Learning to fly, one mistake at a time
Flying into airfields around the UK and Europe. Here are a few thoughts and pointers based on my own experiences. Please note these are my own personal notes and experiences. If you are planning to fly into any of these, then use the usual aviation sources for correct information.
Welcome to Elstree. My Home.
It's quirky, busy and expensive. It has the worlds most complex circuit which flips daily, horrible noise abatement rules, militant walkers, pylons on the approach, movie starts on the other and footpaths in stupid places. but it is my home and I love it.
There's a running joke in our house. We don't talk about Kemble. Mention it and Caz rolls her eyes, Jack grins into his tea, and I suddenly find something else to look at. Which is odd, because we have been to Kemble. Twice. So why the silence? Well. It's a good one, and enough time has passed that I think I'm finally allowed to tell it.
Read more: Airfield Review :: Kemble (Cotswold Airport) EGBP
Most airfields tolerate you. Sandown wants you to have a nice day, and it has rules to make sure you do. No hi-vis. No miserable people. There's a skeleton running the complaints department and a space rocket parked where you'd expect a windsock. I've flown in five times now, first as a nervous student, most recently with one of the share group taking turns at the controls. It's the place I'd send anyone who reckons British GA has lost its sense of fun.
Read more: Sandown (EGHN): the Isle of Wight airport that bans hi-vis and miserable people
A delightful little airfield in Suffolk with a good reputation for food, helicopters and parachuting. Air/Ground radio, friendly atmosphere, and on this visit, my shortest runway to date. The runway is normally a tarmac and grass mixture, around 450m of concrete with a 150m grass extension, but on the day we went the grass section was closed. Tarmac only. Less than 500m of it, apparently. That was the airfield's own answer when I rang to ask, by the way. "It is less than 500m." Very helpful. Thanks for that.
Southend means different things to different people. To half of Essex it's the seafront and the world's longest pleasure pier, a mile and a third of Victorian ironwork marching out into the estuary. To the budget airline crowd it was a cheap way out of the country, an airport that cheerfully bills itself as "London Southend" despite sitting a good forty-odd miles from anything most people would call London. Then again, so is Heathrow, and nobody blinks at that. From a pilot's seat, and especially a student pilot's seat training out of Elstree, "London airport" mostly means one thing anyway. Controlled airspace, and lots of it.
