On Monday 4th August 2014. The weather was favorable for me to plan a flight i have been trying to do for the last two years.
The weather or Aircraft Un-Servicability had prevented the last three attempts.
Flight Plan Filed the day before & weather double checked, Monday morning things were falling into place just nice.
My Wife, Gillian & Myself arrived at Humberside Airport where our aircraft for the day was parked & Lived. A Cessna 172, G-BGHJ, 180 BHP engine.
We checked the Aircraft over & put on our Life Jackets, (Needed for the Channel Crossing) & I phoned Humberside Tower to check they had my Flight Plan.
We got airborne at 08.40hrs Local time & Climbed to Flight Level 55 which would be out cruising altitude for most of the flight apart from when i needed to descend to remain clear of airspace.
My Route took me Humberside to Earls Colne, Passing overhead or near to RAF's Coningsby, Marham, Lakenheath & Mildenhall. Just past Mildenhall I had to descend to 3300 feet to remain clear of London TMA which feeds Commercial Traffic into Stanstead & London's Airports from the continent.
From Earls Colne we transited over Southend On Sea Airport then out into the Thames before altering our track to fly around a live Danger area then set course to Dover VOR (DVR) After passing Whitstable on the south Bank of the Thames we were able to start our Climb to 5000 feet as we were clear of the airspace then were flying in Cloud for around 15 minutes until we were over the port of Dover when the clouds cleared to nice Blue skies! We could see the french coast way out in the distance then i climbed to Flight Level 6000, there is air space lanes over the Channel at 6500 which i had to remain below.
After around 20 minutes over water we were starting to fly over French countryside & were about 25 miles from my destination airfield Le Touquet, i needed to start descending to circuit height for landing.
After listening to the french controller speaking to other British aircraft i was given instructions to join downwind for Runway 31 Left.
On final approach to land was given instruction to vacate after landing to park on the light aviation park. we shut down at 10.50hrs BST 11.50hrs France time.
This was by far one of my best life events so far. I had just flown to another Country without another Pilot sat next to me which was what i set out to achieve.
The Journey back was the reverse of this route, with the correct altitude flown to remain clear of published airspace's, BUT we were confronted with building Clouds over Dover & flew through some rain & in clouds intil we cleared Whitstable then it was blue skies all the way back to Humberside where we landed 2 hours 10 minute later.
The photo's were taken by Gillian. Quality on some photo's are not of my usual work due to photo's being taken through windows with sun reflections or Propeller Blur.
Sony A580.
Lens. 18/75
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