To Lancaster and Back

After constantly checking the weather for the weekend ahead for the majority of the proceeding week, I was amazed to wake up to blue skies and relativly clear skies. Desperatly wishing that I had not gone out the night before, I patiently waited for my hang over to depart, so that Victor Alpha could too depart with myself as PIC. Finally pulling her out of the hanger and onto the pan at 14.00HRS on Saturday, we got ready to depart. My able minded friend Jonathon was the co pilot for today. The plan was to depart Barton on RWY 27R and proceed over to Formby, before routing up the coast abeam Blackpool and up to Lancaster, before turning and tracking the M6 back to Barton. A route which was quickly becoming common nature to me. But due to the dangers associated with becoming complacent, every turning point and VRP was still double checked againt the CAA 1:250 000 VFR chart.


The only major problem today was the consistent and at times often problematic hazey conditions which were present around Barton and parts of the North West coast. Today also seemed to attact a hive of GA, Blackpool Appr. being inundated with incoming R/T. After being told that the area was alive with both reported and unreported A/C, we proceeded with extreme caution. Several aircraft passed overhead at less then 1000ft but this was little problem.


After a fun but uneventful flight, we retuned past winter hill and over Bolton. Strangly we had a Grob trainer from Barton right on our starboard wing tip on approach to the overhead position. As he was too close for my liking and had no clear intention of moving I opted for a right base leg join, which was quickly approved by the FISO who had seen the arrising problem. There were nine A/C in the CCT, four of which were on finals! To stop a go around occuring, I decided to take the lead and preform an S-turn over the Trafford Centre, something which although not part of the JAA training I had picked up whilst at KSEE. We were still numnber four and when number three broke away for a go around, we slipped it in and although we were 200ft high on short finals, carried out a nice landing. I had kept it high as to be honest it was 50/50 whether a landing would take place. All in all a solid, well executed flight.