Learning to fly, one mistake at a time
My reviews and experiences of visiting airfields with hard runways. Not hard as in difficult to land on, but hard as in tarmac or concrete. Airfield runways may be of variable quality. Always check the AIP and the airfield itself for details before visiting.
£26 to land at Duxford. It might seem to be a little steep, but that's about what you'd expect for a decent sized field with a proper hard runway. What you might not expect is that the fee includes two hours in the Imperial War Museum, which turns a landing fee into the best value day out in UK general aviation. I flew in on the hottest day of the year with Caz, parked on hardstanding a few yards from a MiG, and spent the walk to the cafe trying to work out whether I'd just paid for a landing or bought two museum tickets with a free arrival thrown in.
Read more: Duxford (EGSU): warbirds, red gates and a £37 jacket potato
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
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.
There is a dog at Earls Colne. His name is Zak. Do not feed Zak. There are signs. There is staff guidance. There is, I suspect, a long and grumpy history. More on him below. The other thing worth knowing before you fly in is that the tarmac strip is only 10 metres wide, which plays a properly nasty trick on your eyes the first time you fly an approach to it. More on that below too. Earls Colne in May 2023, with Jack in the right-hand seat. Lovely day out.
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.
Read more: Elstree Aerodrome (EGTR): the café, the circuit and the footpaths across the runway
