A Busy Day

We had a big day planned. Taking advantage of a day off work, the plan was to fly to Wolverhampton and back with Frances, my instructor. All being well, I'd then fly solo from Barton to Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton to Blackpool, then finally Blackpool to Barton - this round trip would give me my qualifying cross country.

I have many failings - too many if you talk to my wife. One of them is my ears, as I suffer from both a selective hearing condition and occasional inattentiveness syndrome.
In the case of the planning for my qualifying cross country, it was the latter; instructed to plan Barton to Wolverhampton, I did exactly that, not hearing the 'via Stafford' condition attached to end. So I ended up with straight line from the bottom of the Low Level Corridor between Manchester and Liverpool to a disused airfield in the Shawbury military air traffic zone, with a dog leg from there to Wolverhampton. On paper it looked sensible. There was the complexity associated with a clearance through military airspace and the fact that there were few landmarks on the way down, but I traded both of those issues for two simple headings.

As I was to find out, it was a bad deal. Firstly, headings are just a number, so it matters not whether you have to change heading frequently or not. In fact, frequent heading changes are probably better as it forces assessment of position and drift. Second, the lack of landmarks is a big problem - they give you a location fix which is pure gold when you're on you rown.

This I now know but when I set off to Barton it was looking like I might not get the chance to learn it; the cloud base was about 1200ft and it was generally windy, dull and not conducive to navigation exercises. After hanging around a bit, it cleared off up to about 2000ft and so did we. En route to Warrington, Frances took a look at my plan and made some comments along the lines of 'Why the hell have you planned that route? Why haven't you planned via Stafford?'.

You've got to cram experiences in; life is too short. Aviation probably doesn't help lengthen it. My route was unconventional but properly planned so we decided to follow it. The flat plains south of the low level corridor were almost landmark free, so straight away things were getting tough; without landmarks it was far more difficult than it had to be to get a visual position fix, leading me to rely heavily on radio navigation. The cloud base was coming down and visibility was getting worse. I called into Shawbury to get clearance through the military air traffic zone, which they gave promptly because it was very busy - by far the busiest controlled airspace I'd been in and it was pushing my capabilities. The local area has a number of military helicopter sites and aerodromes but it was impossible to identify them to get a visual fix. Unable to keep the altitude given by military air traffic control because of cloud, we had to drop out, down to 1000ft, but the frequency was buzzing with traffic, there were numerous unidentified military aerodromes around us and I was very nervous about the proximity of other aircraft. I could hear them in the clouds above and feel them on the ground, waiting to climb towards us.

It's moments like these when the standard 1:500,000 scale aeronautical charts tell you nothing. There's no detail that transforms a few camouflaged buildings on the ground into a helicopter landing site on the map - that's why those landmarks are so important. At least Shawbury, barely visible off to the south west, was a full runway lit up in the gloom. Flying purely on the headings towards a VOR radial I'd selected to take us into Wolverhampton, it was something of a relief when, exactly at the point expected, Shawbury asked us to turn onto 150 degrees direct to Wolverhampton. Skirting some high ground, still at 1000ft we tracked out of controlled airspace on the VOR heading for Wolverhampton, breathing slightly easier.

The cloud base stayed at about 1000ft and the visibility stayed bad all the way to Wolverhampton, which is to me a glorious asphalt aerodrome in what looks like a natural bowl, surrounding by low rolling hills. Three runways bisect each other to make a huge off kilter triangle with the control tower in the middle. It's an airfield that, like Barton, feels almost prehistoric and none the worse for it. I worry that one day all these old airfields will be modernised into new regional airports, or turned into housing estates and the old guys who run the radio, or bimble around in their old aircraft, who give the place it's character, will be dead, with all those that might follow them marooned alone at home watching X-Factor, unaware that these places exist. We're all complicit; we might as well bury them in bright new concrete.

Visibility at Wolverhampton is so bad, we make a run for it as soon as we can - though we do see Charlie Delta, one of our PA28's original siblings. Frances had demanded a replan to take us back via Stafford, instead of the nightmare transit through Shawbury's zone, so we're heading back north-north-east initially and it's predictably a lot easier than my route. The M6 is rarely considered a thing of beauty but it is as we wheel above it, turning above huge white sheds where men toil volumetrically isolated, slaves to pallets and boxes and stacking storage systems. Flight feels like a rare freedom as the clouds begin to lift and we track a railway line to Ashburton.

Back at Barton I replan and refuel for my solo legs, my Qualifying Cross Country. As always I make one error in refuelling; if it's not leaving the door open, it's leaving the brake on. Whilst the fuel is going in, the sky looks as if it's clearing of cloud and it could be a good day.

