Sunday saw me bumping into Marcus in the breakdast bar at 0800.
"Coming with us today are you?" he says.
"Oh, well, yeah, I guess. Where are you going?" (notice I have committed myself before finding out the relevant facts).
"We're going over the Gorges du Verdon - you'll kick yourself if you miss it while you're here - they are really spectacular!"
It sounded interesting - I could take some photos for the blog. Once again I commit further before getting the facts:
"Yeah great. I'll come"
There was a small pause for thought and I then said "How far is it?"
"Oh, it's about a two-hour flight"
Two hours? I must be mad - I've only got about an hour in LC solo! I don't know thw aircraft well enough to go haring off over the Alps, faffing around in gorges!
"I don't think I have enough fuel", I said. Marcus had plenty to spare.
Cornered, I did my preflight and togged-up.
After I took off behind them, I started getting really loud intermittent buzzing and crackling in the headset. It was the radio.
For the next ten minutes, I was frantically wire-wiggling to see if I could get it to go away. It got worse. By this time we were on 129.825, the unofficial Microlight 'air-to-air' frequency. I called Marcus and told him I had a problem. I was scared I had some sort of electrical short-circuit. The last thing I wanted was to get a fire, or melting bits.
His solution was "Don't worry - just turn off your radio and follow us!". Damn - still no way to chicken out with dignity!
At that point I decided to adjust the 'squelch' on my radio (for those of you not in the know, it filters out all atmospheric 'noise' and erroneous signals from your radio - gets rid of all the background hisses, buzzing and hums. That's right - buzzing...) - oh yes! My 'short-circuit' was nothing more than a badly adjusted radio.
I elected not to tell Marcus about that...
Well, we had our flight - 2 hours 20 minutes in the end. Awesome is not the word. The gorge was spectacular and the flight was sublime. In one flight I'd tripled my hours on LC.
I got some photos - when I get them off the camera I'll post them.
But I warn you - I need practice at taking photos while trying to fly a plane! The ones I took of the ground are featureless and bland - I forgot to get a horizon. The one i took of me flying could have been taken on the ground! You guessed it, I forgot to get a horizon! Ah well, _I_ know I was at 7500 feet!
I'll practice some more in the next few weeks I hope. Weather permitting.
If anyone is reading this other than myself - maybe see you at Spamfield!
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