Members of CIX VFR Club were invited to
have a look round the airfield, including the tower, at Manchester
International Airport. After the guided tour, Garibaldi biscuits & Yorkshire
tea, we filed our flight plan for the trip home and departed
the way we came.
Here is the Briefing Document
The Club celebrated 15 years of operation
this February. As a change from our 2-4-CIX displays which
we have held for some years we are going back 15 years to the
days when our events were "Flyins", members flew from an airfield
of their choice to a single destination. In those days, we
sat on the apron looking at each other (thanks to the new "multiplayer" phenomenon
in FS2004) and chatting socially on Teamspeak (which continues
to be a major feature of Club life today). So - in a nostalgic
repeat of those days, this year we flew in to Wellesbourne
Mountford (EGBW) on the evening of Monday 18th February, and
met our friends.
Here is the Briefing
Document
This event was a salute to Mel Kirk, who designed the first 'Mel's Mad Monday'. It followed his original scenario of departing Shoreham, landing at a remote airfield, and returning to Shoreham where everyone was required to execute the infamous overhead join. With a number of pilots arriving within a very short space of time, this resulted in a situation which could indeed be a bit mad - or even complete mayhem! This months event, although held on a Tuesday, featured two remote Airfields , with the possibility of requiring not one but two or even three overhead joins. Mayhem was indeed an appropriate description for this event. Here is the Briefing Document.
An Earthquake had
hit Nepal. Moments after the earthquake, an
avalanche of falling ice came down from above Everest Base
Camp
(EBC). Rescue helicopters had found the climbers and brought
them to Lukla. The climbers that were stranded at Lukla required
onward transportation to Paro. GA STOL aircraft from the Club
were therefore flown in
with food and water supplies from the nearby Tumlingtar
Airfield.
Here is the Briefing
Document.
The Vintage Air Rally presented
another unique event – a
STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) competition on the
beach at Knokke-Heist in the Netherlands where pilots
from around the world take part annually in this test
of precision flight and precision landings – and
sometimes create new world records!
http://www.vintageairrally.com/rallies/upcoming/stol-competition.
We flew in to Knokke-heist in our taildraggers, and
then departed back to Manston in Sussex.
The real world event took place between 16th-19th
May, but because we’re
not real world we showed them how it really should
have been done!
Here is the Briefing
Document.
June's month's event was a celebration and to some extent, a re-enactment of the flying career of one the Club's celebrity members whose 99th birthday was on June 7th. His flying career started with the Southport Aero Club at RAF Woodvale (EGOW) in 1961, so that's where we are going for a spin. Here is the Briefing Document
The Club has visited Oshkosh several times over the years, once even starting from the UK, and flying "across the pond" via Iceland and Greenland in our small aircraft. Once again, in 2019, memberswere invited to take part in the exciting flight into Wittman Regional Airport (KOSH), in the the state of Wisconsin, USA, replicationg and mimicking the real world OSHKOSH event which took place from 22nd to 28th July 2019. Here is the Briefing Document.
The Manchester Low Level Route is a tricky and busy route between the Liverpool and Manchester Control Zones that is often not given the due respect it deserves (by both pilots and controllers in the Virtual World). This event was to allow members to experience the delights of the Low Level Route, sometimes called the Manchester Corridor, in a choice of either a fixed-wing or rotary aircraft, flying from opposite directions and thus on opposite sides of the 20nm long by 4nm wide corridor at less than 1300ft!. Here is the Briefing Document.
Following one member's holiday read of one of Capt. W.E.John's famous hero's children's stories about flights in Norway, we re-enacted the story in part by flying a floatplane through spectacular fjords and valleys, avoiding enemy radar, and finally landing in the fjord near Stokka. In the book, Ginger and Algy came to Biggles' rescue and he escaped back to England with the Luftwaffe on his tail, but we didn't do that bit. Here is the Briefing Document.
We bill these now annual events as "Try to fly with our CFI!" This October we took on the challenge of a night flight round London's controlled airspace to enable a friend to take some night photographs of Gatwick's runway 08 for publication in the Virtual Pilot Magazine. Here is the Briefing Document.
2-4-CIX and the virtual Battle of Britain Memorial Flight impressed members with fly-pasts and spectacular aerobatic formations. This year our display was held at our Gloucestershire base. Here is the Briefing Document for spectators.
Our usual December month is a long tour of somewhere scenic and interesting. This year we visited Papua New Guinea.The tour started and ended at the capital, Port Moresby (AYPY). Members landed at fourteen aerodromes across the country, some of them hidden among the mountains - hard to find, hard to get there and hard to land. Here is the Briefing Document