A grand day out in Yorkshire

After my venture towards the pennines in the club motorglider the other week, I was invited to fly again with the instructor in his own private machine (a Super Ximango), so that we could go and see some more of Yorkshire and pick up some navigation pointers.

It would be again a learning exercise but also a bit of a sightseeing exercise - the main purpose was just to see some of the main towns and landmarks that are considered local flying.

I plotted a course on Saturday evening; with turning points at Breighton, Beverley, Bridlington Scarborough, Full Sutton before passing over York, back to Rufforth airfield.

I marked up my map with headings and 5-mile markers to each TP. I added rough timings based on 70 knots, but we all know that gliders don't fly in a straight line at a constant speed, so this was more just to make sure the flight didn't go on too long. In all, the route just over 100 nautical miles.

I purposely routed to the coast for some sightseeing opportunity, and it also gave the chance for a couple of decent length legs to practice navigating to places that you can't see directly from the last one.

Setting off on track with York and the impossible-to-miss Elvington runway, Breighton was easy enough to find. An old airfield now covered in containers and absolutely not a place to try a landing.

My route took us over some small windfarms - marked as a feature on the 1 - 500,000 map but next to useless in most cases as a navigation aid, the turbines are so spread out, and there are now so many windfarms, that you could easily mistake one for another.

We stopped for an orbit of Market Weighton - a place I may need to revisit as it lies almost a perfect 50km from the Sutton Bank clubhouse, so would be a good candidate for a Silver distance out-and-return later. Beverley was next up, and again fairly easy pickings - with the Humber off the right wing and the clearly visible docks at Hull being good markers to plot my position.

You can't really miss the Yorkshire coast - this was the sightseeing part. The wind farms right along our track to Bridlington were usable as they made perfect sense in relation to the coastline and they made the map and compass obsolete for this leg. 

We flew out to sea a little ways, partly to remain well clear of the parachute drop zone and partly to stop and take some pictures around Bridlington, Filey, and Scarborough. Most of them had cockpit reflection in them but since my phone is almost DV panel size, I didn't want to risk dropping it in the sea from a great height...

The next turn would be, I thought, the tough one - and I was right. I set the heading and kept the Yorkshire Wolds over my left wing, expecting to see Norton about half way down the track. Once again, towns - even sizeable ones - can be tricky to spot if they happen to be under a cloud shadow. I knew it was there - somewhere! 

I eventually followed the railway line and deviated slightly off track to ensure I crossed it, and then resumed my course down the wolds once I was sure that the town was where it was meant to be. 

On my first cross country a couple of months ago, I mistook a government building for Full Sutton prison and so I did exactly the same again, becoming fixated on a shiny white building instead of waiting and seeing something that looked like a prison with an airfield dead next to it...

Yes, I forgot to turn on my logger again....

Once that mistake was out the way, I quickly picked up Pocklington where it was supposed to be, and Elvington from another angle. There was also the White Horse of Sutton Bank some 40-50km to the North which was clearly visible when the sun shone on it.

We flew straight back over York, found Rufforth again and landed in time for a cuppa.

Here a few more pics from the trip!