Piper Arrow and Cirrus SR20

During the first couple of weeks of May, I did some local flying in G-HALC, my grouped Piper Arrow, and also had a Cirrus SR20 flight out of Blackpool.

The first Sunday morning in May, I flew a navigation exercise out of Barton, up to the Pole Hill VOR,  then a north-westerly track to nearby the Cark parachuting centre, westward to Barrow Walney Island and from Barrow a southerly track to the Blackpool airport overhead. A left turn back to Barton completed the trip. The weather was lovely and it was a nice relaxing flight, with great visibility. The clouds were building around the southern Lake District as I flew between them at 4300 feet, but south of that was great flying weather. I was solo on the flight and landed back at Barton just over an hour after take-off.

The following Saturday I booked a dual session in the SR20, which I haven’t flown since late last year. I flew up to Blackpool in HALC before refreshing my currency in the Cirrus again. An hour was all it took and I felt at home in the aircraft very quickly. Stuart Chambers, my instructor, was happy to sign me off for solo. A twenty minute flight back to Barton in the arrow rounded off the day’s flying and I put HALC back in the hanger. It’s a little indulgent to fly rather than drive to Blackpool, but what the heck, enjoy it while you can is my motto!

The next trip I have planned is to this year’s Aero Expo event at Northampton’s Sywell airport over the weekend of 25^th, 26^th and 27^th of May. The weather is looking promising for this event and I’m planning to fly there in the SR20, with a colleague from Aircraft Grouping. I’ll write about this in my next post.