Calais or Conington…?

It’s taken me a while to get round to typing this one up, but I figured that this particular story might be of interest, and possibly of use in a kind of “I made the mistakes, so that you don’t have to” kind of way…

Anyway, last week, I promised SWMBO that I’d take her to France for lunch. It would also be her first time coming up with me, but I was happy and confident about it bearing in mind JN-4 had been my guinea pig last weekend, and the club were happy for me to plan and execute the trip. So, on Wednesday night, Catherine and I planned the flight from Cambridge to Calais. Well, I planned it while she ate my food and drank my wine…

Weather during the night was pretty horrendous, but Thursday dawned bright, if rather breezy. After downloading the Met, I estimated we’d have a 50-50 chance of going, but if the France trip was off, we’d have a decent chance of at least getting a short local flight done as a consolation. So off we went to Cambridge.

Arrive at Cambridge, to be told by Trev that the weather in the channel is shockingly bad. So bad even the gulls are taking Eurostar.

So it’s plan B time.

I’ve got July’s ‘Pilot’ magazine as a backup. With free landing fee vouchers for Old Buckenham and Leicester. We decide on Leicester. Or rather, Catherine decides on Leicester, on the basis that they serve food on a Thursday. So I rapidly plan Cambridge Leicester, using Sierra Foxtrot as she’s the PPL aeroplane. Bad news though – SF got hurt a few days before when someone landed her awkwardly, and so she’s over at Little Staughton being mended. We’ve got to take dear old Whiskey Bravo instead. Different aeroplane, different speeds, different wind and drift calcs… all of which takes a while, and I’m a bit conscious that Catherine’s possibly getting a bit bored.

But, I get it all sorted, brief Catherine (who struggles not to laugh at the unprecedented sight and sound of me being serious), we don the canary jackets (to mock mild indignance from C), and off we go. Preflight the aeroplane, carry out the internal checks, key in, “CLEAR PROP!”… and all we get is a loud grinding noise from up front – the starter motor’s engaging, but the engine isn’t turning, and neither’s the prop.

Switch off, breathe, count to ten, run through the start up procedure again… same thing happens. Oh dear. I switch off, tell C to stay put, and off I go to get Trev. He takes a look, and discovers the starter motor shaft has sheered. Whiskey Bravo ain’t going anywhere. We ain’t flying.

But then Trev suggests plan C. Sierra Fox is due to be ready today; he’ll make a call, and if she’s ready, he’ll fly us over there in the 182, we’ll pick up Sierra Fox, and be off on our merry way. Catherine and I gather up our kit while Trev makes the call, and it’s a go! Fabulous news, the day is saved! Sierra Fox is airworthy and can be collected, so C and I pile into the 182, and Trev flies us over to Staughton. As we depart, I’m aware of the sky to the south getting darker, but that’s okay, as it’s forecast to pass by the time we’ve been where we’re going. What I don’t realise at this point, is that we got out of Cambridge ten minutes before a major cumulonimbus unloads right overhead and shuts the airport.

We land at Staughton, park the 182 at the end of the runway, and get out. Trev and I are going to walk over to Colton’s, pick up SF, and taxi her back. We tell C to sit tight at the 182, we’ll be back in a minute. Thirty minutes later, we taxi SF up to the 182. Catherine doesn’t mind too much, she actually found half an hour sitting by herself next to an aeroplane in a field quite tranquil. Which earns her a few brownie points in itself. 😉

However, we now know about the weather at Cambridge, and Trev knows he has to sit tight with the 182 until Cambridge phone him and say the airport’s open again. Meanwhile, the clag’s on it’s way to Staughton, so C and I had better get cracking. I’ve preflighted SF, so we get in, taxi out, and go. Fuel’s only about an hour’s worth, but there are no refuelling facilities we can use at Staughton, so Trev tells me to fuel up at Leicester, and he’ll reimburse me. Leicester’s 25 minutes away, so I’m happy that we’ve got enough to go. Climbing turn out of Staughton to avoid the mast (!), and off we head for Leicester. We’ve beaten the weather!

For now.

Everything goes swimmingly well, we track slightly north so as to get onto the track I’d pre-planned from Cambridge, but then approaching Corby, the sky turns grey. Very grey. The clouds get lower, and suddenly our clear air at 2500 feet is a wall of cloud and rain, and before I can even think about avoiding it, we’re slap in the middle of it. Hell, this isn’t in the plan! Carb heat on, power back to 1800, bank left, nose forward, and down we come to 1500 feet. We’re lower than I want to be, but just scraping our rudder against the underside of the cloud. As I look to the west, it’s looking even lower.

