A little bit of snow at the home ‘drome – it lasted for a day or two:
Meanwhile in Sweden the snow lasts for months. Here’s Siljansnäs (ESVS) from the air:
Just after the snowfall. Andreas in the plough clears the way for Andreas and Sven in the aircraft…
The snow clearance width on the taxiway does look a little tight. But one good thing about snow at minus 10 degrees is that it tends to stay powdery, so if the wingtip does run across the top of the pile there’s no damage…
…although the pitot tube looks like it collected some:
Frozen lake Siljan in the background (lake in lower case as it is just Siljan, not Lake Siljan). The airfield is quite close to the water as it’s on the peninsula called Siljans nose – Siljans näs in Swedish, hence Siljansnäs. Place names are cool…
In January in our part of the UK we’ve only had a handful of nice days in the gaps between the wind and the rain…
The amount of rain led to several flood warnings for the usual suspects. Here’s the River Isla north-west of the airfield:
Meanwhile back in Sweden at Malung airfield – a beautiful day; cold, calm and crisp. Malung is where Robert and I had a fractured english/german/swedish conversation with an airport geezer about potatoes at the other airfield at Dala-Järna…
This is Älvdalen to the north of (lake) Siljan. If you fly up the river and put the island on your left you will be lined up with the runway. The straight cut out of the trees is quite distinctive.
Älvdalen airfield in the summer can be seen at about the 3:00 mark here:
A quick visit to Siljansnas in Sweden to check on things coincided with 6 inches of fresh powdery snow and temperatures of minus 14…
The clear skies and solar activity produced some nice northern lights displays:
And then it was back to instructing in the windows of good weather. Here landing at Dundee on a student’s first visit to another airfield…
Some days when the weather is clear we still can’t fly. This wing was covered in frost and took ages to clear…by the time the wing was “clean” (using brushes, deicing fluid and sunlight) the fog had rolled back in, so the flight was cancelled.
Despite the weather, instructing is quite fun. I lost my suction instrument covers and had to improvise a bit. The student doesn’t seem to mind…
A little bit of RVing as well, after the permit renewal. The weak watery winter sun makes for nice photographs:
A lesson in what not to do, taken from an instructor group in Whatsapp…
Ooops!
And a final look at Sweden on Flightradar24 to see if anything was going on and we came across this. Somebody is having too much fun!
There can be a lot of rubbish weather in November…
But there can be good weather too. I’ve flown both these aircraft
The Jet Provost in the background at RAF Linton-on-Ouse many moons ago and the Sting from Balado more recently. Owner Graeme wanted me to help convert him to type as we owned a Sting in the past. We were back flying together a few weeks ago when he wanted help with the Permit renewal test flight.
Here’s a selection of flying pics in good weather. There are not usually any pics of flying in rubbish weather, for obvious reasons!
Cessna:
RV6:
RV6 again:
PA28 over the hills:
PA28 over low-lying morning mist:
Over the hills again, in the RV:
Student navex in the Tecnam. This cloud was actually very useful as he had to come up with a plan to get around it and modify his timings accordingly. He did well and was sent off on his first solo nav a few days later…
More low mistiness from the PA28:
The RV was grounded as it was time for the 12 monthly / 150 hour inspection, followed closely by the Permit to Fly inspection. Working in the hangar at this time of year is ******* freezing, but we got it done…after replacing a broken fuel priming pipe which had sheared at both ends. A quick fix as inspector Sandy had a perfectly suitable part in his spares box. We are waiting for slightly warmer weather to redo the aircraft weight schedule as it was last done some time ago…
Service complete, inspection passed, paperwork sent off. The renewed Permit to Fly came back from the LAA twenty minutes after I submitted the application. Well done LAA Engineering…I like the new electronic system!
Then it was just a matter of waiting for a good weather window and doing a shakedown flight to make sure everything was working properly again….it was. Nice day too.
As I say to my students once they have gone solo…. “Onwards and upwards!”
