Essex Microlight Club

Our next club meeting is Monday 14th April, at 7pm for 7-30 at Stewarts Bar, Western Road, Billericay.

Cromer, Norfolk - End of Harvest fly-in

21 Sep 2003

By Pete Croney

The plan had been for Tony H-S, Steve Sebastian and Steve Ward to meet over head at my field for our trip to Cromer. The distance was 117 miles from Danbury, taking the coastal route. Unfortunately Tony found that fuel was going to be a problem for him, with a distinct lack of potential fuel stops and a forecast of southerlies to slow our return. Steve Ward, coming up from his new base at Harringe, suffered very poor viz over Kent and decided to stay in the Stoke area for the day. So in the end it was just Steve Sebastian and myself that departed for Norfolk. After fuelling up to the brim, we sat on the numbers waiting for Steve, who arrived overhead at exactly 10:30, as planned.

Our route took us east across to the Clacton DME and then north along the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coasts and the weather could not have been better. Steve had his Quik on full trim and we found that with a small bit of "bar in", this made our speeds virtually identical at approx 56-58mph IAS. The southerly wind pushed us north with a ground speed of 73mph over the long East Anglian beaches, in air so smooth that it felt like we were on autopilot. The cloud less skies gave visibility of over 30 miles and we were left to enjoy the views of Harwich and Felixstowe, Southwold, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth on route.

Just after popping up to 2500ft to clear Sizewell nuclear power station, I noticed the dreaded "low battery" symbol flash up on my radio. I let Steve know that we would shortly lose communication and decided to turn it off, so that I could keep contact with my daughter, Laura, who was in the back seat. As we approached Cromer, 40 minutes later, we turned the radio back on and could hear the calls, but could not transmit. I heard that RAF Cottishall was not active and getting into Cromer circuit wasn't a problem as Steve had let them know that we were probably off air entirely.

After 1:45 of flying time, landing at Cromer on 18 was directly into wind we remarked that Cromer Northrepps is probably the smoothest grass runway either of us had landed at. After paying our £3 landing fees, Chris Gurney, the airfield operator let me charge my battery up on his jeep and with a bit of Heath Robinson wiring, new life bled into it.

The "End of Harvest" fly in at Cromer was a mixed affair of GA, microlights and a solitary R44, representing the rotaries. After a local Q462 departed, Steve and I were the only remaining flex wings, so our machines attracted a lot of interest from the locals who had turned up by car. We were very lucky to witness a De Havilland Gypsy Moth give an incredible aerobatic display over the circuit before coming in. This fine example of the marque is owned by the only De Havilland engineer in the UK and is in as new condition with all of its original instruments. The only thing missing was the Gatling guns!!

Two other aerobatic types came along, giving the lowest "tower fly past" (the tower is Chris' caravan) that I've ever seen. If the short pole holding the flag of St George had been a metre higher, I'm sure there would have been contact. They then proceeded to show us stalling climbs, spiral dive and roll rates that had everyone reaching for something solid to hold.

Lunch was the mandatory BBQ with burgers, sausages and some excellent spare ribs.

After filling our bellies, Chris sorted us out with fuel to fill our tanks and we said our farewells, to head back south. I had burned 22 litres on the trip, but had forgotten to pack two stroke oil. Chris found enough oil for 17 litres and this gave us about 42 total, enough for 3.5 hours flying.

The wind was quite brisk and ground speed was down to the low 40s at 2000ft but the air was still reasonably smooth. When we got to Lowestoft, we could see a carpet of cloud ahead between 1200ft and 1500ft. It was broken, out to sea and ended all together about 3 miles out, but in land looked very murky and solid. At first we decided to fly under it but by the time we got to Southwold, we were down to 600ft with our kingposts cutting open the grey bellies above us. I elected to go up through one of the holes, as Sizewell was now only 10 miles ahead. The cloud turned out to be very broken with a carpet of thin mist between the cumulus. This allowed a clear view of the ground below and legal flying. Steve came up to join us and we spent a few miles enjoying the beautiful white pillows and duvet below our wheels, before climbing to clear the Sizewell exclusion zone.

After Sizewell, the cloud suddenly cleared, letting us drop down under the headwind and enjoy some low level flying down the beaches. When we could be certain that no boats or people were ahead, we dropped down to 30ft over the expanses of sand which stretched out ahead like a 10 mile runway.

The remainder of the flight was with better ground speed and whilst my fuel calculations showed that we should have 30 minutes reserve, this extra speed was very welcome.

We split from Steve over St Osyths, him heading south for his base at Southend and us heading west over Mersea Island for the farm. We both thought it was one of the nicest flights we had both done, being at least on par with the French beaches on our Wingspan trip. The trip also showed us that its possible for one of the old school trikes to fly with the latest hotships, both pilots having a lot of fun.

The fuel calculations proved to be very accurate and the 3:00 return flight had burned 36 litres leaving around 6 litres in the tank.

On leaving Cromer, Chris Gurney had asked that we come back for a longer stay with the promise of good B&Bs and some excellent local cuisine. As I would like to fly further on and play over the huge beaches of Brancaster, this is something that we will definitely be doing. Especially as I forgot the camera for this trip!!

Airfield details are at http://www.chris.gurney.co.uk/