Donington Trackday...in the Scooby!
So last weekend I get a message from my mate Pete who has some free trackday tickets to a suite holders trackday at Donington Park. Excellent! But Donington has very strict noise regulations (98dBA driveby) despite there being an international airport right next door! Well, a free tickets is a free ticket, I'll take the Subaru!
Was a really good day - great weather, but the Subaru on standard brakes just wasn't quite up to it. Braking into Goddards from the Dunlop straight from about 120mph was just too much for the little twin-pots. I couldn't get the brakes to kick the ABS in no matter how hard I stamped, the brakes were just getting too hot! Bigger brakes and a better pad compound are required for any serious track day I think!
Still, it was a good day out, but the MK is a lot more fun (and less harsh on brakes/tyres/everything else). I'll have to look at quietening the MK down somehow and get it out to Donington...
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Click here for some photos.
Click here to add a comment Added 23/10/2007
Flying Lesson
Today I had a flying lesson, thanks to my friends buying me a trial lesson for my 30th birthday :D It was with Multiflight at Leeds & Bradford Airport.
I woke up on the morning and the weather was lovely and sunny, perfect flying weather, or so it would seem...
Accompanied by Anne (with her "massive" one - camera lens that is) and Noel, I went to the airport. There was a small wait whilst we waited for the plane to arrive, but soon I was sat in a Piper Cherokee ready for off! It was the only single-engined plane I would fit in - a 6 foot 4 bloke simply can't fit in a Robin or a Cessna
My instructor (Lee) taxi'd the plane towards the runway, with endless chat to the control tower - you don't realise just how much radio protocol there is until you experience it first hand (roger, wilco, what's your vector victor etc)! Then after a few pre-flight checks (does the engine work, is there any fuel etc etc!) we were signalled to go in front of a Boeing 737!
Of course Lee was driving for the first bit, so we headed down the runway, took off and made a sharp right to get out of the way of the aforementioned 737! From there we headed towards Dewsbury at 2000ft. He then made a left towards Drax power station, gave me a brief rundown of the controls and declared "you're in control". Like HELL I am, I thought!
It felt wierd. In a car, you turn the wheel left to turn left, then turn it straight again to go straight. In a plane, you turn it left to "go lefter", then turn it straight to "stop going lefter". So the first time I turned left, it was very disconcerting to straighten the wheel and it still be going left! My human-gyroscope was telling me that I was still going left and we were going to barrel-roll into oblivion! I forgot for a brief moment that there was a pilot next to me if it all went wrong! Once I'd got the idea that you had to turn right to stop turning left, it made more sense, and there was then just the weather to contend with...
Lovely sunny day, perfect for flying...or maybe not! Once we'd got in the air it was clear how poor visibility was, it was very hazy - there was no horizon. The first thing Lee tried to teach me was how to maintain "straight and level flight". The theory is you learn how far up your windscreen the horizon is then you are flying neither up nor down. Hard to do when there is no horizon! So instead I was already flying by instruments, looking at the vertical speed indicator to make sure it read 0 - not bad for a first flight :D
So we flew from Leeds & Bradford Airport, down to Dewsbury, across to Drax Power station, up past Selby and a local Gliding Club, Church Fenton Airfield, east of York towards Elvington Airfield (where there was no track day today!), then west towards Wetherby, down the A1 and then over Eccup resevoir before relinquishing control to a man who could actually land a plane! I get the feeling we wouldn't have made that much progress on the ground...
I'd got the hang of basic turns and keeping it level, and even counteracting for the odd cross-wind (like opposite-lock in a car!) and some bumpy thermals, but was getting a little nervous as to how nervous Lee looked searching for "other" planes! We flew near a gliding club, and had a couple of calls from air traffic control warning us to keep an eye out for planes on radar with unknown altitude heading towards us (!) Nice to know he was checking though - I've seen too many Air Crash Investigations programs to want to be a statistic :D
Heading back to the airport was interesting - we were heading straight towards the sun, in hazy dusk conditions, with a perspex scratched canopy! He asked me to head for Eccup resevoir because it was on the way to the airport, and the only thing we could see! He asked me to descend to 1000ft (above land, he'd recalibrated the altimeter for landing) and then I handed back control. After a couple of mid-air donuts (I mean, a holding pattern) we were cleared to land. He pulled a handbrake lever to lower the flaps (yuk yuk!), we slowed and landed much softer than any Ryanair flight I've had :D
All in an enjoyable experience, so thanks to all my mates who clubbed in to buy the ticket :D Thought I think I may need a decent payrise to go for the full PPL license (in this country at least!)
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