I had a chance to look back through the photos of a summer’s flying as Storm Amy battered the north of the UK:
It turns out it was not a bad summer after all. Took my old colleague Alan flying once his air ambulance shift was over:
Saw some pretty good sights while instructing. Seen them many times before but it’s great to experience the student’s first look…
Queued for ages at the pumps on hot summer days:
Flew once again into the “pop-up” airfield at Montrose for the open day. It’s more of a Cub field but the RV managed admirably. Hoping to take the Cub next year once the wings are back:
Did some tailwheel differences training in an Emeraude. This involved circuits at the grass strip at Lempitlaw in the Borders and also at Eshott in Northumbria for the hard runway.
Also managed to get on telly again. I’ve been retired for 17 months now but still keep popping up like a bad rash:
Lots of instructing on the three school types at Perth. I quite like the Tecnam P-Mentor:
Storm Amy didn’t just batter the north of the UK. Specifically it battered our removal men as they loaded furniture for the house move. Downsizing is all the rage. This was taken the week before the move as we transported the SSDR Eindecker to dry storage at Neil’s mancave near Laurencekirk. It needs tinkering on the electrics as previously reported but I was only halfway through when the house completion date was agreed.
There’s no workshop at the new house (yet) so the Eindecker needed a new home:
I have taken a couple of weeks off for the house move, but I suspect the heavy rainfall recently may have produced a few of these next situations.
Water in the fuel sample! We check every flight. The avgas is dyed blue to differentiate it from water and other types of fuel (UL91 is red).
In heavy rain water can occasionally get in past the fuel cap seals, and this is the result.:
It took four or five samples to remove the water and get a perfectly blue liquid. Normally we might find one or two tiny droplets of water from condensation in the tank but this was a good’un!
Water doesn’t burn very well, that’s why we check the fuel.
Having just written the last post about Kilo Sierra the latest AOPA magazine flopped through the mailbox and guess what I found? The aircraft is for sale!
If you do buy it, can I have a shot? Another shot.
July 1981, Woodgate Aviation, Belfast Aldergrove airport. The start of the PPL course.
I’d had previously done little bit of flying with the Air Cadets but this was the start of formal lessons. We flew in one of two Piper Warrior aircraft: G-BFWK (Whiskey Kilo) and G-BGKS (Kilo Sierra).
Kilo Sierra 44 years ago:
And Kilo Sierra today:
Kilo Sierra is still going strong. Sadly Whiskey Kilo, which was my first solo aircraft, was de-registered in 1998…originally I had no idea why, but a little research shows that the aircraft was involved in a mid-air collision with another PA28 near Newtownards in 1987. Both aircraft landed safely, but WK couldn’t deploy the flaps, which led to a bounced landing and a collapsed nosewheel. This folks, is why we look out for traffic in the circuit area and why we practice flapless landings!
(As an aside, autocorrect just wrote “flawless landings” – if only!)
Perhaps being unable to operate the flaps was a symptom of distortion to the wing, or the nosewheel collapse caused significant damage. Either way, it looks like it was uneconomical to repair.
Poor Whiskey Kilo.
G-BFWK. First solo flight. 1730 to 1745 on 27 July 1981 at Belfast Aldergrove. 15 minutes.
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Fast forward 44 years and a flying visit to Siljan Air Park in Sweden for a hangar party.
New neighbours Timm and Corinna have just had a massive hangar put in on the plot next to us. They invited all the neighbours round to christen it. As you can see from Timm’s toys, they needed the big hangar! I’m not too sure about the full height roller door at the back…maybe they also have a double-decker bus?
I did thank Timm and Corinna profusely for inviting all the neighbours around to celebrate the 44th anniversary of my first solo…
At some point the shots came out…this stuff is particularly vile. Having said that, I did partake of one. Just one – I have memories from about 6 years ago of Klaus bringing round a bottle of “O P Andersen” to one of the barbecues and I had a few. The next day was a write-off as all I could do was lie on the sofa and not move.
