PPL Lesson #21: Diversions and radio navigation

The weather managed to hold up just well enough (and for just long enough) for me to get nearly 2 hours of diversion and radio navigation in first thing this morning.

I’d planned a route from Blackbushe to Marlborough, though I suspected we wouldn’t get that far with the first topic of the day being diversions. Given the relatively low cloud I’d planned to stay around 2000’, but that meant I couldn’t take the direct route to Marlborough as that would mean overflying the Aldermaston restricted zone below the prescribed 2400’. Accordingly, this morning I’d stuck the Kingsclere mast in as an additional waypoint to keep me clear of that particular source of trouble.

We got where the Kingsclere mast should have been to see it poking majestically out of the hillside without much bother. I found myself often flying between two layers of cloud - scattered below, broken or worse above - which made navigation a little tricky and it was off to the left rather than straight ahead. A slight turn to the north later and we were headed in the general direction of Marlborough with a now broken layer of cloud below making nav even more difficult. The lack of downward visibility coupled with my own inexperience and less drift than I was anticipating found me 10° adrift over Hungerford when the clouds below finally dissipated. I was able to positively identify it as Hungerford and plot a good correction to Marlborough, though the cloud what was was even thicker so my instructor decided it was time for my first diversion.

For this first one he took control and flew the plane in a hold around Hungerford while I got busy dropping almost everything on the floor in an attempt to plot a diversion up to see our military friends at Abingdon. I’d taken in a bunch of advice and inspiration from folks here and elsewhere to draw up my own plog with a second sheet purpose-designed for diversions. That diversion sheet includes a wind star (sod using a whizz wheel in flight), additional plog rows for a few diversions, and a handy lookup for flight time for a given groundspeed and distance:

Diversion plotted, it was back to me to overfly Hungerford and set what I hoped was the appropriate heading for Abingdon. After a few miles the instructor was happy that we were bang on for Abingdon and wanted me to give it another go but without handing over controls this time. We circled the visible and map-marked disused airfield at Welford whilst I juggled flying the plan with plotting a diversion to White Waltham. Oddly I found that easier doing that whilst in control of the plane than I had over Hungerford where I was just doing the diversion bit, and we were swiftly on our way towards WW. The instructor was particularly happy that I picked out that this was under the 2500’ TMA shelf but that we were okay at our current 2000’, and as we passed Pangbourne a bit later the bloke in the right seat declared we’d have made it just fine and decided it was time to mix it with a bit of radio nav.

We’d just (not-coincidentally, I’m sure) flown past the Compton VOR, so the instructor had me identify the VOR and then turn back and fly into the VOR on a given reciprocal (given where we were, it might well have been 270°) and then out again to the south on the 180° radial. I’d practiced messing with this in MSFS a bunch so mechanically I was happy with this, though the different radio stack and an older CDI that only moved at the bottom and not the top took some getting used to. As we headed outbound on the 180° radial we then cross-referenced with the Ockham VOR to get a position fix, which my map told me would put me back at the Kingsclere mast. I was grinning like an idiot when I looked up to see the mast just off the nose.

From there we did one more diversion from Newbury back to Blackbushe, which involved an altitude change to get above the Aldermaston restricted zone but was otherwise straightforward. On the trip back to Blackbushe my instructor asked how I was feeling in terms of focus and energy as this was by far my longest flight so far covering a tonne of new stuff, and I was surprised to report that I felt relatively fresh. Of course, I should have known he wasn’t asking as a pleasantry and I got my just desserts: he pulled the throttle for a little last-minute PFL practice. All went well, though at one point I did seem to forget that while the engine was bust the flaps were working just fine: I was trying to slip in a flapless PFL before a little nudge from my instructor. We headed back to the airfield for a normal join and landing, then back in the hut for a debrief.

Next booked lesson isn’t for a week and a half, this time heading down to Littlehampton on the south coast through Farnborough’s sprawling class delta. Time to fire up the sim again to make sure I can pick out the M3J4, Fleet Pond and Tongham VRPs ready for my first clearance. I also need to see if I can fit some more solo consolidation time in before then as I’m still short of the 3 hours needed for nav solo, and I’ve also been given the hurry-up to get Met, Nav and FPP passed for the same reason.