Indeed, the flight to Wolverhampton then goes very smoothly with only the cloud around the destination being of note. Matters are better down at 1200ft and there is the usual thirty seconds of mild discomfort whilst the airport doesn't pop up on Charlie Bravo's nose as soon as predicted. The revised planning has worked and it's been stress free compared to the first flight earlier in the day. Before long I can make out the aerodrome and I'm fairly sure it's the right place. I'm given a straight forward overhead join for a huge long runway with a slightly uphill portion at the far end and the only strange moment is when, on final approach, the chaps in the tower can't see me.

I'm directed to the apron and park up, where an old Irish chap insists on helping me turn the aeroplane around, even though I don't want to and, it then transpires, don't actually need to; I've been given a spot on the apron specifically to allow me to taxi out directly. Everyone is so damn helpful it's something of a shock and guaranteed to turn even the most confident into complete jelly. When the chaps in the tower sign off my airmanship as 'very good', I feel like a young Jedi being inducted by numerous Yodas - the shuffling, non flying Yoda of Empire Strikes Back, as opposed to the CGI pseudo science waffle spouting disappointment of any of the later films. Give me a Jim Henson puppet any time.

I pay my tenner landing fee and I'm told to 'just ask for a taxi' and they'll sort it all out. On my preflight walk around, the aeroplane decides to develop sticky flaps. I've seen this before, so I help them back in a couple of times, and then they're anything but stuck, their mechanisms eager to pull the flaps back in. I check them a couple of times more - Blackpool has acres of asphalt for an aeroplane like this, but there's always that chance you'll have to land somewhere more....interesting.

Wolverhampton is very quiet. There's a twin engined spanking new Diamond doing stuff on the apron, but it has the feel of a lazy, old, slightly decrepit seaside resort. Like Southport, with aeroplanes. So when I call for taxy, there's no hold up and I'm doing my power checks on the apron. All told I'm probably on the ground for no more than 15 minutes.

En route for Blackpool, it's clear that Wolverhampton is in some sort of meteorological hole. Overhead the A5 I'm flanked briefly by a Jetranger and some sort of biplane. We're a serene trio, an elite club scraping along the bottom of a cloud, along the lower surface of millions of tonnes of water - an airborne lake. They peel off to go their own way and suddenly there's no cloud at all, just a a limitless acreage of blue sky as I turn for Ashburton.

My radio technique is shot. Over Ashburton I'm lulled into a false sense of security by some chit chat between Manchester ATC and another aircraft. Evidently they have a mutual friend. I hit the PTT button and make contact, then pass my details, forgetting to ask for anything in particular.

"Would you be wanting a Radar Information Service?"
"Yeah, please"

It's hardly CAP413 but we both appear to have communicated successfully. Needless to say, extra effort goes into R/T from that point on.


As I'm tiring I'm getting harder on myself; halfway up the low level corridor between Liverpool and Manchester, I gain 100 feet taking me close to the 1250ft limit and controlled airspace. I loudly berate myself. "Idiot!".

Even so my route up via the VRPs is spot on and a few miles north of the low level corridor I request a frequency change to Warton, a military aerodrome that sits very close to Blackpool. Today the weather is so fine that I can see Blackpool beyond Warton before I get on frequency. My R/T isn't great and they won't give me a Radar Information Services because I don't have a transponder. It's not going to ruin my day.

I'm routed via Southport where I encounter my first roll cloud. They're rare and beautiful, as this one is; a thin filament of rolling moisture held in magical suspension a thousand feet above the bay of Southport. I fly more or less through it, accepting the loss of visibility and the temporary breach of the ANO. For a moment, there is just me, the sun and the cloud. Bursting out of it in a euphoric haze, realising it's brought along a couple of bigger and less interesting friends my nerve goes; carb heat on, throttle back to 1500rpm, down we go.


Warton ATC are busy, so there's the opportunity to orbit left over Southport pier for a moment. Southport beach stretches out below, with the Irish sea sparkling in the west, oil rigs poking up through its surface. Far in the distance, the Welsh mountains rise, a smattering of cloud over their peaks and over Liverpool with it's wind farm out in the bay. Almost too soon, Charlie Bravo is cleared through Warton's MATZ to Lytham St Annes' Pier and I'm told to call Blackpool Tower, which will always raise a smile.

Straight in approach to 31. On the plus side, there are no circuits to fly, no working out where exactly left or right base is and no other traffic. However, it's a new runway for me and there are houses close to the end I'm landing at. It shouldn't matter, so I put it out of my mind - after all, if I hit those houses, I'm dead too. Without a base leg to get my speed down and flaps deployed, I do it nice and early and call final, which gets me a "Cleared land 31" which I read back. Now it's me and 31 and my airspeed and my altitude and nothing else in the world.

