After a lovely day walking around Alderney, I return across the English Channel to Redhill in Golf-Oscar Romeo.
This video has taken a little longer to produce, owing to a failure of one of my main hard drives. Thankfully, the data was recoverable!
After walking around Alderney, and getting a snack on the way back to the airport, I checked over the aeroplane for the return trip back to Redhill. Obviously, I had filed my GAR (General Aviation Report) form 12 hours prior to arrival in the UK, and submitted my flight plan an hour before departure.
Alderney is within class D controlled airspace, and so a clearance was required.
This flight was absolutely hassle free, except that the Portsmouth danger areas were becoming active during the course of my flight, and I therefore chose a slightly different route for the return leg. You can see the GPS track here. In order to maximise my altitude for the water crossing, I sneaked through a small gap at waypoint ORIST, with a class A airway to the west and the danger area to the right. Through the gap I was able to climb to FL095 in uncontrolled airspace. It sounded like London Information was a little concerned by my proximity to the airway, and twice reminded me to remain outside controlled airspace.
In the Descent over Selsey Bill
When returning towards the UK, the controlled airspace eventually gets lower and lower, and so a constant watch on the distance to go to each boundary was important, as was the timing of my descent.
With a calm wind at Redhill, the aeroplane floated quite a lot as I flared for landing, which resulted in me using up a fair amount of the runway. It was not an issue, I could have plopped it down, but I was holding off for a smooth touchdown on the grass.
Video: Alderney to Redhill