The day was a lovely calm and sunny Sunday and myself and David headed off to Weston at about 4:45. We had a plane for an hour or so and had decided to head up to have a look at Newgrange!
In Ireland when you make a plan for a flight like this, the weather is usually the thing the screws with your plans! Not today though as it was lovely and calm! So we got out to the airport and ominously the plane was there waiting for us! I'm flying there a year and a half and not even on the day of my flight test was the plane there waiting for me! Anyway out we went, took the photo below, got David all settled into his seat and I pre-flighted the plane. All was well and there was even enough fuel aboard for our trip.
David with G-BTIK just before Take offSo the time came for me to call the tower and tell him of my intentions! This is where it all started to come slightly unstuck! When the controller called me back from the tower I could barely make him out over the radio! So after a bit of fiddling around with the radios and talking to an instructor that had just parked beside me we got it all up an running!
Run up checks completed and off we went! Took off slightly later than planned so we were never going to make it to Newgrange and back at this stage, but we still had a decent hour or so for David to get a good feel for what its like to be flying a small plane! Enroute out I again called Weston Tower to tell him that we were at the zone boundary and that we were changing over to Dublin airport tower to head north as we planned....... No response! Tried again.....nothing! All we were getting back over the radio was a random word every 4-5 minutes! I had gathered from one of the random words that Weston could hear me and I just couldn't hear them! At least that made life a little easier! So change of plans altogether, we had to cut it short and head back! I called the tower back and told him I was having a lot of trouble in hearing him and that we were going to head back in a few minutes.
We headed out towards Trim for me to get up to the required altitude for our return trip into Weston and to see if we could get the radios working. It at least gave David a small trip to at least see if he liked it! We headed over towards two hot air balloons for David to take a few pictures while I had a good look around to see if there was any other traffic returning to Weston. After about 5 minutes i decided that there wasn't any other inbound traffic to effect us and we made the turn around to head back in.
We knew what runway was active so I called the tower just to the north of Kilcock as normal and told him I was on my way back. I'd hoped that he would give me the clearance I was expecting and would be able to pick it out of the few words I could hear. This time, once I'd finished my call I throttled the engine back to idle to reduce the engine noise and low and behold we got a few clear words "1 thou...... 500........ left...... 25"! The few words we heard gave me the exact clearance I had hoped for and I called it back out to him "continue inbound, fly overhead 1500 feet, expect left base to runway 25"! Again a stroke of luck, I heard the tower confirm my call. With all problems over in we went! We still had no radio to speak of, but we were cleared all the way in to the airfield!
After an uneventful landing we made or way back in to the school and reported the issue! All in all I think David enjoyed his short but eventful first trip with me and hopefully he'll like it as much as I though he would!
The two of us just after parking in Weston
Hot Air Balloons off in the distance
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