Where have you been? What have you seen?
#1772102
At the LAA Rally last year I decided I should venture further north than the edge of the Southern chart for once, so bought a half-mil Northern chart (my old one being several years out of date!). Having been to Sherburn-in-Elmet before, I settled on Leeds East, formerly RAF Church Fenton. I got round to making this trip in late October last year.

Back then, the biggest problem we had was weather! There'd been a lot of heavy rain around the country in the weeks before (although nothing compared to the winter that would follow), which is evident from the video, particularly around the Ouse. Luckily, both airfields had tarmac runways, and although a bit of a breezy day the crosswind at Leeds East was within limits.

Outbound flight, I routed through East Midlands' zone. Normally I'd take the VFR lane from Shepshed to Long Eaton, but as there was a lot of flying school traffic inbound the controller offered me a transit at 3,000ft - this saved me an orbit to wait for commercial traffic! After that it's pretty much a case of following the M1 north, threading between Doncaster and Leeds Bradford's airspace. Once clear of the Sherburn in Elment ATZ, I tracked east and routed in via the A1/M1 VRP.

There's been a lot of money spent on transforming Leeds East, it's got a lot of promise. Nicely resurfaced, long runways, plenty of parking & hangarage and friendly controllers. Although the cafe was closing for the day they were still able to whip up a baked potato. Some may flinch at the £20 landing fee for a Cessna 172 when there's only A/G on offer, but with all the investment going on it didn't seem too bad. It was very quiet (aside from a training flight, I was the only one there), although this may have been due to the wind that day.

On the return flight, I'd planned to track east of Doncaster's zone, and then pretty much due south from Gainsborough back to Sywell. On calling up Doncaster for a traffic service, stating I'd be remaining clear of their zone, they responded with "Zone transit approved, what altitude would you like?". Not one to refuse this kind gesture from an evidently bored controller I went through their zone on track to Gamston. Luckily I had Skydemon, otherwise I'd have needed to do some VOR tracking!!

Unfortunately I'd placed the camera on the wrong side of the aircraft on the outbound leg, so didn't film East Midlands airport as I flew by. I wasn't originally going to upload this video as it's not one of my better ones, but I felt like being reminded of better times!



In summary: Leeds East is a great airport with lots of potential. Well worth a trip! Very friendly controller and cafe staff. I believe they're trying to get a GPS approach in place too.
Iceman, UncleT liked this