French fly out feel the force
With flight plan and passports submitted, all the best fly outs start the night before with a briefing on Zoom to discuss all the standard preflight requirements such as weather, routing, various plan Bs etc. We spoke about the channel crossing itself, life jackets, ditching procedures and of course you will need a passport. A good hour focused here saves time in the morning and hopefully help everyone to prepare for the following day.
Our AV-venturers met at the flying school bright and early. Capt McDonell (Todd) checked the B206 Jet Ranger, Capt Knott (Mungo) the Cabri G2 and Capt. Utchanah (Micheal) the R44. Once checks were complete and aircraft fuelled it was back to base for a coffee as we waited for the morning mist to clear. Elstree’s micro climate resulted in a one-hour delay which made the departure from Elstree at 10:30am.
Flying our planned route, which was out of Elstree, round the M25, southbound over the Lea Valley reservoirs, down towards Olympic Park and then the southern tip of the Isle of Dogs and across to the Dartford Crossing. From there we turned Southbound towards Brands Hatch.
THEN, it was time to activate plan B… We had intended to cross the channel from Folkstone to Cap Gris-Nez was just a little hazy and the cloud base was a little lower then what we like. So we flew further westbound down towards Hasting’s direction and across from there. The right decision! Lovely and clear from there, at halfway we managed to get up to 3500ft and could have gone higher if we wanted to.
Into French airspace and along the coastline to Le Touquet. The controller was expecting us and super helpful. First in was HERZ followed by the G2. However, due to a plane that was coming in via instrument flight rules Todd and myself stayed North of the airfield and meander around the beach (in the air of course!) and let the IFR traffic go in front of us. At last we saw the plane come in and we just tucked in behind it and followed it in. We opted to fuel the helis straight away as their mobile AvGas Bowser still not operational which does mean a bit of a delay so rather now than later -fortunately the Jet A1 bowser IS mobile! Through customs and on to the bikes!
A fabulous two-wheeled parade of pilots through the stunning avenues from the airport to the town and to our favourite restaurant Le Matisse – Moules Marinière for me but it really doesn’t matter what you have it’s all magnifique! No trip to Le Touquet is complete without a trip to the beach and with the sun now shining made for a beautiful backdrop for some team photos.
After some short but sweet retail therapy it was back to the airport. Bikes dropped and landing fees/fuel paid it was through customs again and to the helis for start up.
As the weather was so glorious we all elected return to Elstree via the Heli Lanes. Why? Well why not. So retracing our track from the morning we entered at the Dartford Crossing flying westbound along the Thames and through Central London all the way to Northwood (to the East of Denham) and then back on ourselves, inbound via Alpha at Elstree.
As we landed, I jokingly asked the tower “I don’t suppose there is a white van in the car park with some uniform officers” and he responded “well it looks like it, why can you see them from there” and we both chuckled for a minute. And low and behold as we landed there were there! It’s only been the 2nd time in 27 years that we have been checked. They did not hold us very long, they just wanted to check passports, make sure we had a good time and thought they would check 3 helicopters in one go as it would be good for their records!
A fantastic day and good to see border force are doing their job too!
