A DAY VERY MUCH OF TWO HALVES – A109E

Sometimes things are not what you expect them to be and to be honest a lot of that is about preparation, especially in aviation, making sure you have the right tools (or perhaps crew) for the job at hand.??Well, this day started early with a planned flight from Boscombe Down airfield to the Royal Navy Air Station at Culdrose in Cornwall so myself and my Flight Test Engineer(FTE) colleague could do our 6 monthly Sea King simulator ride.??Whilst we could have driven, I needed the hours on the school A109E, which had just come back from major maintenance, and using the aircraft had turned a near 4 hour each way trip into something just over an hour each way.??The weather was clear that morning and whilst an occluded front was due to move across the country later in the day, there was apparently little chance of it effecting a relatively straightforward return.

With the route planned and the flight plan submitted we set off on time into a bright blue autumn sky, virtually cloudless and not much in the way of wind to worry about.??The visibility was fabulous and given the conditions I was happy to fly the whole thing manually with FTE backup, for things like checks and lookout.??Being a rather well trodden (or perhaps I should say flown) route for me, what was on the map proved relatively unused, and having checked for NOTAMS was not really required to keep my safe and legal.??So I talked to the relevant Air Traffic Units and we were pretty well on schedule when I arrived at Culdrose to be parked at the Visiting Aircraft Section(VAS).

On arrival we had about 30 minutes before the Sea King simulator brief so having buttoned the aircraft up after an after-flight walkaround and refuel we were just about on time at the simulator.??When I got there, I had a phone call to say that ETPS had appeared in Flight International that day, something which took me by surprise because I had not actually been talking to them, and I tried in the short time available to try and find out what it was about, without success (thoughts of updating myself on the weather forgotten). We then went off and completed our Sea King emergencies and manual throttles sortie which was as enjoyable and informative as ever.

On exiting the simulator and after the obligatory debrief I again tried to get to the bottom of the Flight International story but didn’t get very far.??It delayed our departure from the Simulator Building (which has no windows) and into what was now unexpectedly very heavy rain and strong winds, time to think about instrument flying.??We went back to VAS where I put together a quick IFR plan, nothing too complex as the weather seemed to have not got much beyond mid Cornwall and I could use a radar service from Culdrose to keep me safe.??I didn’t see too many problems with the plan since I thought that I would fly the aircraft whilst the FTE would help out with checks and radio changes when I needed them so I would not need to break my scan.

Having booked out we set about getting to the aircraft without getting too wet and clambered in when I realised that of course all the frequencies for Culdrose would need to be set manually as we had no pre-sets in the A109E.??I got the aircraft started and talked the FTE through setting the frequencies commencing with Ground and Tower Frequencies, but knowing we were also going to need Radar pretty soon after take-off, given the cloud base was around 200 ft.??I had preset the heading bug to give me the right direction for Boscombe Down and we ground taxied to the duty runway to get ready for departure.

Anyone who knows the A109E and its three-axis autopilot will appreciate that I was about to start working quite hard, since this aircraft is no fun on instruments and in turbulence!

I took off and initially all went well as we accelerated to climb speed, doing the after take off checks and readying ourselves to turn towards home and away from the weather.??Then it got all a bit difficult, as the turbulence increased markedly, and I had to work hard to keep the pitch attitude under control.??And then it was time to change frequencies, the problem was it wasn’t the one we were expecting, and the FTE was a little overloaded by the conditions and what I was asking him to do.??As a result, I had to talk him through each step of the process meanwhile keeping the aircraft the right way up and visually checking he was entering the right numbers.??We did get through it but there were some interesting oscillations in both pitch and heading that didn’t really fit with my Green Instrument Rating.

In the end we got to talk to the right ATC Unit and once there were able to turn onto my requested heading, but it was all very hard work fighting the aircraft’s response to the weather conditions.??About 5-10 miles down track we came out of the other side of the weather front back into blue skies and a nice but not overly turbulent tail wind; the stress was over.??After that it was back on the internal autopilot for a thoughtful if uneventful trip back to Boscombe Down VFR.

What is undeniable is that I had been a little too relaxed about this sortie, the route for which I had flown at least 30 times before.??Whilst I have had some many interesting recoveries to Culdrose on account of its rather unique weather environment, I had never really had anything quite so interesting on departure.???I had made a great deal of assumptions on the capacity of the FTE to help me when I really should have planned to act as a single pilot on this sortie, which I was fully trained to do – I should have asked.??Whilst single pilot IFR is hard work on the A109E,??it is so much easier if you do all the right planning activity from the outset, which I definitely had not.??Another 5-10 minutes on the ground at Culdrose would have done it but I had become distracted with a management issue – something which fell out the next morning – and definitely could have waited.

Definitely a day of two halves (sorties).?

Side-note: The 3 axis autopilot on the A109E really isn’t much use in such conditions which is why ETPS use it for teaching!