Those more avid readers of this blog may remember a post about going to Northern Ireland to test fly a couple of Autogyros with a view to purchasing one. Well, aim achieved. The next task for me was to fly said stainless steel and carbon fibre crotch rocket back across the Irish Sea and across Scotland, down through the North of England and thence onto homeplate at Chiltern just south of Benson. Easy. I used to do this stuff in my sleep...

So, with new permit to fly given to the aircraft, servicing complete and licence in hand I decided I had to think of what could go wrong. First let's deal with the Irish Sea. If you ditch, and survive the gyro thrashing itself to death as the rotors eventually strike the water and then get clear of the sinking wreckage, the cold will most likely kill you next. Functional disability will strike in about 2-15 minutes if the cold shock response (inability to hold your breath, gasping, hyperventilation, tachycardia and hypertension) doesn't aid your drowning without an immersion suit. One trip to eBay and a Typhoon immersion suit with the added bonus of inbuilt neoprene gloves and a hood and that's covered. Next, if you have survived you only have a few hours in an immersion suit before hypothermia will set in so I need to let people know. I need a PLB....

Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) used to be the domain of superyachts and working vessels (a slightly different version called EPIRB linked to the vessel itself) or the military. However, recent advances have seen PLBs and EPIRBs become financially available to Joe Bloggs so one ResQ+ Link later and that's taken care of. You can see it on the photo to the left in the box. It's about 5 inches long by 1 inch square and transmits on 121.5 and 406Mhz, has a built in 5 year battery, 24 hour life once activated, 66 channel GPS and your position can be registered in as little as 5 minutes and passed to the rescue services of that country. You do have to register these with the coastguard in the UK to a person (EPIRB to a vessel) but it means you can use it hiking, kitesurfing or wherever there is a risk of serious injury or getting into major life threatening difficulty with no other options for assistance. At about £200 this is a great piece of kit (I have no allegiance to the makers of this just fyi). Compared to the chunky SARBE7 we used to carry in a previous life, this thing is light years ahead. So, second thing to kill you, tick....

The rest was just the usual planning guff. I booked some diversions, seemingly an unusual thing to do in the civvy General Aviation (GA) world, however they came in mighty useful, checked the weather, NOTAMS etc. The plan was pretty straightforward. Enniskillen across the water to Kirkbride, Kirkbride to a little farm strip called Forwood Farm, Forwood Farm onto Chiltern. Fuel at each stop and time for a leak and a stretch at each before thrashing my way onwards. Easy...

I went over a day early to go and check over the machine and hopefully get airborne for a quick refresher since it had been a couple of months since my last flight in it when the previous owner had given me a comprehensive conversion. It wasn't particularly different from the aircraft I learnt on so it proved to be no major dramas. Arriving at Enniskillen there was way to much cross wind and very gusty so we decided that just a ground run to check systems and put it to bed was all we would be able to safely achieve.

The following day was better but still pushing the limits. I considered using the disused cross runway which would have provided enough room but insurance would have been invalidated and it all seemed like the classic accident scenario of "press on regardless". Short runway, unused to the aircraft, 2 months since the last flight etc. All I could hear was Michael Buerk voicing over the BBC Series 999 in my head so I decided to wait until the wind was more favourable on the main runway.

As it was the wind abated enough for me to get on my way (safely) and I merrily headed (slowly) towards the Irish Sea. Apart from taking time it was uneventful to the coast of Scotland. I lost contact with Belfast and was handed over to Scottish West but poor radio reception meant I wasn't in 2 way comms with anyone over the sea. It was only when I coasted in near West Freugh that comms came back. And this was where it got interesting.

Low puffs of cloud had started to bubble up from the coast with the incoming breeze and sit at about 600-800 feet. It was easy to dodge in the flat area around Freugh but as I pressed further in, to around the 1:45:00 mark on the map, as I looked out to the coast off in my 2 o'clock it was as if someone had set fire to the entire coast and smoke was rising from the sea/land interface. This was pushed inland and initially rested on the hill tops. The very moist incoming air was being forced up and cooling forming low cloud which eventually banded together to for a solid sheet of stratus. No problemo. Schneeble through the valleys (that's a technical aviation term), get to the coast the other side and boom we are home and dry.

Not so much. The MET Man's "ISOL COT 600M" (isolated patched of coast will have visibility of 600m) was about as ISOL as rainbow flags and assless chaps at Gay Pride. As I was doing my best schneebling it all started to get a little bit tense. The ground below was starting to become more wooded and less useful in case of an engine failure and the cloud was getting lower and letterboxes getting smaller. Time to turn tail and like the best F3 air defender, run away like a little girl squealing... So I did. With less squealing. It was obvious it was going to be exceptionally challenging (but not impossible) to get through, although infringement of flying regulations would almost be guaranteed so I decided that discretion was most definitely the better part of valour and headed back to the 20 or so minutes to my diversion at Castle Kennedy.

No comms, no-one around, quick circuit, land in a sporty cross wind, park, get out... Balls. Now what? Quick call to the chap I arranged the diversion with in the previous week for some advice and it turns out he watched me from an adjacent field as I landed. He would pop over in an hour to provide some assistance. Long story short he turn out to be ex-army (you can spot them a mile off) but he was so helpful he gave me lift to Stranraer, assisted in finding me accommodation for the evening, picked me up the following morning, lent me a jerry can for fuel and was generally a top gentleman. Lord Stair, thank you sir, I am in your debt.

At the hotel in Stranraer after the world's largest and cheesiest macaroni cheese (with chips obviously) accompanied by the tunes of the 80's (and not in an ironic way - I just think Stranraer hasn't moved beyond the New Romantics, Kajagoogo and Duran Duran) I retired for the night and got ready to attack the remainder of the trip the following day.

The following day was bright and moderately breezy. I filled up, headed off with a spring in my step and finished the remainder of the 5 or so hours of somewhat chilly flying without incident.

Kirkbride to Forwood Farm

Forwood Farm to Chiltern

So what can I tell you about what I learnt? Not much really, although the importance of diversions is not stressed in GA very much. The mindset is "I am going from A to B therefore I must get to B". Given my prior experience, you are always assessing the weather and working out how far you can go, what fuel you have remaining, where you can put down safely next (and not in a field). I am not sure how many GA accidents have been caused by the linear mindset of "Must. Get. Through."and not having the testicular fortitude to say "No, this isn't suitable or safe and I will divert/RTB". When I do my instructor qualification this will be passed down to my students at every stage.

Was it fun though? In a way yes. A little adventure of sorts. I met some very friendly people and saw bits of my old stomping ground at considerably slower pace. The gyro behaved impeccably, I now have a good "war story" about my first solo flight post licence award and I got to know my 'jet' a little better. Two bits of advice will always ring in my ears. One from a very charismatic and brilliant instructor I had the privilege of flying with at Basic Flying Training and one from my father, an instructor of some repute with more hours on more types than he would want known.

"Always take the weak dick option. You can talk about it in the bar afterwards" - TLW

"Never push a bad position" - Senator

Sage words indeed...