My Maiden voyage to Alderney                      

The first I knew of the "flyout" was an email from the club.www.airsportuk.co.uk. Having not flown more than a few minutes over water, and not having done the Lundy Island trip, or the Scilly Isles, I thought I'd wait until another Alderney trip. But then the week before, Cliff phoned me up and suggested I go with an experienced pilot, and do as much navigation and radio as possible, as a learning excercise, good experience he said.. Hmm he was right!

How do we get there, which route, what do we do if the engine stops... all these questions and more raced through my head. Apparently I was to wear an immersion suit, a life jacket, and an emergency beacon. How do you get into the cockpit with all that on? To add to the pressure we had to get to Alderney via Jersey zone in class A airspace, to Alderney Airport in Class D airspace, so requesting special VFR to real ATC, better get my CAP413 out and revise, also what's the weather going to be like. The forecast a week ahead wasn't good, but as the days ticked by, the forecast for the Saturday improved. I Used the http://www.goflying.org/ website to do work out the VFR Flight Plan of headings and time, to double check the GPS, and in case the GPS failed.

Take off. Aircraft external checks complete, a last dash to the loo, and then back to the aircraft to get the immersion suit on. Giggles all round as 10 people are in various stages of trying to get a big rubber and cloth suit on. But as a short chap in a one size fits all I felt a little silly. Feels a little weird effectively having a pair of rubber socks on in your shoes, but didn't seem to get sweaty, and didn't notice it after a while. Life jacket on, Attach the emergency beacon, and we're ready to fly over water. Erm. We get into the plane, and arrange the SLR camera and strap with all the other zillions of straps I now seem to have around me.

Lets have the beer NOW !

Then a flurry of aircraft taxiing to the end of the runway, final checks, and then we're all ready for departure, and the lead aircraft takes off, and each one of us, keen as mustard, waited just a few seconds after the previous aircraft left the grass before lining up and taking off. Felt like the Spitfires leaving in WW2. We followed each other as closely but safely across the New Forest, navigators fiddling with the GPS, compass agreeing with our PLOG, and checking the usual VRPs as we went, Stoney Cross, Lyndhurst, Lymington... won't be able to do that over the English Channel. As we reached the Needles, we each told Bournemouth we were climbing to 3000'. Some bright spark in one of the last few microlights said in very poor example of RT, "same as the other aircraft", to which came the reply "Roger".

We were strangely quiet flying over the sea. My pilot gave me the talk on 'what to do if the engine fails', as we get close to the sea, open the door and jam it open with your foot, so the pressure of the water on the door doesn't stop you opening it; after we've stalled just above the sea, and "landed", get out, inflate the life jacket, activate the beacon, and we'd hopefully find each other soon after. The plane of course sinks fairly quickly. It doesn't float. Gulp. I wondered if my son's camera and the borrowed expensive Garmin was insured. I carefully untangled all the wires and straps and harnesses, so if I did have to get out quickly, I wouldn't get caught in them. It's recommended that you take a knife, to cut yourself lose, but I'd probably end up cutting myself in the commotion and then bleeding to death. I kept looking back to see the white cliffs of the South Coast, slowly merging into the haze. Then I spotted all the ships and boats in the channel, and we discussed whether one of those container ships would actually see us if we landed near it or in front of it. Or could we land on top of it!. We decided that it would be better to try one of the smaller pleasure boats, if the need arose. There was what looked like a dark grey cloud low on the horizon, which slowly turned into the north coast of the Cherbourg peninsula. We're nearly there!

About 10 miles from Ortac, we switched to Jersey. And a strangely welcoming voice spoke to each of us in turn, we were about to enter controlled airspace, so we had to do what we were told. They split us up, one at each of 1000, 2000, and 3000 feet, and another instructed to go into an orbit. And another microlight, whose transponder was playing up, was vectored to Cap De La Hague a small rock NW of Cherbourg that will teach them to turn on their equipment next time! Although we were fourth in the formation across the channel, we ended up at 1000' and were the first to be passed to Guernsey Radar, and ended up being first to land! The aircraft first in the formation was the one who went into the orbit, and I think ended up fourth to land. we had to report airfield in sight, and at this point I must've missed the request to switch to the Tower

we were already on a long final, and we just concentrated on the landing, and as navigator and RT I completely forgot to change to Tower, and forgot to wait for the "Cleared to Land". We landed, no other traffic. A lesson learnt here. Then the second confusion was we saw the sign that said Apron with an arrow pointing right, and used to taxiing on grass we taxiied across the grass, forgetting that they have a perfectly good tarmac taxiway. Another lesson learnt. We were greeted by a man waving his arms about... typical microlight thoughts of what does that mean... but guessed it meant park here. Stroll across the apron to the big C. To start the paper work, as we each filed our stuff, we wandered out again to watch the passengers get off what was a bit like a long thin mini bus with wings. Watched the luggage come off and go down just a few rollers into the arrivals hut, with the "welcome to the lovely channel island of Alderney" mural on the wall.

Nearly there

We walked out of the airport, through the small car park, and onto the main road, which is like a country lane, but since the island wide speed limit is 30mph, was perfectly safe to amble along in a large group. Despite being designated as navigator, I'd forgotten to print out a street map of Alderney, but some of us had been here before, and it was basically follow some signs, and go down hill. Whilst the town seemed to be quite a few small village type shops, not a Tesco or Sainsbury in sight, what a relief. However i saw a fair few pubs lurking around. Eventually reached the coast, and the Braye Beach Hotel, where we had our lunch. We had lovely table on the balcony, overlooking the almost deserted sandy bay, sun out and hotel shielding us from the slight west wind made it quite a sun trap. First pint of coke went down quickly...excellent meal, though they'd run out veg lasagne, doh. Second coke. Tempted by the dessert... thankfully not too filling until you stand up and find your tummy fells like it might not get back into the C42. Walk off the meal by wandering around the harbour, then a slow amble back up the hill to the airfield.

VAT free purchases (Duty free?) was like a tuck shop at the back of the little cafe. But very friendly, and personal. And they had exactly what I wanted. Back at the 'C'. cliff checked all that all flight plans were ok, and over to the aircraft. We quickly suited up, topped up with fuel from a nice man in an AVGAS lorry at about £1.20 a litre, clear prop, and came to a traffic jam at the hold, because we each had to back track. We were told to stay on "runway heading". Not sure if this is in CAP413, but apparently it's standard terminology. Switched to Guernsey, and they kept us on the runway heading, presumeably for separation, but we were going away from our destination, Just when we thought we ought to ask them if they'd forgotten us, we were given a new bearing to ORTAC, at 1000', and told to contact Jersey Zone, passing ORTAC we were allowed to climb to 3000'. Oh dear more water - and again moved off frequency to Bournemouth Radar. seeing the Needles was a great relief.. land at last... soon it was Old Sarum "request join", no problem, but as we get close to doing a crosswind join, we hear RT about the parachuting, so we decide to fly around and do a base join. Touchdown, get out of the rubber suit, tech log update, and a bottle of beer, and a good debrief.