Kieran was over this weekend and i wanted to take him flying again, both myself and Marc managed to book planes for the same 5 hours on friday morning - Got out to the airport bright and early to be met by a properly dodgey days weather. Cloud was lowish - viz wasnt great - would it clear or would it get worse - should we go or not. To add to it a pretty strong wind from the west - but pretty much straight down the runways.
Knock airport is over the far side of the country - above Galway and below Sligo - kinda in the middle of nowhere, but in its favour no big mountains or hills between us and it. So on a low cloud ceiling day a very good choice. After a phonecall to their tower, and checks of as many other weather sites as possible, we made the decision to give it a go - could always turn back if worst came to worst.
Myself and Kieran were flying in EI-GSE and marc was gonna follow us in EI-BCK. Both aircraft had two radio boxes which meant we could chat along the way - Out of weston and over towards Mullingar again, it wasnt really the nicest days flyign in the world very bumpy, and a lot of work to keep the a/c pointing in the rite direction. As we got about that far the weather was really begining to get to that stage of should we turn back - but in fairness it was still above minimums, we were pretty much on track and to the minute on times, so we were both happy enough to carry on.
Next fun arrived as we headed towards the one line of hills that was along the way - the chart said they were 800 ft high. 1000 ft clearance meant i had planed to cross them at 1800 - 1900 ft. As we approached the hills they looked a lot higher then they were supposed to be, and i got a shout from marc behind asking if we wanted to go around them - dispite knowing we should have been above them decided to take the safer option and scoot round the south of them - Probs a good choice we got properly battered around by turbulence flying around them, so i dont think i wudnt wanted to try it straight over the top of em !!
From there it was a straight shot to Knock - called at the boundary and was told to report field in sight - proved more difficult then it sounded at the time as we really couldnt see it among the rest of the landscape. All of a sudden there it was - i was cleared to finals - but marc behind was told to hold a couple of miles out and the reason became clear as a ryanair 737 was told to hold at the holding point and wait for me to land in my little cessna. I then had to stop and let him backtrack before i could take his exit onto the apron. I parked up and waited fro marc to make his way in and touch down after the departing 737.
We took 20 mins or so in Knock - time for a cuppa before we were issued with our private boarding passes and rushed through the security screen and out our own private gate.
Trip home was jus as much fun - takeoff and told to exit the zone at some unknown town. Spotted it on the chart and had to quickly decide on a plan to get to it. Couple of nice lakes and a main road later we were sorted. From there it was towards Lough Ree a huge lake in the middle of the country forming part of the Shannon. It was about this point we noticed jus how strong the wind was. While pointing pretty much south, we were moving east across the ground. I had this to some extent beforeff, but never jus this strong. We met a proper minging drizzley rain cloud over mullingar again. It was begining to get to that scetchy side again - but we did feel it was above the minimums - the rain wasnt that heavy and we were well above freezing - so on wards and upwards and it wasnt long before we were out the other side of it.
Final bit of fun when we got back to Weston - because of a Instruments jet flight coming in - we ended up with the 2 of us and another aircraft all doing circles 1000ft above the right hand side of the airfield. Little closer then i think any of us were comfortable with - but we survied to put the plane on the ground.
A Really busy and hard working long flight - largely down to the poor weather and also because of the added job of keeping an eye on the other aircraft - but definatly worth doing and im glad we kept going when it started getting a taste dodgey - gotta fly on the not so nice days as well as the gorgeous ones!!
