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I can’t close the series about my flying in England without talking about my temporary home-base there: the West London Aero Club, at White Waltham (EGLM) airfield. There is a short and easy way to describe White Waltham: three grass runways, 11 nautical miles west of Heathrow. The airfield was created in 1935, and was requisitioned by the Minstry of Defense during WWII. It is now the homebase of the West London Aeroclub. To read more about it, go to www.wlac.co.uk.

I flew there as a (temporary) member for the first time during my english trip, mid of August, but I already visited Waltham as a passenger, after flying to Biggin-Hill with a friend of mine. This friend is now an instructor there, and this explains how I “landed” there. As many things in aviation (life ?), it was a matter of luck. As a visitor, I already noticed something different in this club, compared to other clubs and school I visited: the social aspect of the club is at least as important as the flying aspect. Even on week days, with less than optimal weather (and in England this means something…), the club house bar is almost full.

Is that because of the restaurant itself ? Possible. I can’t imagine going there and not having one of their full english breakfast. The bar is in the same building as the theory rooms, briefing room, and ops room. No need to get your feet wet to check if weather improves. And if someone is in doubt about a decision, there’s always an instructor nearby ready to help. This high-level of social activity makes it a very attractive club, and reinforces the feeling of being part of a flying community. Something else that I like the the presence of someone in the ops room, answering on the radio, all the time the field is open.

That being said, the activities and the fleet of the club are also rather impressive. Typical aircrafts like Warriors and C172 are the basis of the fleet, like in almost all flying clubs. My favorite G-registered PA32 G-ELLA is there for longer trips, and IFR / IMC flights. If you like aerobatics, you can train in a C150 Aerobat. Not enough power ? What about the Extra 300… or the Pitts Special ? Oh, you prefer a taildragger ? No problem, there is a SuperCub as well in the fleet. Did I mention that some Russian aircrafts are also based at White Waltham ?

The airfield itself is interesting, with its three grass runways, arranged in a triangle. This reduces the probability of crosswind… reduces, don’t anihilate.

Because of the Heathrow CTR on the east, and the proximity of other airports, the circuits are rather tiny, particularly in a quick airplane like the Saratoga.

This video shows the base, final, and landing on runway 25. The landing is made on the left side of the centerline on purpose, as the centerline markings are rather deep.

If the message was not clear until then, don’t miss the opportunity to fly there if you can. As visitor or member, this is a place you’ll never forget. And to make things clear, I’m a member there… for the next 10 days.

Flying is fun - parts of it can be stressing. This post is about the top three stressing moments on my personal stress-o-meter. Feel free to comment about yours.

Line-up and wait…

When operating on airports with airline traffic, it’s frequent to be instructed by ATC to line-up and wait. The more stressing combination is having to wait for three minutes when already lined-up, until the wake turbulence of the previous take-off are dissipated, while another airliner is already on short final.

Light aircraft have no mirrors (with the exception of glider towing planes), so there is no possibility to see that approaching traffic. You just know that a 40 tons aircraft if coming to land on the same runway, and you wait for a take-off clearance… Wait and don’t see…

Hot, heavy and high ground
I won’t make a climb performance lesson here, but shortly said for non-pilots, plane performance decrease with temperature and load, a.k.a. passengers. Under adverse conditions, the climb performance can easily be reduced by 50%.

Any serious pilot makes performance calculations before take-off and incudes a safety margin, so as to ensure a safe climb. Even when one knows that performance will increase with speed increase, and that the expected rate of climb will be achieved, the seconds spent waiting for that can look impressive and be stressing.

And she floooooooooooooats
I did not found a photo for that one, but all pilots already understood it. Any approach flown a bit quickly will result in a long flare and landing - necessary to loose the extra speed.

As runway length is usually limited, there can be long seconds during which the plane seems to endlessly float a couple of feet about ground. It’s anyway better to do so than land with excessive speed, but looking at the quickly approaching runway end can also generate some pilot stress.

Nothing unsafe
These three cases are all but unsafe. Good radio watch, good controller work and possible go-around for the approaching aircraft ensure that the first case is safe. Good preparation and flying skills ensure that any climb that is started is achievable, and going-around is the safe way out of a too long flare.

What make these situations stressing is the short time available for decision making. If anything goes wrong, the pilot must take the right decision within a couple of seconds. That might seem obvious, but “Safety First” is the motto in such moments.

Do you know about side-step approaches ? The concept is easy to understand: it starts with a standard approach to a given runway, at least until breaking below the clouds base. Then comes the funny part: a short segment to be flow visually, to line-up with and land on a different runway. No guidance, no auto-pilot, just manual, visual flying, at low altitude, and land.

Such procedures exist at several airports with parallel or nearly parallel runways. Apart from being fun and entertaining for pilots, they allow for a better traffic flow management. Typically, if a landing aircraft is slow to vacate the runway, and the second runway is available, the next aircraft can make the side-step, and avoid a go-around - which is much less fun to fly than a side-step.

Side-step approaches have also be in use at Zurich airport for years. Most landings take place on runway 14, and most departures on 28. The third runway, 16, has a 20 degrees offset with 14, but crosses 28 so both can’t be used simultaneously. However, all planes landing on 14 have to cross 28 during taxi.

To make things easier, ATC offered ILS 14 approach with side-step landing to 16, as long as there is no take-off on 28, thus simplifying the taxi procedures. I experienced it a couple of, time as passenger, and I have to say that it’s pretty impressive, particularly for those seated on the right side of the plane (the side-step is a right turn).

This procedure is not longer used in Zurich, after a couple of incidents where bad coordination resulted in loss separation minima. No collision, but planes taking-off flying low over the landing ones. Not good. Click here to read the investigation report about one of these incidents.

I selected three videos from YouTube to show you how funny these approaches are to fly. I did not found any filmed in Zurich. The first one is at Denver, at dusk, in a rather slow plane, flying a side-step to the right.

That one is slightly more… aggressive.

This one in Vienna is even more impressive, as it includes a very long low-level segment over the approach runway, and then a left turn to the landing runway.

Is not that cool ?