Runway 35 – Grass!

1 hours in g-wach with Lisowski. We did Rwy 35 – 6 circuits. Total hours flown so far = 18.7

VFR flight guides

Some cool videos here about flying near the London CTR… I can nearly see my house =]

http://www.airspacesafety.com/guides/content/

Brits abroad…

This was sent from Thomas Cook Holidays listing some of the guests’ complaints during the season.

  • “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”
  • “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time – this should be banned.”
  • “On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry.  I don’t like spicy food at all.”
  • “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels.”
  • A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel “inadequate”.
  • A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff.  When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain   in the room.
  • “The beach was too sandy.”
  • “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure.  Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white.”
  • “Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned.  The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women.”
  • “We bought ‘Ray-Ban’ sunglasses for five Euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake.”
  • “No-one told us there would be fish in the sea.  The children were startled.”
  • “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home.”
  • “I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends’ three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller.”
  • “The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the accommodation’. We’re trainee hairdressers – will we be OK staying here?”
  • “There are too many Spanish people.  The receptionist speaks Spanish.  The food is Spanish.  Too many foreigners.”
  • “We had to queue outside with no air conditioning.”
  • “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”
  • “I was bitten by a mosquito – no-one said they could bite.”

·         “My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room.  We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant.
This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”

Great to be British innit?

Thoughts on BA cabin crew strike.

The Unite Union/Bassa, have announced the latest BA cabin crew strike dates.

I don’t have a lot to say on the matter, but it is an issue which winds me up. Your company is in financial trouble, and your protesting the cuts that could save the company – poor old BA, that’s a bad situation.

Despite the ballot being overwhelmingly in favour of a strike, I still believe fewer people will strike then voted for it. Many may vote for a strike hoping it doesn’t need to happen, seeing it as a hollow threat to get BA’s attention. If the strike does go ahead, many again will decide to work – they need the money (that’s why they are striking isn’t it, money?), plus they won’t want to lose the discount travel priviledges they have.

I think BA’s staff are very loyal, to the airline and to eachother, this is why they may all vote together, but will still work…

I guess We’ll see what happens soon enough!

New Transair shop at Wycombe air park.

I’ve just been up wycombe air park flying for the first time in 3 months. Great to be back in the air, and glad id not lost my ability though things did seem to be happening very quickly in part because we did a tighter circuit.
After shutting down I popped into the new Transair shop in the Airways flying club reception. It’s a very nice shop with everything you could want nicely laid out, a dvd running on a tv, and very chatty helpful staff who seemed proud of the new space.
If you need anything or just fancy popping in to browse, i’d reccomend it thoroughly. If you have never been to the air park its also a great place to fly and worth a visit itself.
I also saw a nice cub today, hope to try one some day!

Power + Attitude = Performance

Anybody who’s undergone flight training will hopefully recognise the phrase…

“Power + Attitude = Performance”

But I’ve always through the phrase spans beyond simply being a way of understanding aircraft performance, infact, I think it could be a life coaching mantra. It sounds almost like a simple equation to success, balancing power and attitude (to maintain a ‘assertive equilibirum’ – to achive performance … to go places.

One of the things I love about learning to fly is the amount of inherited wisdom that exist in the aviation world. There are lots of phrases like:

  • Its better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here.
  • Runway behind you, altitude above you and fuel in the truck – are all useless.

These are simple facts eloquently stated and, if you’re a bit over enthusiatic like me, you can apply then to general life situations.

Runway 06

0.9 hours in g-wacu with Roberts. We did Rwy 06 – 7 circuits, glapless, 30 deg. Total hours flown so far = 17.7

Learning WordPress

About 3 weeks ago I offered to help with a site which is powered partialy by WordPress. I thought I would install it myself and give it a go to get a basic understanding, and was so impressed I’ve not rolled out 2 main site installations and one micro-site! I’m also thinking of rolling our wordpress installations on 3 other sites to replace jaws installations.

It’s a fantastic tool, and tonight I learnt even more tricks that show how powerful it is!

The main reason I’m loving it is the very clever Atuhualpa theme under which I am building my Heathrow site. It’s enabled to me to do a lot, and the guy at the forum – http://forum.bytesforall.com/ – really help out with nifty tricks.

But in general the strength of WordPress is so great I look forward to continuing learning how to make and do more and more with it!

My Cessna 152 checklist

Approach / landing speeds.
Flapless – 75kts crosswind, 70kts final, 65kts threshold.
Normal flaps 20 – 70kts crosswind, 65kts final, 60kts threshold.
Short field flaps 30 – 65kts crosswind, 60kts final, 55kts threshold.

Notes – 85kts is Vfe.
Extend downwind and expect lower approach profile when flapless.
Approach must be stable at 300ft and below. Don’t be afraid to go around.

Euromillions lottery syndicate

I’ve played the lottery a great deal in my life. I don’t want to think how much I’ve lost to camelot! At least I know the money does some good but still its a sum I could have saved…
Anyway tonight I have forfeited 6 quid in the hope of getting my hands on some of tonights 85 million jackpot! Luckly tho I have a part of 17 tickets because I joined my first ever syndicate at work.
The boss joined in too… in the knowledge that if we won he’d need the cash too as his business would quickly have no staff!
Well I hope tonight goes well…