This morning's departure was cool and damp for me and Three-Five-Mike. It was 1145AM when we took off from London Ashford on Runway 3, climbed up to about 500 feet and banked over to the starboard side and started across the English Channel. The weather was damp and cool - oh I mentioned that, did I? The route for today with limited general ded reckoning and use VORs when able. That strategy came in handy and used KOK, HSD, and RTM as my VOR waypoints. After crossing the channel I passed north of Calais and saw the French coastline, and then turned toward the northeast after flying very nearly over the town of Koksijde. At 1200 it seemed to be clearing a bit and I climbed to 1000 feet and watched a watery world of inlets and bays slide below me, occasionally obscured by low scud and mist trails.
I tuned HSD VOR but never got a signal or ident and just continued on with the pre-planned heading of 049 magnetic. At 1250 there was light drizzle and broken layers forming below and above, but I never entirely lost sight of the ground, yet it seemed the weather was deteriorating. Checking the radio, surface reports indicated that visibility in Rotterdam was 1200 meters in drizzle and mist and an overcast layer at 400. Well it seemed pretty good right now, but just in case I pulled out a chart for Rotterdam - the VOR DME RWY 6 would be my guide to the airport!
Rotterdam METAR: EHRD 011755Z 23010KT 1200 R24/P2000N DZ BR OVC004 02/02 Q1024 BECMG 3000
I tuned in the STN NDB which was alive so then I tuned the Rotterdam NDB and it was good too, so then I tuned in the Rotterdam VOR and after verifying she was sho she said she was, I flew to STN NDB and began the approach - a bit low, but this wsn't really IFR either - I still had the ground well in view and a lot of the scudd had disappeared as I turned inland.
1307 - lined up on the 239 radial inbound to Rotterdam, and just a few minutes later the runway lights were in view. The rest was gravy with nary a bump of the gustiness and at 1313 I landed on Runway 6, taxied off into the grass and shut down. That's about 1.5 hours of flying and burned up 77 pounds of fuel.
