Beautiful day. Blue skies, a light-ish breeze, and my flying mojo at its absolute peak. Every instinct said go. So why did I leave KK tied down and reach for an ice cream instead?
The Met Office has slapped a rare red extreme heat warning across us today. Top level, risk to life. They're forecasting up to 38°C, and the June record on the line is 35.6°C, set back in 1976. I was there in '76. Stand pipes and all.
Too Hot is Too High
Hot air is thin air. At Elstree's 332ft, a day like this gives a density altitude around 2,800ft. KK doesn't know it's baking in Hertfordshire. She just feels like she's been lifted half a mile up before I've touched the throttle. Thin air, less for the wing to bite, less for the prop, less for the engine.
"But she's got the 180 STC." She has. And it doesn't save me. The extra horses breathe the same thin air as everything else, so the upgrade fades on the one day you'd want it. Longer rollout and a weaker climb. At Elstree, with a gradient and obstacles off both ends, the margins I like just got thinner.
Cooking the Engine
Then there's the cooking. Not the engine, although a 49-year-old shared lump runs hottest in the climb and four other people own a slice of it. I mean everything else. KK's air conditioning is a little pipe to the outside, and that's it. The lovely new avionics have big fast processors, and big fast processors get hot, so something up front will throw a wobbly. My iPad will overheat and quit. The GoPros already overheat on a normal flight, so today they'd give up at the first sign of footage worth having. At least the paper chart won't melt or burst into flame. I'll just struggle to read it through the sweat dripping off my nose. As to Caz's infamous in-flight choccy peanuts? They will be gone. Liquid. And both of us will be slowly poaching in a flying perspex lawnmower.
Lastly all her cowlings and wings (KK's not Caz's) will be hot enough to frying an egg - I'm not going to test that one even for YouTube as KK has just been valeted, but given I have to clamber over her to check her out before flight it is yet another nail in the too hot to fly coffin.
Early Rise?
"Get up at six and go before it heats up." Are you mad? With these tropical nights I've barely slept as it is. Starting a flight already knackered, in a heatwave, is not the clever opening it sounds like. They've shut the schools early because the little cherubs can't cope. I've earned the right to be sensible. So no, I'm not strapping into a bouncing greenhouse with a thunderstorm brewing just to prove a point.
I ran the go/no-go and said no. No deadline, no place I have to be. I might pop up to the airfield mind you. That bacon roll is calling, and it's a lot easier to enjoy in the shade with a cold drink than at 2,000 sweaty feet. A nice ice cream after wouldn't hurt either.
We never stop learning, and today's lesson is knowing when to leave her tied down.
