I’ve probably flown my last trip at night for a while, mainly because the clocks are about to go forward and the nights will becoming generally shorter. I had the opportunity to get one more trip in last night with JJ riding shotgun for the majority, but not all, of the trip – and that would be the main differentiator.

So far the predominance of my trips have been with him sat beside me taking an instructional role but last night the plan was to collect him from his home in Shropshire, conduct some more training, and then return him home leaving me to fly the final leg from Shropshire back to Manchester on my own. I was quite giddy at the prospect as I enjoy flying at night. It’s an odd feeling particularly as you spend half the time thinking what would I do now if the engine failed (remember it’s often pitch black with very little, if any, illumination from the moon). The other half is training myself not to think that the engine might fail! Read More→

written by good friend and fellow aviator Mike Bathurst

Regular readers of Joel’s blog may be aware that I was one of the unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate) souls on board G-LADZ, our Enstrom 480, that was brought to an undignified unplanned landing south of London a few weeks ago with a main rotor gearbox failure. Anyone involved with helicopters (or indeed most forms of private aviation) will be aware that you can’t just pop down to Halfords for a ‘new bit’ and therefore it seemed I was likely to be on ground-only duty for quite some time whilst waiting for Enstrom to send us some new cogs that didn’t make the same hideous grinding noise when they spun around. I needed something to do. Read More→