Friday 2 January 2015

Last Flight of 2014 Aberdeen to Perth in Cloud and Turbulence

In the afternoon of 31 December and with just a few hours of 2014 left Alex and I decided to take ZV to Perth for some VOR approaches using the PTH VOR and an old Jeppesen plate. We knew Perth airfield would not be busy and would be closed from 1500 so homing to the beacon would not be an issue though we would need to make sure Dundee was aware of our intentions.

The airfield winds at Aberdeen were reasonable light though the winds at 3000 ft were 220 40kts. We re-fuelled ZV to full before the trip (a good thing as we would be airborne for 3 hours). The plan was for me to fly to Perth, carry out 3 x approaches then hand controls to Alex for 2 x approaches before recovering to Aberdeen where Alex would get in a 3rd approach though an ILS rather than a VOR this time.

We took off at 1400hrs in bright sunshine, Alex looking cool in his sunglasses, but as we climbed to 1500 ft I levelled off to stay below a layer of cloud and then - wallop we were hit by some pretty heavy turbulence, heavier than I had experienced in a small plane before. Slowing to below 100 kts to protect the airframe I requested a climb to 4000 ft which was allowed by ATC but which now made us IMC. We had been in cloud for30 minutes before Alex realised he was still wearing his sunglasses - he looked cool in his Aviators thaough I am sure it was a darker cloud for him than for me.

The strong headwind not only slowed our groundspeed to 60 kts but also caused mountain wave activity within our cloud thereby requiring constant power and attitude adjustments. On leaving the Aberdeen Zone we were handed over to Scottish who provided an excellent service for the rest of the flight until re-joining Aberdeen some 2 1/2 hours later. With Scottish we were able to get a traffic service plus co-ordinate against any Dundee Outbounds.

On the transit flights to and from Perth we had planned to carry out some PFLs but our IMC status precluded this so it was a simple case of homing to PTH using the VOR and GPS. My 1st approach was planned, and briefed with no issues we broke cloud at 1400ft with a DA of 970ft. I tracked to the Missed Approach point and that is where it went wrong. Firstly I did not fly out for long enough given the strong wind meaning I would be outbound on the procedure sooner than I had allowed for; secondly I DR'd my position rather then reset the inbound heading on the VOR dial which meant that I ended up arcing rather than going overhead directly. Thirdly I did not allow sufficient wind correction for the outbound track. These errors combined to push me east of the inbound heading rather than west so quick abort and climb to 3000ft to reset was required. Lessons were learned immediately and applied for the next 2 approaches which went fine though the cloud base was notably decreasing and visibility becoming much murkier. On my final Approach Alex took over at the MAP to fly the missed approach and then to do his 2 approaches. The 1st of which was done straight away before we had to spend 10 mins circling at 1000ft in the gloom to allow 2x movements from Dundee to clear. Alex then carried out his 2nd VOR and from the missed approach headed back to Aberdeen.

The return flight was also IMC and mountain wave activity was again significant though our ground speed was much faster at 160kts. Again as we approached Banchory we received some severe buffeting that threw us about quite a bit. Being IMC Alex requested an IFR recovery to ILS. We were told to make our own route to the ADN and then were vectored to the ILS for a smooth landing at 1800hrs. We wished each other a good new year and then went our separate ways.

In doing my log book that evening I was pleased to see that I had exceeded my 2014 Resolution's target of 40 hours and had logged 51 hrs 20 mins for the year

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