Nope, this isn’t the start of Sweet Caroline – what a classic. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to return to where it all began, back in Dundee.
Dundee and much of Scotland in general has some absolutely beautiful scenery. England is beautiful from the air but Scotland is something else altogether. For this reason, I was keen to fly all the way from Sherburn to Dundee.
We’ve been blessed by fantastic weather in the last few weeks and I wanted to take advantage of this. I luckily had a whole day booked out in November Juliet on Sunday and because of this, prepared a route for a flight up to Dundee. Cautious regarding fuel, I stopped at Eshott, an airfield north of Newcastle where I had a quick break, refuelled and called Dundee for PPR. The flight up from Sherburn to Eshott was an absolute dream, I requested two zone transits through both Durham and Newcastle airspace and was fortunate enough to be granted the transits. From Eshott I departed towards Alnwick climbing to 5000 feet and contacting Scottish Centre whilst tracking the coast up towards Berwick. I was slightly dubious with regards to crossing the Firth of Forth and therefore climbed to 6000 feet to enable a sufficient and comfortable glide to land should I have had an engine failure over the Forth. I was handed over to Leuchars and granted a MATZ penetration to head towards Dundee. With a smile ear to ear, I made a long approach towards Runway 27 at Dundee and was beyond delighted to land and taxi to Tayside aviation to park.
Of course I would have loved to stay in Dundee much longer but only remained long enough to speak to my former Instructor, have lunch and get NJ refuelled for her journey home. I figured that I could make it back to Sherburn on full tanks with the Cessna 150 having around 3.5 – 4.0 hours of fuel capacity.
This flight has been the most enjoyable and exhilarating flight of my hour building. Being able to fly all the way up to Dundee, handle the radios including MATZ penetrations, zone transits and changeovers really bolstered my confidence in flying and somehow managed to make me even more willing to fly more by myself. It also was longer than 300NM, including enough landings to count as my CPL QXC. Ideally I wish to fly to Le Touquet, Glenforsa or Oban for my QXC but its nice to know I have an extremely enjoyable flight I can use should I wish.
No doubt at all I will be returning to Dundee before I get to my 100 hours, it’s too important to me not to.
MozzThePilot 