All the way down I'm flying at the numbers, exactly as I do at Barton, knowing that when they feel too close I'll level the aircraft out. The landing is a peach, a greaser. Compared to Barton it's like landing on glass. It's possible that the main wheels and nose wheel hit the tarmac together, but it's so gentle it'd be churlish to complain. The aircraft settles and decelerates exactly as you'd want it to and within 200m GLACB is at taxy speed, which means we're both rewarded with a good five minutes of taxying to the handling agent's hangar.


The wife and I have a quick chat whilst I'm getting my head together in the handling agent's hangar - she arranges to visit Barton to watch me land. I'm too tired to feel any additional pressure, so tired in fact that when the tower sign off my QXC form with the required comment on 'Airmanship' being 'unsatisfactory', it takes me a full five minutes to realise that this isn't good. I call ATC to book out - another first - and ask them where I've gone wrong. I'm too tired to be either upset or relieved when it turns out they've confused CB with RB, an aircraft from my flying school who's airmanship clearly wasn't up to QXC standards. It gets corrected and I'm sure I've done a good thing calling them.


Blackpool Tower are delightful and when I read back my taxy clearance I thank the handling agent. "Bless you sir" followed by the nearest runway and a simple straight out and left clearance. Bless you back.


Flying is a beautiful pastime for many reasons. Sometimes, as today, it's the view. Sometimes, as with my climbing left hand turn up and out over the sea, it's a well executed manouevre. Many reasons, all of which seem to be there today, even when I crudely ask Warton for clearance through their military zone when it's not needed; Blackpool have just handed me over. As soon as I hit 2000ft, my cruise altitude for today, I can see the new indoor ski slope being constructed near Barton. There's virtually no crosswind, so my carefully planned headings are redundant. All I have to do is keep Barton on the nose and keep an eye on the instruments.

The overhead join is another manouevre which is priceless. Today, it's starts for me at a touch under 1800ft, high above Barton, with Manchester crowding the immediate view, the Pennines and Saddleworth Moors rising up many miles behind, lit by the evening sun. Banking right, the wing tip describes a circle around threshold and below I can see a light aircraft executing a touch and go as the throttle comes back and Charlie Bravo drops 800ft in a minute or so. It's a movement of controlled languor, an effortless way to come home and perhaps as close to the feeling a glider pilot must have as I'll ever get.

After rattling and bump down the runway in an undignified manner completely at odds with the overhead join I taxi to a stop and get my head together. It's been a fantastic day but an incredibly tiring one. But I've achieved every objective set, I'm safe and the aeroplane's left in a working condition, so it's a success. The wife is waiting under the shadow of the control tower with the family hound, Connie the dog, and I remember why that last part of the day was the most important.

Zero Hour

Having studiously avoided all manner of institutions including the air cadets, by the time by trial lesson comes round my flying experience consists of infrequent tours of duty in World War 2 Europe, with several kills (and several deaths) to my name. My flying skills are limited to standing a Spitfire/Hurricane/Stealth Fighter/F16 (delete as appropriate) on one wingtip and hitting the fire button until something explodes, or crashes or just changes. Navigation is boring. Shooting stuff is interesting. I own only one joystick. The odd time I've been obsessed by Flight Simulator for a few hours, it's been to fly a Learjet under the Eiffel Tower or Golden Gate Bridge. I might know what a Cessna is but, you know, why bother with it?

Actually, I did build a remote control training aircraft as a child. Using some old plans I found in the attic I built it from scratch using using balsa wood. The wing and fuselage was covered in a heat shrink material applied using my mother's iron, which was an high risk operation due to the implications should I wreck the iron and endanger my mother's primary function in the house. The iron survived, but the aircraft didn't - I completed it after many hours but couldn't afford the radio kit or the engine and so got a bit bored with it. I threw it around the back garden a little, trimming the surfaces for a no-engine no-radio kit scenario that the aircraft would never see and then it went into a cupboard, forever devalued as a good idea that I couldn't see through.


It's tremendously exciting but I'm keeping the excitement in check because there's a weather dependency. At 10am, LAC get their first telephone call. The weather is marginal, so I have to call back at midday. The weather is still not great, but I'm told to go in anyway.
The wife tells me to be careful. I promise I will be.

I arrive.
"How much do you weigh?"
"Ooh, about twelve and a half stone."
"We'll say thirteen."

I'm insulted but apparently it means we get to take a Piper PA28 as opposed to a Cessna 152. A Piper what?

Walking out to 'airside' takes you past some hangars and the quaintly old fashioned control tower. It's all tremendously informal compared to every airport I've been to previously. All that's stopping me getting 'airside' is a sign telling me not to go there. Even then airside seems to comprise of more grass and an asphalt area for parking aircraft on and not much more. There are a bewildering number of almost identical aircraft and then a couple of odd balls which are clearly for aerobatics or people who like old things, along with some helicopters which are fascinating but seem to be marginalised to the west end of the runway. Either way, just being around the helicopters and aircraft is exciting, making the walk across the grass is almost unthinkable, unreal.

