It has been a while since I have managed to do a navigation flight so I took the opportunity to do Hour Building: Local Flight from Cranfield in a Cessna 152.
I wasn’t planning to go anywhere really special I just wanted to make sure I had at least 1 radio frequency change just to make sure my radio skills did not deteriorate. I arrived at the school and planned a flight from Cranfield -> Gratham Water -> Sywell -> Olney -> Cranfield.
Olney is a VRP (Visual Reporting Point) for Cranfield so it is just where I report that I am ready for rejoin to the airfield.
The weather wasn’t bad at all, it was a little bit rocky up there but nothing too bad (220/20). It had been 3 months since my last navigation so I really wanted to work on my altitude holding and trimming of the aircraft. On top of this I really wanted to make sure that I wasn’t getting rusty on the radio. I remembered that radio calls basically go who, where, what. Who are you? Where are you? What do you want?
We first flew out towards Bedford before heading east towards Grafam Water which looks incredible from the air!
From here I headed east and switched to Sywell and let them know I planned to fly overhead before heading south towards Olney to return to Cranfield. They had no issues at all with this, just wanted to know when I was overhead which I of course let them know.
I always take extra care on my lookout when flying around airports as that is where planes take of and land!
When I got back to Olney I rejoined right base runway 21 and landed. All in all an uneventful flight (the best type) and I had my GoPro’s so made this video.
Hi – well done on the navigation! Your photo of Grafham Water is really good! I live nearby, so it’s great to see it from your perspective!
It really is impressive from the air! I plan to go and see what it looks like from a boat 🙂