When you’re not happy with a takeoff but get to over analyse it afterwards

Had a nice relaxing start to the day in bed. Had coffee and cereal. Read the paper. But couldn’t procrastinate for too long as I had an important passenger. Anya arrived on time. I do like prompt people, even though I could never be like that myself. We departed for Staverton. I gave my standard safety briefing, ‘Don’t touch anything and don’t point a camera in my direction as it may reflect the sun’. I could go into the brace position and emergency exits, but lets be honest, an engine failure in an R22 is a rare event, surviving and engine failure in an R22 is an even rarer event, if the hamster stops running, I’ve got very little time to react. We managed to get the aircraft a bit early so started up and headed out. Now, Staverton is having some work done at heli-south so you can’t fly over it. Two seven was the active runway but the wind was coming from 330. I crabbed it as much as I could but I ended up doing a crosswind takeoff and turning downwind at only about three hundred feet. The rest of the flight was uneventful, flew to the south, across to Cinderford and then up to Ross-On-Wye. Then via Tewksbury back to Gloucester. Drove back home, had a light lunch and then drove into town. Spent the next few hours walking into town, through the harbour and headed towards the balloon fiesta. Unfortunately the route to it was all blocked off. So I ended up going via a park in Bedminster and back to the centre. Walked back towards the car. Texted Ben that I was in the vicinity, we met up for a pint. Discussed the 27 takeoff issue, apparently I did exactly the right thing and compromises sometimes have to be made, I’ll make a good pilot yet.

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