Stay outta my way

The practice area was busy today. I suspect it is the first weekend in a while that people have felt the weather was good enough to fly. It is certainly the first time that I’ve had to negotiate for space out there. I will admit that listening to RTH and his stories of the practice area, I was worried about how I’d cope with picturing the space around Claremont. Spatial awareness has never been my strong point but as usual between RTH and Bob I’ve managed to pick up enough tips to be able to manage it would seem, if my latest flight was anything to go by. Bob has shown me how to divide the area up into NE, NW, SW and SE segments. That way you only have to worry about the height of the people in your section. RTH passed on his advice to avoid getting into lengthy discussions about who is going to work where. You don’t have to be rude about it but it helps if you are decisive. Today SAR and I were pretty much doing the same kind of stuff (precautionarys and forced approaches). Once I realised this I simply made the radio call “SAR if you stay to the east. I’ll work in the west. No conflict”

Obviously I was doing the right thing because Bob didn’t seem particularly interested in joining in the conversation!

Funnily though, I landed back at home base just a little behind SAR, I’m not sure if they are a PPL or a solo student but she stopped to say hi as I was gathering my stuff and asked if it was me in JES. When I said it was, we talked briefly about how it was a little busy out there, she said she found it a little intimidating, but apparently so is my accent! According to her a crisp British accent cutting through the airwaves gets everyone’s attention!

Those of you who know me in real life, it will come as no surprise that I’m already organising the other traffic out there!