Whiskey Alpha Pilot

04/06/2026

PFL drill with Connor. The engine "goes" and the brain has to do five things at once. 73 knots. Trim. Where's the wind from. Pick a field. Mayday. Fuel checks. All while the ground keeps getting closer. First time back in the seat for a while, this was the moment everything either clicked or it didn't. Spoiler. It mostly didn't, first go. ✈️

04/06/2026

Hottest May day on record, and I spent it in a portacabin with no aircon, having a chat with the CAA. 1,119 airspace infringements in the UK last year, and no such thing as a little bust. New on the blog: what I learned, what a bust really costs, and the encoder fault in my own aircraft I never spotted. ✈️
https://whiskeyalphapilot.com/touch-and-go-logbook/bust-uk-airspace-caa-seminar

01/06/2026

Updated my Elstree Aerodrome airfield review

My home airfield reviewed honestly. Elstree EGTR has potholes from Wellington bombers, a circuit that flips at 2pm, and one of the best GA cafes.

01/06/2026

If the recovery needs a crane, you didn't recover. You crashed. Best thing I said all day, and it was an own goal. ✈️

30/05/2026

New video. I took KK up on my own for the first time in ages. No instructor, just me and the radio. A quick bimble to Silverstone and back out of Elstree. Did it go perfectly? Of course not. I'll let you spot the mistakes. There's a landing in there I'm oddly proud of too, give or take a centreline.

Have a watch: https://youtu.be/713fgNOaD0o

28/05/2026

A proper . The Giant with the knobbly stick is getting a rub down, so here's the afternoon back in 2022 we spent hunting for him from the air. Hope he enjoys the new chalk and lasts another thousand years. https://whiskeyalphapilot.com/touch-and-go-logbook/giant-knobbly-stick-rub-down

21/05/2026

Léon Ellison was one of my electronics tutors at university. A genius and a gentleman, in that order and both completely. The kind of teacher who made hard things feel reachable.

He died in 2024. I only learned this week what he'd been quietly doing for the twenty years or so since I last saw him.

He'd built a Lancaster cockpit. Not a model. Not a sketch. The full cockpit of an Avro Lancaster bomber, from the ground up, in his back garden. He tracked down the original drawings. He photographed every Lancaster he could get to. Then he went into his workshop and fabricated the lot.

This week it was winched out and driven up to the Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre in Lincolnshire, where the engineers there plan to turn it into a working simulator. Knowing Léon, that's exactly what he'd have wanted.

A genius and a gentleman. Rest easy.

Full piece on Touch and Go Logbook: https://whiskeyalphapilot.com/touch-and-go-logbook/he-built-a-lancaster-in-his-back-garden

✈️

16/05/2026

Three forced landings on my first flight back after months on the ground. My instructor Connor decided to find out exactly how rusty I'd got. Spoiler: very. ✈️

Full vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WMjU3O-Pb8

09/05/2026

Back in the air today. First time with no passengers this year. KK was behaved as always, the tower briefly forgot who I was, blood pressure recovered, and apparently I made some contrails on the way home.
Sorry chemtrail folks. Just water vapour. And wasnt me. Same as it’s always been. ✈️

07/05/2026

A neighbourhood in Seattle got helicopter landings restricted at a children's hospital. Twenty extra minutes by ambulance. Apparently the noise was the problem.

So let's ban hospitals next, shall we?

New on the Touch and Go Logbook: https://whiskeyalphapilot.com/touch-and-go-logbook/let-s-ban-hospitals-next