On the way across I'm asked about previous experience so I come clean on my WWII dogfighting expertise and Learjet soirees. Clearly with that experience I'll be qualified by lunchtime.

This aeroplane thing is small, with it's wing set low, like a Spitfire, though Spitfires look much bigger in photos. In fact, these light aircraft look bigger from the ground, so why so small up close? The low wing perhaps makes it more familiar as a 'real' aeroplane and means that getting in is tricky, involving climbing onto the wing first to access the single door on the copilot's side. I'm given the left hand seat, which prompts me to check that my aviation stories haven't been taken too seriously - the left hand seat is the captain's seat. Already the instructor is relegated to copilot. Good grief.

The control panel is bewildering. There are numbers in circles, numbers next to circles, circles with no numbers and loads of what look like antiquated radios - it's as if there's two for AM, one for Long Wave, one for Short Wave and not a CD player in sight. So it's the BBC World Service and Radio Luxembourg for us then. And there's a compass. I'd date the interior as designed in the fifties, implemented with sixties technology and updated perhaps around 1965, since which the most modern addition was fear induced perspiration. But you know, I don't mind at all. It all feels kind of 'right'. This is how aircraft are meant to be; impenetrable masses of instruments and controls. If it was just like a car it would be boring and we'd all be emoting about Volvos.

The instructor fiddles with the yoke, hits a couple of switches, works the throttle and the red lever (another throttle?) and Charlie Bravo shakes and rattles into life. It's noisy, smelly and generally fabulous. On go the headsets for some utterly meaningless but very authentic chatter during which I almost breathe. There's a bit of 'wilco' but no rogering, which leaves me disappointed; script writers always ensure 'roger', 'over and out' and 'tiffin' make it into radio chat, so to have none of it leaves me wanting to write a strongly worded letter to various studios.
We park up to do some stuff. The handbrake goes on. And stays on. I decide not to say anything as, seeing as my instructor is a woman, such inconsistencies are likely to be a feature of my flight. Hopefully there'll be no parallel parking involved. The parking lasts a minute or two, then we taxy to runway twenty seven via a holding point, though everyone seems to call the runway "two seven left".

So here we are, on the threshold. Literally. I'm directed to put one hand on the yoke, one hand on the throttle and my feet on the pedals. There's a moments pause and I'm told to put the throttle forward all the way. There's an almost imperceptible lag, then the engine and propeller get down to business and we accelerate....and don't stop. There's no changing of gears, no pauses, just unrelenting acceleration. Charlie Bravo tries to get off the ground and fails, then again, then again. The third bounce is so hard it knocks my throttle hand slightly, but the instructor rams it forward with a dramatic cry of, "Full throttle!". After three good bounces we're inexplicably lifted off the ground in a clean sweeping motion and that's it; we're airborne.

In the beginning...

June 2006.
I'm bored. The wife knows I'm bored, so we converse briefly about how to alleviate my boredom.

"I'm bored", I say.
"You're bored."
That's helpful.
"Why don't you see about a flying at Barton?"
That's helpful.
"But surely it's too expensive.
"But you've always wanted to do it."
Have I? Really? I hadn't realised that I'd even mentioned it.

So I dig around the web a bit and telephone LAC. I like the look of LAC because they look from the web like they are Barton, and Barton has been at the back of my mind as somewhere interesting since I can remember.

Having been brought up in north Manchester as one of a platoon sized family entirely dependent on my father's wage, everywhere south of Oldham has carried an aura of impossible glamour, unattainable riches or impenetrable complexity. Barton Aerodrome always fell into all three categories, sitting just by what was the M63 - a motorway itself associated forever with the easy middle class of Sale, Altrincham and, somewhere way beyond, Cheshire. Next to the airfield, Barton Bridge rose above the Manchester Ship Canal like a colossus, a feat of engineering to parallel other famous big bridges, like Thelwall Viaduct. The airfield seemed to be hemmed in by motorways, sewage works and industrial estates, whilst a short distance away Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, was a conspicuously massive football stadium for a middle ranking city, 58,000 standing fans seemingly marginalised to just outside the city boundaries and much further from Barton than the few miles between them.

It was precisely these circumstances which made Barton intriguing. For a start it didn't seem to have any runways. It had a control tower, some hangers and a bright orange windsock but that appeared to be it - though it's tricky to spot any kind of detail from the top of Barton Bridge because it's a motorway and people driving cars make it really difficult to stand there looking at the view.


LAC are reasonably helpful in a terse kind of way and I book myself in for a trial lesson on the 22nd June 2006. I have no idea who's on trial but I decide that if it's me, it's harsh.