This stuff is the type of drink that if you pretended to down the shot in one, but actually threw it over your shoulder, it would have evaporated before it hit the ground! And if it did reach the ground it would probably strip the covering off the floor. In deference to Timm’s new floor I had to drink it…
Our view out of the main room used to be a stand of trees, now it’s a hangar and apron. I quite like the new view:
Siljan Air Park is in Siljansnäs in the centre of Sweden. There are a lot of lakes around, including the nearby Siljan which is the country’s seventh largest lake. As a consequence there are a few floatplanes at the air park, such as the Cessna 182 above and this Thurston Teal:
It’s not all floatplanes…here’s neighbour Calle in his Fisher Celebrity going up for a quick evening 10 minute flight…
Another view of Timm’s 182 with lights. Didn’t get to peek in the hangar doors in the dark to see what they looked like as at this time of the year it doesn’t really get dark.
Not to be left out, our own hangar, with summer resident Husky all the way from Switzerland. Owner Chris took a week to fly up from the Zurich area at the beginning of the summer…
A bit of excitement as the local air ambulance arrived on a shout. The patient went by road so it wasn’t too serious. I had a good chat with the pilot and swapped HEMS stories for a while.
After the air ambulance flew away, Chris landed and taxied up to the hangar, allowing me a good look at the inside of his aircraft. I hadn’t clocked the fact that it has lots of glass instrumentation, including the Garmin750 unit which we had on the Helimed aircraft.
Just a quick flying visit by airliner to go to the party…it was great to see the place in July when it was busy. Normally it’s very quiet. July is the month when Sweden goes on holiday…all the campsites were packed, the parking areas were full of campervans, and most importantly there was lots of flying going on at the airfield. Next year we want to spend a bigger block of time there, not just a week – or in this case three nights!
On a quick holiday in Brittany, we went to a café for a cup of coffee. Check out the windsock in the background! Exotic location – who says romance is dead?
We were on Quiberon, a peninsula on the south coast which is a bit of a holiday destination. The Aerodrome Quiberon had a handy car park – in the centre of the “island” within walking distance of most places. Walking too far was not recommended due to the heat…
The airfield was a quiet little place with the occasional movement…
There were people in the aero club so I wandered in for a chat in my fractured French. I managed to come away with a Pilote Breton hat, seen here airborne over Perthshire later:
Down at the nearest beach, we found out that it was named after the aerodrome. Every airfield should have a beach.
The end of the asphalt is close to the shore, so traffic onto runway 29 comes whistling over the sunbathers, the path and the road before landing…
Back home from our Breton break, and straight back into instructor stuff. A two yearly revalidation flight in an RV8:
Differences training in a lovely Sting, much nicer than our old one:
Taking friends flying:
Normal instruction in the typical Scottish summer weather:
Time for a 25 hour inspection and oil change on the RV. Oil flows much better out of the drain valve when it’s warm, so what better excuse to go flying?
David is a Scottish Aero Club member who recently gave up flying; he still comes to the club to help in the hangar. Since I was going anyway, why not share the flight?
We headed out over the hills and then back in. After 40 minutes David had been flying again and the oil was nice and hot so it was straight into the hangar…
…cowlings off and oil drained:
As I’ve often said before, whoever designed the quick release oil drain deserves a medal.
Dad’s old petrol can probably belonged in a museum when he was using it for lawnmower fuel in the 1970’s…it’s still going strong as a waste oil receptacle.
The oil filter was replaced and the old one cut open for inspection. It’s a messy job using the vice to squeeze out all the oil from the filter element to check for metal particles…no nasty surprises this time!
As well as the oil change, the aircraft got a thorough inspection, a good clean, and a proper lube. Tyre pressures checked as well. Then it was time to fly!
Ron is an associate member and is often at the club, he jumped at the chance to go for a flight…
Another trip to the north over the hills…and another satisfied passenger.
The good weather brought everyone out and it was busy at the pumps:
As well as getting the oil change and service done, I also heard back from the Cub wing repairers. There is progress and work is proceeding. We may have the wings back soon…
