I starting with the man in the mirror...

Tonight's flight help me learn a little more about myself. The lesson was "get home itist" nearly added a knotch too its bed post. Not that we nearly bit the dust, its just that our decision making was all a cock. I also learned that folk critique others based around their own fears. I have decided to watch out for this and make sure I dont fall into that trap.

Fly UK 2010. I am now ready to move on....

Fly UK 2009 - Counting Down - Tuesday

Essential maintenance complete, oil changed new plugs, a good look over the trike and detailed look at the wing, check lists printed and laminated. A pile of camping equipment in the car is being slowly loaded into the car.

Completing my ICE documents tonight, I have to prepare for the worst and plan for the best. How do you plan to say good by to the kids? Like I might not see them again? or like I will see them next week? The truth is its no more dangerous to fly around the UK in a microlight than it is to travel to London in the car. So why to I feel differently about saying "see you later" on Friday night than I do when I rush off to work in the morning? What is it about flying that brings you to terms with your own mortality, when compared to taking the car to Tesco's (Whoops....Waitrose ;-)

"I began to feel like I lived on a higher plane thant the sketics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very assocation with the element of danger they dreaded, becuase it was freer of the earth to which they were bound.

In flying, I tasted the wine of the gods of whch they cound known nothing.

Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their ant like days?

I decided that if if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life." - CSA

You could see the broken branches

So what was the reason? We know what happened, but not why? A couple on route from Hertfordshire to Jersey hit the hill near to our Airfield, Nr Petersfield Hampshire, UK. Its a hill around 700 ft AMSL, the cloud was low and so he was flying in a valley heading to the coast, but why did he hits the hill? Was he flying IFR or IMC? Was he looking at maps or cockpit instruments? Did he know there was a hill close by? We will not know until the report is written, and we may know the what but not the why two thirty something people hit the trees on the hill, crashed and died.

Tonight I flew over the site in near perfect flying conditions and witness first hand the broken branches where the Aircraft, a Piper, first hit the trees. There is a line of broken branches, broken hearts and broken lives.

I feel sick, I feel like a voyeur, but I know what it feels like to be compelled to fly, just to be in the air.