Author: Russell

A couple of months ago our Norwegian friend Klaus landed his Lancair on the temporary ice airfield in Sweden:

A few weeks ago we visited the same lake. It was still cold in the wind but all the ice had gone:

Back home and it was time for yet another RV oil change so we went looking for the last remnants of snow while at the same time warming the oil…

A good indication of the surface wind direction!

After flying around at 90 knots in the training aircraft the speed of the RV was refreshing:

Floating around over the hills to the north of the home ‘drome we came across this valley where the River Tilt flows down to join the River Garry at Blair Atholl.

Known in RAF circles as “Star Wars Valley” ( after the trench on the Death Star which Luke Skywalker flew along on his bombing run in the final battle ) it runs perfectly straight for over 5 miles. It is regularly used for fast jet training and is one-way for safety…

I was tempted to go lower and have a look but down there the wind and turbulence would have much more of an effect on the 140kt RV than a 420kt fighter…

…and it wouldn’t be the done thing to get run over from behind by one of His Majesty’s finest!

After landing all the warm oil was drained, filter removed and new filter installed. Inspection of the old filter element showed no surprises…a little bit of a messy job but worth it…

Spotted out and about by one of my students:

Somebody has an aviation background!

Nice weather for a few days in a row. While instructing navigation there’s time to sit back and enjoy the view:

Dunkeld and Birnam from the mighty Cessna 152. Nice…

It stands for “Back in the saddle” – Brenda hadn’t flown for a while so we decided to get her up for 20 minutes or so to see how she got on.

“Or so” turned out to be about an hour…

…and as you can see, everything was OK.

We did Montrose and back, then a wee detour to overfly Errol before heading back in. We’re already planning longer trips…

Meanwhile back at work I had no idea why my student (*) was flying towards the only cloud in the sky…

* Names redacted to protect the guilty (Mr S)!

I had to take some lifejackets for servicing in South Queensferry, right underneath the bridges from the previous post…

I think they are even more impressive from underneath, but I still prefer the view from above…

Almost 10 years ago I wrote about flying over the Queensferry Crossing, which was under construction at the time.

The Bridges

Hard to believe that the Queensferry Crossing will have been open for nine years in August 2026!

A couple of days ago a student wanted to practice a zone transit of Edinburgh airspace for a second time to gain confidence talking to “adult” air traffic control, so we got the clearance and entered controlled airspace again.

It was a lovely day as we came overhead the bridges:

The marina at Port Edgar lies between the two road bridges where they reach the south bank of the Forth at South Queensferry. At this point the aircraft is directly above the iconic Forth Rail Bridge…

After the bridges we proceeded west past the old ordnance depot and the newer bonded warehouses near Alloa:

…then back over Perth city on the way in to land: ( more bridges! Two road, one rail – just like Edinburgh ) :

A lovely winter’s day of flying. And it’s slowly starting to warm up…can’t wait for better weather for longer trips over the summer.

The price of Avgas is not allowed to rise – we have plans!

I was saddened to learn of the death last month of Richard Starks. Dick was a larger than life figure, one of the stalwarts of the replica World War One fighter movement in the US.

He bought a Cessna 120 and learnt to fly, then with a friend built two replica Nieuport fighters at home. These became the nucleus of the Kansas City Dawn Patrol. Wife Sharon was a little bit left out so she eventually learned to fly too and they built her an aircraft…

A high school mathematics teacher, Dick turned his hand to language and authored two books and numerous articles in the aviation press:

I read his first book ( on the left ) many moons ago and reread it before acquiring the replica Eindecker. I had to buy it again as I had leant it out and lost track of it. At the same time I bought his second book which was just as good as the first.

His books inspired the Walter Mitty in me and helped make the Eindecker purchase decision a lot easier. Great reads – recommended!

Condolences to Sharon and the family, RIP and blue skies Dick.

Nice obituary here with more details:

Richard Starks Obituary (1943 – 2026) – Weatherby Lake, MO – Kansas City Star

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…

(See https://www.sigurdmartin.se/2019/08/27/kvallsflyg/ for Malung airfield in the summer…should open a new tab if I’ve got it right 🤞)

Another Sweden pic, another airfield:

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:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OLlM3j-CQSU&pp=ygUKU2lsamFuc25hc9gG1gE%3D

Flying in Sweden. Great fun, summer or winter. Can’t wait to go back.

Stop Press!

Finally found a use for AI…!

Here’s the original Malung picture:

Hello 2026!

Hopefully the anemometer is working again. It got stuck after a gust:

And by now the fences should have been repaired. This was a few days ago:

And there’s a snow and ice warning from the Met Office as well! But with luck we’ll soon be back up to views like this:

Happy New Year!

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!

Seasons greetings to all!

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.

Back to work soon, with checks 🙂