I had a flight booked for Sunday 2nd November but when the weather looked better the day before I made a last-minute change to fly on Saturday instead. When I arrived at Shoreham airfield I found that I had been allocated a different Flying Instructor (FI) than normal due to my last-minute change. I didn't mind - on balance I felt it would now be a good thing to fly with someone different and get used to having different people with me in the aircraft. Plus I was sure that the different FI would have some differences to point out to me.
I checked out the aircraft and the FI joined me. I went through the checks, started the engine, and taxied us to the tarmac runway 20. While I was doing my Power Check another Piper Warrior slipped past behind me and jumped the take-off queue. Without doing a power check they took off - I think with just permission to line up not take off! No power check seems reckless to me, and a take-off without permission (especially on a busy Saturday at the airfield) seemed double reckless. I hope I never get that sloppy.
I noticed a couple of gyrocopters behind us in the take-off queue. I did a smooth takeoff and we headed out towards Littlehampton. Here's a video of the take-off and climb. I'm afraid there is no more video of this lesson (great shame as stalling is fun and would have looked good on video) because as you can see my GoPro fell off the window during the climb! We took off at 14.50 and you can see that the sun was already low...
As we were climbing we heard over the radio that one of the gyrocopters had crashed on takeoff and the runway was now closed. The pilot was declared safe. The FI said we would continue the lesson and either land on another runway at Shoreham or divert to Goodwood.
The lesson was a mix of stall recover in different configurations such as stalling in base leg configuration (two stages of flap at 1,500 RPM), stalling in final configuration (full flap and idle), and stalling while turning to force a wing drop. It really is a great shame the video was not working as it would have looked really good. Before each stall we did a HASELL check to make sure we were safe to do the maneuver.
While we were doing the exercises we heard that the runway had now re-opened. I flew us back to the circuit in a lovely descent. During the descent we heard that active runway was now the grass strip 25. I took us through base and onto final but I could not see the runway due to glare from the sun that was very low and directly ahead. The FI could not see it either so it was not just my eyes. As we approached all we could make out was the white runway numbering and arrow, but there was no definition of the grass runway itself.
As this looked quite tricky the FI took over at about 250 ft and we continued our decent. He flew us over the runway threshold and landed - and all the while neither of us could make out the ground properly due to sun glare. He said after landing that he literally floated the aircraft down, he did not land on anything he could see. As he lands there many times a day I guess he could use his judgement.
I wondered what I would have done if I had been solo. I would not have landed without being able to clearly see the ground. I think I would have declared a go-around and discussed options with Shoreham Tower. As winds were quite light I think I would have asked for an approach on Runway 20 which is tarmac and seen if that had better definition in the sun glare. If I had gone around on that too then I think I would have flown south over the sea for 15 minutes and then tried again as the sun position changed.
Here's a route of our flight...
Weather...
- EGKA 011320Z 23013KT 9999 FEW016 16/13 Q1016
- At 13:20 GMT on 1st (November) wind 230 degrees at 13 kts, visibility 10+ km, few clouds at 1,600 ft. Temperature 16 degrees, dew point 13 degrees. Barometric pressure 1016 hPa
Blood sugar readings...
> 2 hours before flight: 8.8
< 30 mins before flight: 6.5
Before landing: 8.7
Flying hours...
This flight: 1h 10m
Accumulated: 11h 5m
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