Date: 15/2/2009
Time: 15:20 - 15:55
Aircraft: Ikarus C42 - G-CFHP
Old Sarum
Ian and I have decided to go to Old Sarum today. I haven't been there since I did my qualifying cross country exercise. Unfortunately the forecast states there may be low cloud around, maybe some rain and a front coming down from the north not perfect. It may be more sensible to head north into the weather front, to Brimpton or perhaps Chiltern Park. However, the former is shut after an accident and we can't get an answer from the latter. We decide to head down towards Chilbolton and have a look and keep an eye on it.
Ian pilots the first stint and we take off from the intersection of 26. The visibility is OK, but not good; but at least the cloudbase is higher than advertised. We go past Chilbolton and by the time we get to the railway line, we may as well continue to Old Sarum. This isn't so hard to navigate as we follow the railway to Alderbury and you can see the airfield from there. Approaching the airfield we drop down for a deadside join circuit and landing.
We go in for a cup of tea and I can't resist the bacon roll. A quick checkover and then we're back off home.
We follow pretty much the same route in reverse on the way back to Popham. Once past Chilbolton, there is a cloud bank, so we drop down a bit to go below it. Approaching Popham it starts to rain a bit, but not too bad can still see OK, so we do a deadside join here too. This new aircraft G-CFHP strangely really seems to float a lot, so a mild sideslip is required.
I guess we made the best of the day that we could.