At the end of August, LB group member Neil, along with his son, Kian, took a trip down to Cornwall. Originally, the plan was to fly up to Scotland, to the famed grass strip of Glenforsa on the Island of Mull but the incessant rain up there during that time put pay to that idea. One for the future – watch this space!
The weather looked fine for the back up plan of Newquay airport so the route was planned stopping off at another well known grass strip of Compton Abbas.
Again, using the great tool that is Sky Demon, we set off. It was immediately apparent that it was a lovely day with excellent visibility and fair weather cumulus building. Using the Luton listening squawk, we skirted around their airspace cruising at 2500ft on their QNH, turning at Wing. Approaching the Benson MATZ, a call for MATZ penetration was made. Being Sunday, there was no reply but with another aircraft and a glider in the MATZ, the frequency turned into an informal ‘traffic information’ guide with us all passing position reports.
Tracking towards Stockbridge kept us clear of the bulk of the Boscombe Down / Middle Wallop airspace. Again, a call to Middle Wallop resulted in no reply but we communicated with a microlight, which passed 500ft below us as we turned at Stockbridge. From there, it was a direct track to an overhead join at Compton Abbas. It did look spectacular with the rolling hills and with a wind of 300/15, there was a good crosswind from the right with some turbulence on approach Below 100ft though, it all went smooth.
Parking at the east end of a long line of visiting aircraft meant a decent walk to work up an appetite for lunch. I can highly recommend the food here, I had an enormous baguette. It was warm enough to sit outside amongst a variety of visitors to the cafe, including whole families and a group of motorcyclists, just watching the aeroplanes on a nice day.
I had planned about a couple of hours on the ground at Compton Abbas, but after an hour, Kian was especially eager to get going. We picked a busy time to depart, being number 5 taxiing out! At this point the highlight of the day for Kian was spotting a PA28R taxiing beside us with a registration of G-KIAN. He’ll have to own that one day!
After departure, the navigation was more straightforward now with much less airspace to worry about. Tracking towards Princetown before a very small right turn to Newquay kept us clear of the danger areas on Dartmoor. Exeter gave us a Basic Service up to the turn then handed us over to Newquay radar, who gave us a new squawk. This part was very scenic over the southern part of Dartmoor National Park, passing Dartmoor Prison with Plymouth and the Tamar bridge visible on the left.
After the turn it was a straight run past Bodmin and we were given a right base join for runway 30. The enormous concrete runway looked ridiculous and after touchdown, I had to apply power to get to the right turnoff for the GA park – about a third of the way up the runway!
What a great welcome! We were told where to park then as we shutdown, a fuel bowser rolled up and filled the tanks. He was looking for some Avgas 100LL stickers by the filler caps as ‘some refuellers won’t refuel without them!’ Personally, he was OK about the lack of labels though – this has since been rectified on LB!
There were concrete block and ropes lying around in the parking area – ‘feel free to use them’ said the refueller. One was tied to the rear tiedown point. After donning the mandatory hi-viz vests, a short walk took us to the Fly NQY office where all that was required at this stage was a signature. Our taxi into Newquay was there waiting, even though we had arrived an hour early. An excellent service.
We had a couple of pleasant days in Newquay including a surf lesson at Fistral beach. We stayed at the Esplanade hotel and got a great, short notice deal for two nights by phoning them direct – much cheaper than I ever saw on the website.
On returning to Fly NQY, we settled the bill. The £30 landing fee initially seems steep but the associated service, quick fuelling and taxi arranging made this worth the cost. Conversely, the overnight parking fee was a mere £2.40 per night – much cheaper than parking a car! We were booked out, then after preparing the aircraft, called for start. We had more than enough runway from point C – where we had vacated after landing! The clearance was a right turn out, not above 2000ft. The plan was a non-stop flight home with the advantage of at least 20 knots of wind behind us. This should make about two hours. We routed along the coast initially passing Padstow, Tintagel Castle and turned away from the coast at Bude.
Speaking to Exeter radar again, we had to descend from 3000ft to 2500ft to stay clear of some overcast that had appeared. Then heading past Bridgwater, towards the Mendips, the cloud came down a bit more, some showers appeared and it became hard work looking for gaps and bright areas. This wasn’t forecast! I thought we’d have to turn south for an unscheduled stop at Compton Abbas, or even do a 180 and head away from the bad weather. In the end, we found a way through slightly North of track under the Bristol CTA near Cheddar. Careful navigation and MSA monitoring was called for here, passing Keevil, Lyneham (now disused) and over Swindon in the reduced visibility.
Gradually, the low cloud lifted and dispersed and by Oxford, the sky was clear! We were back in familiar territory now and fairly quickly, we were downwind left hand for 28 at Little Gransden. It was still so early, only 1.30pm. Looking at the statistics for our return flight, the tailwind had been good to us with an average groundspeed of 109kts and a maximum of 127kts. The airborne time, from Cornwall to Cambridgeshire, was exactly two hours – try that in a car!
