PPL Lesson #22: First control zone transit

Woke up this morning to what my old man would call “a proper frost”, and I spent close to two hours at the airfield intermittently brushing down the wings and tail with school-issued rubber brushes and waiting for the sun to do its thing. I’d planned a nav route through Farnborough’s control zone down to Littlehampton, then past Goodwood on the way to Petersfield before turning back to Farnborough for a return transit and recovery back to Blackbushe. Thankfully the warming sun won out with an hour of my lesson left, which gave us just enough time for the planned route.

Getting and reading back the relayed Farnborough clearance whilst on the ground at Blackbushe was super straightforward, not least because Blackbushe have created both a crossing guide and an A5 Farnborough clearance kneeboard cheatsheet, and I’d watched The Flying Reporter’s Farnborough Class D transit video more than a few times.

Once airborne we picked our way over to the hold north of M3J4 VRP and waiting for clearance to transit. This was my first transit, but I somehow managed to (almost) nail a less than straightforward clearance where ATC asked me first to clarify intended routing (M3J4 to Tongham), then asked if I could accept an overhead transit instead (affirm) and then due to an inbound PC-12 on a 6 mile final asked me to hold station before giving me clearance on my original M3J4 to Tongham routing but behind and above the approaching PC-12. My instructor remarked that I’d managed that remarkably well., though apparently I forgot to add my callsign at the end of my transmissions towards the end of that rather lengthy exchange.

As we passed left of Farnborough it looked like the planned navex might be a challenge, with a lot of low-level mist obscuring much of the ground ahead of us. I managed to find the Tongham VRP, though, and could finally start the first nav leg. I could easily see that the high ground we were supposed to pass off to our right was poking out of the top of the mist almost directly on the nose. I’d already had a suspicion that this might happen as this morning’s F214 and Skydemon showed winds in basically opposite directions. I’d planned with the former as per my training so my headings were based on an expected south westerly wind over land, but what we had was much closer to Skydemon’s north easterly wind so I hastily recalculated all my headings. That did the trick, and we ended up over Littlehampton bang on time.

The rest of the nav was much more straightforward: flying overhead Goodwood race course and close enough to the Weald & Dowland Museum to get an aerial photo of The Repair Shop barn for Mrs W. After turning overhead Petersfield it was time to get ready for a return transit, which was going really well up until I got to the Tongham VRP when my PTT button became jammed (off, thankfully) and my instructor had to take over the RT. Once north of Farnborough we were cleared to the Blackbushe ATZ and did a standard overhead join to land.

Here’s the Skydemon track for today’s flight:

My instructor wants to send me up for my nav solo next week, and school rules dictate that I need to have passed Met, Nav and FPP theory by then. Based on EasyPPL results I’m happy with Nav but I haven’t made it even half way through the Met material and FPP hasn’t had a look in. Guess what I’m doing this weekend?! Yup, cramming :|