Helping Wings Flying Scholarship Flight IV - Chakotay Wood
Today the weather appeared to be overcast, however the conditions were variable and subjected to change. Quite frankly the weather was all over the shop; clear conditions in the East, dull and grey appearance at the airport and coming in from Guernsey to the west was low levelled clouds bringing in low visibility and light to medium rain. Despite this we decided that we would head up and survey the current conditions, there was pockets of turbulence here and there however the weather seemed manageable to me. We continued to progress on with our circuits consisting of touch and goes as per normal, we started to see these low level clouds come rolling in.
I couldn’t believe it, within a space of ten minutes I witnessed the shear pace of changing weather conditions on the island of Jersey, within ten minutes half of the island was covered by a coverage of broken clouds. I could see the West was extremely dull and was deteriorating and the East still looked fairly clear. By this time the levels of turbulence at low altitudes had increased and was exceptionally noticeable when passing through cloud levels.
At this point in time we were considering to head back in as we had just completed our normal number of circuits but also because the weather was getting noticeably worse. We weren’t the only ones thinking along the same lines as around the same time ATC (Air Traffic Control) ceased clearance of any other aircrafts flying visually and subsequently our intentions was terminated and we headed back. On the other hand at least I beat the approaching rain and was able to get up in the air beforehand, besides the rain gave me a good excuse to be lazy and watch daytime TV for the rest of the day.
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