Summer 2020 offered some good flying weather. Between COVID Lockdowns I managed to snatch a few days on Isles of Scilly. I flew from Headcorn to St Marys in a Socata TB20. Flight time was around 2 hours 40 minutes with a 28 mile crossing from Lands End to St Marys. Pre-flight planning confirmed availability of Radar services from Farnborough, Solent, Exeter and Newquay. The plan was to fly VFR along the south coast to Plymouth then route towards Newquay to then Lands End.
On the outbound trip we had great weather, few clouds at around 5000 feet allowing a VFR flight all the way while receiving either Basic or Traffic services en-route.
The return trip was not so straight forward. Cloud was overcast at 800 feet. Lands End had cancelled all Helicopter and Commercial flights to and from Scilly. Having filed a flight plan we departed from the shortish Runway 27 at St Marys. At 600 feet we banked right over the archipelago, completed post take off checks and started our climb into cloud. Breaking through into clear skies at 3500 feet we continued direct to Lands End. From there we were passed onto Culdrose Radar. We cruised on top of overcast cloud at Flight Level 050 all the way to Isle of Wight working with Solent Radar for clearances. Routing towards Brighton, holes started to appear in the cloud and by the time we were at Seaford cloud was scattered, turning direct to Headcorn we descended to 2000 feet and prepared to join for the home circuit.
A great way to use the freedom of a Pilot Licence.
