Father’s Day Flight to Headcorn
Sunday 18th June 2017 was Fathers Day and the weather was glorious. An ideal opportunity for my father-in-law and I to take a flight to meet my wife, daughter and mother-in-law for a picnic lunch and spend an afternoon of watching parachutists and aeroplanes at Headcorn in Kent.
In fact it was such a hot day, that the flight was actually rather uncomfortable. With the cabin air temperature peaking at 46°C, It wasn’t just because the sweaty heat but the thermals generated made for an extremely bumpy and turbulent flight. With Headcorn only being a 20 minute flight from Biggin Hill, I am pleased that we didn’t plan a trip any further away.
After swiftly completing all the paperwork and pre-flight checks, we hit a delay when there was a fault at the refuelling station which took a long time to only dispense 50L of fuel. To avoid any further delays, I made sure that we had enough fuel for our trip plus the required contingency. Finally we could get on our way.
With the long taxi from the self refuelling station to runway 21, we departed Biggin Hill to the south. We followed the standard departure route for flights to the south east by making a left turn after 2 miles and then reporting to ATC at Sevenoaks.
We then headed towards Tonbridge and Paddock Wood when we contacted Headcorn’s Air/Ground radio. We were initially asked to join downwind with a left hand circuit for runway 10 at Headcorn. Given the direction that we were approaching from Biggin Hill, this would have meant quite a detour to join the circuit.
At this point, I wanted to find out how busy the circuit was to gauge if I could attempt a straight in approach which more direct when routing from Biggin Hill and would save a lot of time (and fuel), but I didn’t want to cause too much trouble for other aircraft.
By the time I reached Headcorn, there were a number of other aircraft in the circuit, but it all worked out quite well as I was able to slot in between them and my wife, daughter and mother-in-law were all there to see us arrive.
We then proceeded to shut down the aircraft and were relieved to open the aircraft door and take in some fresh air.
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We then spent the next couple of hours, catching some rays while having some lunch watching the parachutes descend from the sky and seeing the variety of aircraft arriving and departing.
We even had time for a quick drink at Wings bar (non alcoholic of course) and an ice cream before we had to head back to Biggin Hill in order to meet our PPR slot. I think by then my daughter had been in the sun for long enough and was ready to go home.
We departed from runway 10 to the east, making a series of left turns to put us on course for Biggin Hill via Leeds Castle, Maidstone and Tonbridge. We contacted Biggin Approach to get our landing information and we were cleared to land behind a BA 146 jet giving the required 5 miles separation for wake turbulence.
Although it was nice to get in the air and clock up some more hours in the log book, I was pleased to be back on the ground with the doors wide open and down a nice cold drink.
Watch the video on my YouTube channel:
https://youtu.be/AUFAJLkXYfc