Flight #15 - Shoreham - Local castles for school project

My youngest daughter has been doing a Year 7 school project on castles. Of course we are very lucky in the UK having lots of castles around, and living as we do in the South Downs we have two very local ones close to where we live - Lewes and Arundel.

She has done a great written project, visited our local castle in Lewes which is 1000 years old, and she has also been making a balsa wood castle using a woodcraft set she got for Christmas!

I suggested we might want to fly over Lewes and Arundel on a pleasure flight to let her look down on the castle walls and appreciate the designs from the air. I'm pleased to say she thought that would be great and her older sister came along too.

Looking at the weather in mid-February I could see one day in particular that looked good - Pancake day. I booked the Warrior and a Flying Instructor (FI) about a week ahead and sure enough the day turned out to be the best for flying for ages - clear blue skies and not too cold.

For total safety I kept of carbs for breakfast so had no insulin on the day we flew ahead of the flight. We headed down to Shoreham and the FI asked me to take the girls down to the plan and do the pre-flight checks. I have now worked out why my Go Pro had been falling off the window on previous flights, so got some good video, and have worked out how to use the new Attenuator+ device to pick up cockpit/radio comms so the audio is clear too. The girls settled themselves comfortably into the back seats...

I haven't flown with this FI before, but he was really great. He let me taxi to the active runway and do the power checks. We were given a slot to take off between two landing planes so he thought perhaps he should do the take-off but let me do it in the end. There was a slight crosswind but I did okay and we climbed and turned left to the west towards Arundel...

Here are couple of pics of Arundel castle becoming visible over the nose of the aircraft...

The FI took over so I could take pictures from the front while the girls took pictures from the back seat.

With great views of the walls we got some great pics including the following two...

Next we headed over to my favourite beach at West Wittering so the girls could see where we like to go on summer days, then we tracked south east to Selsey Bill, then east along the coast past Bognor Regis, Littlehampton and then Brighton where the FI did an orbit over the pier. After Brighton we tracked East further along the coast to Newhaven and then followed the river inland to Lewes where the FI took over so we could do an orbit over Lewes castle for pictures...

We got some good pictures again, though the castle was more hard to spot with so many town buildings around it...

From Lewes we flew west along the north side of the downs for an orbit over our house and then back to Shoreham. As Rachel felt a bit ill by this point the FI flew the landing so we could get safely to ground as smoothly as possible.

Doing a trip like this was great, and it was the first time the girls have been in the aircraft with me. They felt safe, though all the orbits for pics took a toll on their stomachs. Hopefully this is a good sign of lots of fun time flying together in the future.

Here's a route of our flight...

Weather...
- EGKA 171220Z 36013KT 9999 FEW020 07/01 Q1037
- At 12:20 GMT on 17th (February) wind 360 degrees at 13 kt, visibility 10 km or more, few clouds at 2,000 ft. Temperature 7 degrees, dew point 1 degree. Barometric pressure 1037 hPa.

Blood sugar readings...
> 2 hours before flight: 10.4
< 30 mins before flight: 10.8
Before landing: Not tested and did not do landing

Flying hours...
This flight: 1h 20m
Accumulated: 15h 30m