/1620 6000=
In the end we could see the runway from miles out, and the BKN001 was just some fluff within some required radious of the airport
It’s worth noting this, because most people wouldn’t even dream of flying to an airport reporting BKN001 or BKN002. The ILS DH at LFAT is 250ft.
The place was deserted
but the beach looked inviting
Great views on the way back at FL080
Shoreham was really busy, with at least one on the instrument approach, somebody doing their IR test with a CAA examiner (EXAMxx callsign), ATC working flat out on two frequencies, and so many people in the circuit that I had to do orbits a few miles out. Shoreham gets ritually slagged off on one UK aviation chat site for charging more than some other places to land (£30 or so) but clearly the calls to do special £5/£10 deals to LAA/ultralight pilots would be a complete waste of their time, given that those customers would be flying only on nice days anyway. What Shoreham really needs – for new business – is an LPV approach with a DH of 500ft or less on runway 20, which would generate some traffic (some high value traffic, too) during the quiet days (cloudbase below ~900ft).
Nice … here we had a ceilimg at 300 AGL, and I made an engine run on the taxiway and updated the avionics.
At least I spent LESS MONEY this weekend than you ;-)
Alexis,
if you are a believer in Mike Busch et al, you shouldn’t do “taxi runs” without flying. They say it is worse than not starting up at all and actually adds wear and aggravates condensation in the engine…
Looks like fun Peter. Is that a bit of icing on your wing or just reflections of light?
if you are a believer in Mike Busch et al, you shouldn’t do “taxi runs” without flying. They say it is worse than not starting up at all and actually adds wear and aggravates condensation in the engine…
I don’t know if Busch actually said this but I don’t think that statement can be correct as stated, in isolation. The main issue AFAIK is that the engine needs to be at working temperature for something like 30 mins plus, to boil off the water in the oil, etc. I can’t see why that can’t be achieved on a ground run. It probably isn’t in practice because people that do ground runs don’t do a ground run for long enough where the engine is at 30+ mins at 180F oil temp and 350F CHT (or so) but that doesn’t mean that one can’t do it.
Is that a bit of icing on your wing or just reflections of light?
I recall the temp at FL080 was about +4C so hopefully it wasn’t ice The plane is a bit dirty…
I do recall seeing +10C at about 5000ft which suggests quite an inversion, anyway. Even the surface wasn’t +10C…
An engine that suffers from running on the ground should have become a sewing machine :-)
(I am not a “believer” in anything. I just pick up what I like and ignore the rest).
Of course flying would have been better – but you know how much the engine would have suffered if i had flown it today? Broken crankshaft, all that mud on the cylinders :-))
What should NOT BE DONE is to let the engine run without the cowling, as many service centers do. That’s very bad because the cooling doesn’t work well without the cowling, the airflow is not right and there’s not the necessary pressure in the engine compartment.
I often find that cloud reported as BKN002 or BKN001 is not as bad when you get there. I don’t know if it being lower makes it harder to determine the cloud cover or if it’s just a massive luck streak.
For what it’s worth – Approach bans are not limited to the UK.
Yes – I posted it to make the point that the cloudbase, or I should say the point at which the pilot is visual with the runway environment, is a pilot interpreted thing. Nobody can tell when you actually got visual, so there is no possibility of a prosecution. The worst that can happen is that you kill yourself.
I don’t know if it being lower makes it harder to determine the cloud cover or if it’s just a massive luck streak.
I think it is because OVC001 is not likely to be a uniform cloud layer all over the airport. More likely it is stuff like recent fog which has lifted to form bits of low stratus.
As a “steady state” cloud layer, OVC001/002 is very rare. I don’t know why but proper cloud does not seem to form that low. Clearly the ground proximity causes a separation between the temp and the dew point – even if the two were exactly the same (i.e. 100% RH) – but I don’t know the mechanism. The lowest common cloudbase is something like OVC005, I find. That’s why an ILS is so much more useful than any nonprecision approach, many of which have such a high MDH that they seem to merely exist to formalise AOC operations
