Alex Brett

Author's posts

What a difference a year can make

One year ago today, I weighed 103.1Kg, with a BMI of 30.1 (obese), and 26.5% body fat. As of this morning, I weigh 69.25Kg (-33.85Kg), with a BMI of 20.2 (normal, -9.9), and 11.5% (-15%) body fat. This post is to set out how I got to this point, in the hope it might be …

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London airport transits

On Friday 15th May, the government announced that recreational general aviation, where it complies with social distancing (i.e. solo flights or flights with members of your household only), was now allowed. Up until this point, my aircraft (G-AVWT) had sat idle, apart from a single ‘Engine Health’ flight, to protect the engine from corrosion (in …

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PilotAware

I’ve recently purchased a PilotAware Classic unit: This is a system based around a Raspberry Pi which acts as a low cost portable traffic awareness device. It uses a software defined radio (actually a unit designed to receive DVB-T) to receive transponder (mode C/S and ADS-B) signals, along with it’s own 869 aiqk745.5Mhz transceiver for …

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Open letter to Theresa May

Dear Theresa May, I am writing in response to the recent calls from the Prime Minister and yourself regarding increasing the powers of the police and security services. I can understand the aim of these calls, and indeed at face value stating that you are determined that “there should be no safe spaces for terrorists …

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Transits across Stansted

A brief post to relate a good experience I had last weekend – myself and another pilot from the aero club decided to fly out to Stapleford and back. The straight line route to get there goes straight through London Stansted’s airspace, so our planned routes had appropriate ‘dog legs’ around it, as there is …

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Project Propeller

A slightly delayed post here as I’ve been very busy with work over the past few weeks, however at the end of June I was fortunate enough to be able to take part in Project Propeller. This is an annual reunion for 150+ WW2 aircrew, which they are flown in to by current volunteer private …

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Flying Update

I’ve not posted for a while, as January has turned out to be a rather hectic month for me work wise. I have managed however to find a couple of chances to go flying thus far that are worth documenting… 11th January I went up for a local bimble, with greggj, a student pilot and …

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Trip to Gloucestershire Airport

On Saturday a last minute post appeared on the Flyer forums from the person who runs Gloucestershire Staverton airport (Darren), stating that if anybody flew in the next day (which was forecast to be excellent weather wise), he’d do a discounted landing fee and was happy to do tower tours. As such, I gave the …

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Night circuits

I’ve now completed both of my dual night circuit lessons – all that’s left to do for the night rating is five solo takeoffs and full stop landings (as they are full stop landings and not touch and go’s, they’ll take a little longer, and thus be spread across two more lesson slots). After lots …

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Great Saturday Morning

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