Congrats! Now the real learning starts!
Congratulations Amateurish!
I would go to France as soon as possible. It’s possible that the longer you leave it, the more daunting it becomes. Also, once you’ve done it, you’ll want to go farther. The flight is essentially the same, Skydemon will take care of flightplans and customs & immigration, and it’s definitely worth it.
There isn’t much to do at Cherbourg airfield, and I don’t think the restaurant has reopened. I’d recommend Le Touquet and either walk or hire a bike to the town and beach. There’s a Carrefour just to the south for the obligatory camembert and pinot noir. I like Calais too, with a good airport restaurant, village with a few shops and supermarket a 5 minute walk away, but it doesn’t compare to LFAT.
Routing to north east France I normally go as high as possible VFR via SFD VOR, 5,000 feet just off the coast. This is only 5NM shorter over water than Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. An engine failure isn’t to be discounted completely, but is very unlikely and can be mitigated with lifejackets and PLB as a minimum.
Good idea on the IR(R), which will give more options.
Let us know how it goes, ideally with photos 
Congratulations
The plane doesn’t know it is over water, so go for it. Carry a raft though – can you borrow one?
And start off going somewhere nice like Le Touquet. I know the Brits take the p*ss but it is great. Great airport, great ATC, great walk into town, great town.
With a decent satnav app (a must!) the LTMA is ok. Just be careful. Or fly down to IOW and then along the coast to Seaford or Lydd and then straight across to LTQ.
Watch out for the prohibited areas in the Channel – they are quite high (2000ft?). Check notams.
Cherbourg is dead now, since the mad police won the battle with the airport and imposed 24/48hr PN. LTQ is just 2hr PN (email address on the airport website) but actually they disregard it since the police are there 24/7.
Amateurish wrote:
But that does seem like a long flight over open water.
Overwater flights are mainly a psychological issue. The risks involved in ditching are in general (but not always) greater than the risks of emergency landings over land, but they are not as risky as some would have you believe. The greatest challenge is not making a successful ditching or getting out of the aircraft but being picked up out of the water in time. The English Channel is one of the busiest waterways in the world so you’d have a head start. Even if ditchings were 100% fatal (the actual figure is about 10%), the additional risk incurred by occasional overwater crossings is negligible.
Capitaine wrote:
Congratulations Amateurish!I would go to France as soon as possible. It’s possible that the longer you leave it, the more daunting it becomes. Also, once you’ve done it, you’ll want to go farther. The flight is essentially the same, Skydemon will take care of flightplans and customs & immigration, and it’s definitely worth it.
There isn’t much to do at Cherbourg airfield, and I don’t think the restaurant has reopened. I’d recommend Le Touquet and either walk or hire a bike to the town and beach. There’s a Carrefour just to the south for the obligatory camembert and pinot noir. I like Calais too, with a good airport restaurant, village with a few shops and supermarket a 5 minute walk away, but it doesn’t compare to LFAT.
Routing to north east France I normally go as high as possible VFR via SFD VOR, 5,000 feet just off the coast. This is only 5NM shorter over water than Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. An engine failure isn’t to be discounted completely, but is very unlikely and can be mitigated with lifejackets and PLB as a minimum.
Good idea on the IR(R), which will give more options.
Let us know how it goes, ideally with photos
Thanks! Getting it done sooner rather than later makes sense.
How about St Malo?
Le Touquet sounds good.
Peter wrote:
CongratulationsThe plane doesn’t know it is over water, so go for it. Carry a raft though – can you borrow one?
Cheers! I’m slightly nervous since a couple of club members were lost over the channel earlier this year on a club flyout – discussed on the forum previously I believe.
I’ll ask about the raft.
I think they flew into convective cloud and not being instrument capable they lost control. They probably hit the water at 150kt+ and a raft would not have been any good. They got shafted by the prohibited airspace below 2000ft and above FL075, so if they went under or over they would have got busted by the CAA.
You can avoid that fate easily enough. Pick a nice day, use modern wx sources (windy.com is #1, supplemented by radar (meteox.com), and other stuff like sferics). And if you see a huge wall of cloud in front, don’t fly into it
St Malo / Dinard is nice too, but LTQ is a smaller bit to bite off and is a shorter flight.
Is the ditching fatality rate as high as 10%? How many of these were not wearing lifejackets? The water at present will be near its warmest, with the coldest being in the spring.
Maoraigh wrote:
Is the ditching fatality rate as high as 10%? How many of these were not wearing lifejackets? The water at present will be near its warmest, with the coldest being in the spring.
The 10% (actually 12% – I double-checked) is not for just the ditching but also survival in the water until being picked up. I got the statistics from this website.
Bear in mind that the MTBF of a Lyco engine is of the order of 50k hours…
The idea behind carrying a raft – thread – is that you have a viable Plan B. You don’t need a Plan C, etc. I fly over water all the time, often far longer legs than the Channel, in a SEP. Just keep it on the back seat (within reach) and don’t worry about flying over water Oh and make sure you don’t have too much air in the tanks 
