I was planning to do some more solo circuits on Sunday, however in the end I got to do something even more fun! Instructor Bill rang me in the morning to ask if I would like to go to the flight school earlier and share a navigation exercise with fellow aviation student Terese. Of course I wanted to! The plan was for Terese to fly the outbound leg and for me to fly back.

I was somewhat nervous as I hadn’t done any navigation before and had only watched a few videos online about the basic concepts, but felt better as I would get to see navigation skills in action before having to use my own.

The method of navigation you use for flying under visual flight rules is called Dead Reckoning. In simple terms dead reckoning is using speed and heading to determine where you currently are in relation to a previous known landmark. Therefore, the first thing you need to do to create yourself a route is find landmarks that will be easily visible from the air and ensure that the route between them will not pass over any restricted airspace or gliding activity.

When I arrived at the Mid Anglia School of Flying briefing room Terese and Bill had already selected a route to get to our destination of Turweston from Cambridge.

Now that a route was selected the three of us worked together to determine the track headings, which you can think of as compass headings, that we would follow at various stages of the flight. We then made adjustments for magnetic changes across the route and forecasted wind. Using the heading, distance and weather information we had acquired we could work out the estimated time between each landmark we would see enroute. All of this was noted down on a document called a flight log.

As it was my first time doing it, and Terese is also fairly green, filling in our Flight Log took almost as long as the flight was planned to! But time spent planning is always worth while, much better than spending time and fuel going in the wrong direction — or worse.

On the outbound trip I was sat in the back of G-BFWB. I hadn’t sat in the back of a PA-28 before, but even at 6ft 3 I was pleasantly surprised by the leg room! As Terese got to grips with the ultimate multi-tasking challenge of flying a plane whilst looking for landmarks and filling in actual arrival times on the Flight Log I was able to enjoy looking out the window at some familiar places, including; Grafham Water Water, Milton Keynes, Northampton and the Silverstone Formula 1 track.

When we arrived at Turweston I was pleasantly surprised by the airport! I’m not sure what I was expecting but I certainly didn’t expect it to be a flash as it was. It certainly helps that it is the closest airfield to Silverstone for the Gran Prix fans who arrive in their private jets and helicopters.

The staff at Turweston were also great! The gentleman with whom we had booked out came to meet us at the plane and took the photo of the three of us which is at the top of this post. In order to pay our £15 landing fee we had to go to the Control Tower, which I was quite excited about!

Turweston as a small airport which exclusively caters to General Aviation doesn’t have a full Air Traffic Control service that big commercial airports such as Heathrow might have, but instead has a “Radio” service which is a little more casual and can only advise aircraft what to do, rather than tell them and provide clearances. For a bit of fun we rated some of the landings coming into the airfield, with ATC providing scores to the pilots themselves.

Before leaving I told the controller on duty I would be flying out and apologised in advance 😉. Having been spoilt by Cambridge Airports 1965m runway Turweston felt comparatively short at 1000m, though clearly more than enough to take off in a PA-28.

Flying back I realised the sheer amount of work involved when thinking about navigating as well as aviating as someone so new to both. At one point I even told ATC I was heading “west” for Cambridge, despite the lack of fuel or onboard toilet facilities required to circumnavigate the globe.

Despite the amount of thought required it was however terrific fun and a bit of a rush when I was overhead the M1, my first landmark, enroute and only a minute behind my estimated time of arrival! After that I was looking out for Podington Wind Farms and then Grafham Water where I changed course to get to Cambridge Airport (all detailed in the aforementioned Pilot Log).

When I got to Cambridge I got into the circuit through a standard overhead join and Terese captured my landing on video.

Thanks to Terese and Bill for a great day of flying! We all agreed we would do it again as it is helpful for Terese and I to watch each other learn, and it means we can go farther-a-field to new and exciting airports like Turweston. Hopefully next time we shall arrive at our destination 10 minutes before the Cafe shuts, rather than 10 minutes after!

Danny