I call Leicester, ask what their weather is. Cloudbase 700 feet, light rain, and the runway in use is 04, their shortest runway. Suddenly I’m not entirely sure that we’ll get in. And I’ve got another dilemma; my fuel is low. VERY low. We had an hour’s fuel when we left Staughton. I reckon we’re now down to 45 mins. I need to get us down and refueled, quickly. Look at the map; Sywell. But that’s grass, it’s raining there, and hell! I don’t have my Pooleys approach plate for Sywell in the kneeboard. There’s no fuel at Staughton, we can’t go back to Cambridge because that’s closed…

All of a sudden, we’re running out of options. And fuel. Suddenly a bit of inspiration – Peterborough Conington might still be open; it’s twenty miles to the east of us. I don’t have the approach plate for that either, but I do have their frequency, and I remember what the runway is like; I flew from there in 1990 I call Leicester again; tell them that given their weather, I’m diverting and calling Conington.

The cloudbase is getting lower. We’re now dragging our rudder through the muck at 1200 feet, slightly east of Corby. This is not good. Got to be careful about Cottesmore MATZ to the north too. A mile away to our south, an RAF Hercules trundles past at 1000 feet. This sky is getting very small. I’m nervous, but having to remain outwardly calm. Don’t want to freak Catherine (but she’s still happily taking pictures of fields anyway and so can’t see the beads of sweat on my brow.

Then suddenly we’re out from under the cloud; great, a bit more visibility. We’re overhead Oundle, ten miles to Conington. Call them up… fab, they answer. Runway in use is 10, right hand circuit, no other traffic. The sky is getting lighter. I can see Conington, we climb to 2000 to join, then descend deadside, fly the circuit, approach, and land. Then fifty yards later we land again. “Ha!” says I, probably more out of relief than genuine humour, “There you go girl, with me, you get two landings for the price of one!”

We taxi in, park up in an impossibly tight space, inch perfect, shut it down and get out. I’m drenched in sweat, but Catherine’s fine, shows no signs of having been apprehensive. She’s either utterly oblivious, or I kept the fear hidden. Besides, she’s starving, needs her lunch poor girl. So we wander in, pay the landing fee, get C sorted with Pastie and Chips.

Weather out west is grey and horrible. That’s where we’ve just come from. Conington ask me how low it was. I tell them. They’re amazed we were out there. So am I. We eat, sit, and in C’s case, stretch out in the sunshine (where the hell did THAT come from, we wonder?) while I help get the aeroplane fuelled. I call Cambridge, they’re open again, but with light rain clearing, and a very wet runway. Not ideal, but after surviving a wall of clag over Corby, I reckon we can do light rain. If all else fails, we’ll go into Bourn, call it a day, and get Trev to drive over and collect us.

So we go out to SF, preflight her, get in, get started and hell! There’s a flash of forked lightning out to our east. I’d just spoken to Cambridge ten minutes before, and they told me the weather was clearing directly north. I look again, and it does look as if the clag is slightly to the north of Cambridge and ten miles to the east of us. I’ve dodged one bullet already today, do I chance it? I look to the south, that’s clear. Maybe, just maybe, we can get up, depart due south, and skirt round the clag, hoping to find a clear gap leading to Cambridge… We give it a go. Climb out of Conington on full power, climbing turn to the south as another bolt of forked comes down a few miles to the east. Quick call to Conington to say we’re changing to Wyton, and thanks for the help guys. A nice bunch.

Wyton are silent. I don’t want to bust their zone, but I can’t climb above the required 2000 feet due to cloud. I make blind calls, and skirt round past Wyton at 1600. Suddenly, the sky gets lighter…. and we’re out from under the cloud! The sky to the south is a mixture of clear blue, and broken white clouds at 4000 feet. And from here I can even see Cambridge, we’ve done it! I call Cambridge approach, and we get a straight in clearance for runway 23. Right base join, non-standard approach, but we’re down. Another ‘two-for-the-price-of-one’ landing, and I daren’t touch the brakes because of all the surface water on the runway, but we’re back safely. We taxi in, park up, tie the aeroplane down, and in we go.

Cambridge has never looked quite so lovely. I’m utterly drained. On the way home we stop at a pub for a beer and a sit down, and I nearly fall asleep. And then at work on Friday morning, I found myself drifting off into quiet contemplation, reproaching myself over mistakes made and trying to make sense of the lessons learned.

So, what lessons have I learned?

One – do not deviate from a plan at short notice with re-planning thoroughly.
Two – fuel, fuel, fuel, fuel!
Three – always plan a diversion AND carry the airfield approach plates.
Four – phone the destination airfield before departure to get their actual weather.
Five – if it looks horrible up there, it probably is. Stay down here.

So Cambridge to Calais, turned into Cambridge to Leicester, then Little Staughton to Leicester, and finally Little Staughton to Conington. In horrible weather. And an aeroplane with not much fuel. And instead of Croissants in Calais, I treated Catherine to Pastie and Chips at Peterborough. I sure know how to show a girl a good time. But amazingly she tells me she had a great day, and wants to come with me when I attempt Calais again later this month. She’s a strange girl, but with that attitude, I could get quite attached to her. 😉

One final footnote, I really can’t praise or thank the folks at Flying Club Conington highly enough. A marvellously friendly bunch, who rustle up a cracking pastie and chips. Go and visit them, and if you buy enough of their fuel and ask them nicely, they might even let you off the landing fee. 😉