What a great day! Lots to record, so a long blog entry. It was arranged that 12 aircraft would fly from Stoke to Le Touquet (L2K).
Aircraft lined up at Stoke ready for their 'adventure.
I sorted out our flight plans for us on Friday so that they were all done ready. This morning the forecast was for good weather but not too good visibility. We took off before the others as they were getting themselves all tied up in warming up etc and headed off on our own. The vis was not bad and we could see at least 12 miles in front of us.We headed out and left the coast at Folkestone at 5000′. The vis was worse and the sky and the sea were both the same colour, off white in the distance. This can be very dangerous as without an horizon you can get disoriented and end up spiralling into the sea. Luckily we could see 4 boats at varying distances in front of us, so I was happy to continue. About 5 miles out, the vis started to clear and we could see the French coast. France HERE WE COME!!!!
On leaving London Information we were advised to call L2K direct. This is where it got interesting. All was OK as we poodled along down the coast at 65-70mph. At Boulogne we were advised to report base ready for turning final, great a straight in approach. However, L2k then started to put faster aircraft on downwind assuming we would be out of the way by the time they wanted to land. This was a little bit worrying so the last 10 miles were done at 90-100mph so that we did not get an aircraft coming into our side when our paths crossed.
All was going well, I was on final following another aircraft, still at 80-90 mph (I land at 40mph) and then I heard another aircraft following us in, a twin engined, bloody fast aircraft! I kept the 80 mph speed right up to almost touching down and then tried to lose as much speed as possible before the wheels touched. It almost worked, the wheels first touched at 70! they then touched again at 65 and that time we stayed down. By the time I turned off the runway the twin was down and about 40 yards behind and catching up fast. Interesting!
Hotel Sierra at Le Touquet
We met Steve and Jason there from Damyns, They had landed earlier and were watching the fun. The others of our party turned up over the next 30 minutes.
We were going into L2K town for lunch, but there was only 1 taxi and 12 of us (the rest had hired bikes) so Rosemary and I decided to try the new restaurant at the airport, It was great! Very good food and we had a 3 course meal each with wine and cokes for under £50. We then sat out under the trees letting it all go down while we people and aircraft watched. A really relaxing afternoon.
The others turned up back at the airport about 15:30 and started to file their flight plans. We had already filed the return flight plan yesterday so three of us left right away for the trip home.
Leaving Le Touquet for home
The weather was very hot and it took almost 15 miles to reach 3,500′ at which point it got interesting. We throttled back to cruise speed and started to turn towards England. The engine went very rough at this point so after trying different engine speeds we found one where the engine was reasonably happy. Unfortunately, this meant crossing the channel at 3,500′ and only 65mph. We radioed the other two aircraft to let them know we were having ‘problems’ but were still going to try to do the crossing.
Half way across we tried to contact London Information to let them know we were coming home, they could not hear me very well and only got about 20% of the transmission, Rosemary tried calling them and they could hear her 100%. We got across OK although the fuel flow meter was showing that we were using 18-19 litres an hour instead of the normal 12-14 lph. At that rate we would be VERY tight on fuel for landing. However the engine just purred along at the reduced revs and halfway along Kent, the fuel flow started to read the more normal 13lph. We made it back without any problems and when we landed we found that we had only used 13 litres during the whole 1 hour 20 minute trip, so had plenty of fuel. The consensus at the moment is either carb ice, which would not explain the flow meter error or fuel vapourisation which would explain the rough engine and the flow meter…. maybe.
However, having said all of the above, we both really enjoyed the trip and it was Hotel Sierra’s first trip abroad.
