After two days of last minute preparation, several interviews with local newspapers, radio stations and television, we had our bags packed, aircraft polished, route prepared and were ready to finally lift off from Dundee airport to commence G-EVIE’s Grand Tour. The problem was that we had poor visibility, low cloud, and very little let-up being promised in the forecast. What started off at the beginning of the day as not quite being able to make out the other side of the River Tay, along which Dundee’s runway parallels, to by mid-afternoon, not being able to see this side of the Tay. No matter how many times we glanced hopefully through the TAFs and METARs there really was no escaping.
Such is the nature of light aircraft flying, to which every pilot has become accustomed at some point. No matter the months of planning routes, speaking to airfields and preparing the aircraft, the most influential factor of what the day is going to entail is looking at the weather in the morning and seeing what the options are. Today, the options were very definitely limited to playing the odd game of bananagram and unconvincingly looking for a glimmer of hope overcast skies.
By three o’clock, we had very definitely come to the conclusion that although the weather down in Durham and Syerston, where we had been planning to head, was lifting a little, the weather at Dundee was most definitely worsening and there was absolutely no escaping. We resigned to leaving the next afternoon at the first sign of a break in the weather.
Realising that we really had done nothing productive all day since our morning with the press, we thought we could at least pack up the aeroplane so that we would be ready to go in the morning. After several minutes of ‘packing’ we realised all we were doing was simply moving things around a room in a vague attempt to make it look as if we had made some progress. Eventually we recruited a few willing(!) flying instructors and began carting the kit out to the aircraft, trying to neatly pack and distribute the weight.
We called it a day, went home and hoped to be greeted by glorious skies the next morning. Standby for the launch of G-EVIE’s Grand Tour – Take Two...
