Newquay to Biggin Hill VFR - Jon Hunt, The Flying Reporter

After a lovely 2 days in Newquay with my friend Andrew, it was time to return home. We’d planned an early morning departure, when the winds were lighter. This would have had two benefits. a) The headwind would be less strong reducing our flight time, and b) the forecast crosswinds at Biggin Hill would be less intense at the time of arrival.

Sadly, we encountered a minor problem on the ground at Newquay which needed checking out, and this delayed our departure.

We departed from an intersection point on Newquay’s runway 12, and shortly after take off were asked to turn left to allow a passenger aircraft to depart. We then tracked loosely inbound to the Berry Head VOR, taking a lazy turn past Torquay, then following the coast past Exmouth, where we did some steep turns for practice. Next was Lyme Regis, before turning inland to Dorchester. We took a slightly different route back from our inbound course because there was a parachute jump exercise taking place south of Bournemouth. We tracked to the south of Compton Abbas, through the Middle Wallop MATZ, south east to Four Marks, before weaving through the Odiham MATZ to Farnham. I used the SAM, MID and OCK VORs to check course and track to during this tight stretch past controlled airspace.

Biggin Hill Airport was busy with arriving aircraft for the weekend’s airshow, so we were held in an orbit to the west for a few minutes before an approach was made to runway 03. Conscious of the hard and tetchy landing I’d had at Newquay two days earlier, I aborted my first landing when it became tricky (probably prematurely), and came in for a second go. It was hard, but stable.

Distance: 232nm

Flight time: 2 hours 45 minutes