Thread: Nice little nav ex tomorrow!

Flying a nice little Nav Ex tomorrow evening.

Wellesbourne - Gaydon - Leicester - Watford Gap - Wellesbourne.

Should be fun! Prepared all my charts as much as I can, just got to prepare my plog and remember to add the frequencies for Daventry VOR (looking at the chosen route i'm sure we'll be flying towards the Daventry VOR on 180*-ish from Leics to Watford. Haven't done a VOR intercept before on one of my own lessons so should be fun!

Try and show my instructor I am thinking a bit by presuming thats what we'll do anyway haha.

Got a friend from work coming along as well, so hopefully should have some nice pics to share too!

Not seen a forecast but hopefully better than the drizzly weather today. I've just seen a Cessna hugging the M25 so close he must have been able to read the road signs

With every booked lesson comes a hope on the weather lol. 8o)

Well the lesson turned out to have some funny points and some more "interesting" moments!

First point - never plan your waypoints via text message lol. I thought we were going to Leicester centre, my instructor wanted to go to Leicester Airport to do overhead join practice.

Then I made a few errors by not plotting directly to the ground features i.e. Gaydon village instead of Gaydon test track and Watford Gap Region rather than exactly on the Watford Gap Services! Anyway, we flew my route and it didn't come out too bad at all.

The weather was smashing, lovely and calm with winds less than expected. Controllers were quiet making it nice and easy for me to give them position reports without the extra pressure. It was quite hazy around 3000ft but good enough to stay safe.

However, the fun came when we headed back for Wellesbourne. As we overflew Gaydon and set our heading back towards Wellesbourne the haze had the sun behind it - just to make visibility that little bit more awkward! So we made routine calls on our position as we came closer to the Wellesbourne ATZ.

Everything was fine, we joined crosswind as number 2 and got down to the base leg. Just after we were lined up on base, a Tecnam Twin flew directly under us at around 300ft AGL in a steep climbing turn!!! No calls on position, no calls that he departed Wellesbourne - R/T wise he wasn't there yet he was futher inside the ATZ than I was! My instructor and I both shook our heads and my passenger was also amazed and he's not even a regular flyer.

Somehow with my instructor keeping eyes on the twin I lined up for final, and spotted a bonfire on the extended centre line. I used this to judge the wind which was pretty calm, slightly out of the west. I made a perfect stall warner landing to which my Instructor implied I was showing off for my mate lol! 8o)

All in all a valuable number of lessons learnt and look forward to the next flight which is to include a land away!