Aaaaaaaarrrrggggh. Close, so close but not close enough to finally getting Castle Kennedy into my log book.
Shrek, I and Richard (the owner of Shrek) decided to meet up on the 2 July 2014 to do a trip to Castle Kennedy. Weather looked flyable and the legs were divided up.
R – Shoreham to Tatenhill
M – Tatenhill to Castle Kennedy
R – Castle Kennedy to Halfpenny Green
M – Halfpenny Green to Shoreham
Unfortunately we never made it to CK in spite of every effort to do so; we were thwarted by the active danger area. We had tried to call West Freugh by phone before departure, even left a voice mail but no luck. I then asked Scottish (wonderful controller) to try work some magic. I called them from Morecombe Bay. They had no luck and no one responded to my calls on the Dacs frequency of 130.050 so when we got to Kirkcudbright I decided to divert to Carlisle. The sadness was when we were taxing in at Carlisle, Scottish gave Carlisle a call to say that the danger area had just gone cold, but it was too late for us if we were to get back to Shoreham before closing. I will try again to get to CK so it remains on my list of places to go to and will do my level best to attend their fly-in next May.
Waking up THE MIGHTY Shrek to start the day. By the way, this wonderful aircraft is up for sale at a very good price should anybody be in the market for a very capable and affordable machine. I will be a sad bunny when she does finally go to her new home. Sad, sad, sad day that will be.
Richard doing whatever pilots do, to get us to Tatenhill.
Henley on Thames
First time into Tatenhill for both of us. 
A lovely airfield. My only niggle with some of the airfields one visits are their less than hygienic loos. I dislike public facilities at the best of times but when you reach a certain age, the bladder requires empting more often and it would be nice to do it in a facility that does not put the germ alert on high notice.
It was nice to see I am not the only one to name their aircraft – this beautiful Apache is called Moly. 
So sad to see aircraft rotting.
Shrek being fed at Tatenhill and quivering at the thought of me abusing her shortly. 
My leg next. I flew the LLR as far as Kirkcudbright and then diverted to Carlisle due the active danger area already mentioned. I had a bit of crud to deal with over the Lakes so climbed to a nose bleed height of 4,700ft to avoid a lot of it. I could have gone the coast route or I could have scud run but scud running will eventually bite you and those that think it wont, beware………….
The affects of flying tooooooo high. Makes sane people looney. 
Carlisle turned out to be a worthy diversion. This is my third time into Carlisle. And they are such a great bunch of people now. My very first experience into there was less than ideal but the last 2 time – fantastic.
Parked up at Carlisle
Affects of sniffing avgas – makes for a happy bunny. 
We had a “display from the mighty Merlin too!!
Oh, and parked up next to us was another TB 20 just like Peters. There seem to be a lot of these types around the UK.
Richard took the next leg from Carlisle to Halfpenny Green. He elected to do the coastal route back. He also did a routing that I was completely unaware that you could do and took us through the Liverpool overhead. Richard is originally from Liverpool and was an ATC controller there in the 60’s so a happy emotional trip down memory lane for him. It was also his first time north of the border so his wings did some stretching today. :-) I had not realised there were standard VFR routings through Liverpool and it is useful to have an alternate to the LLR. So I learnt something new and useful on this trip. Thanks Richard. As an aside, all the controllers today were great but Scottish, the Liverpool controller PLUS the Shoreham ATC stood out from the crowd.
Sellafield Nuclear Station
Barrow
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm 
Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Airport
Liverpool Airport – Fab
Halfpenny Green was a new airfield for me. Richard had been in before. A lovely place bar the stinky loos. 
We were then treated to a Spitfire start up and departure – wonderful. 
However, what will stick in my mind for a long time was the BIGGEST smile I have ever seen on a pilot in years. The pilot just smiled and smiled and smiled and because I am a nosy chap I asked him for the magic beans for his happy smile. He replied that he was a student pilot from Wellesbourne and that this was his first solo land away. A very good reason then for the Cheshire cat grin and it was absolutely refreshing to see such enthusiasm in young blood. The knock on affect was I went around grinning inwardly to myself remembering my first solo. So thank you Student pilot for making me a little less jaded than when I arrived at Halfpenny.
Thanks for reading and sharing our rather unusual day – far to much to write down but will stay in the memory banks for a long time.
Thanks for the great report and lovely photos!
Unfortunately there isn’t much at Castle Kennedy airport. It’s just a great big deserted field in the middle of nowhwere. So if you do make it there, I suggest that you make arrangements to get a bit further offsite by ground transport. Though there is a nice park within walking distance.
I went to a fly-in at Castle Kennedy a while back since it’s a quick trip from Andreas.
Haven’t been to Carlisle for a while, it’s a good airfield. But have they improved tower’s radio? They had extremely poor transmit strength last time I went there (I could hear planes booking out on the radio 20 miles out, but I could barely make out Carlisle Tower until about 5 miles from the airfield).
Dublinpilot, thank you.
Alioth – comms were 5/5 both ways. Outbound we had them until DCS and no issues with transmit or receive. Inbound I was handed over from Scottish at Annan and again, no probs encountered.
