As a summary of the trip:
Friday 19th May
Gloucester to Lille = 2.0 flying hours
Lille to Dijon = 2.2 flying hours
Saturday 20th May
No flying - sightseeing around Dijon
Sunday 21st May
Dijon to Cannes = 2.6 flying hours
Monday 22nd May
Cannes to Lucca = 2.2 flying hours
Lucca to Aprilia = 2.0 flying hours
Tuesday 23rd May
No flying - sightseeing in the area and eating loads
Wednesday 24th May
Aprilia to Ajaccio (Corsica) = 2.3 flying hours
Thursday 25th May
Ajaccio to Carcassonne = 3.4 flying hours
Friday 26th May
Carcassonne to Bergerac (diversion) = 1.7 flying hours
Bergerac to Dinard (St Malo) = 2.6 flying hours
Saturday 27th May
Dinard to Gloucester = 2.6 flying hours
Total flying time for the trip = 23.6 hours
New airports visited = 8
Aside from the facts and figures, what other flying related things were firsts?
• Well, it is the further I have been from my base in Gloucester
• It is the first time I have flown (myself that is) to Italy
• It is the first time I have flown in mountains (UK does not count)
• First time I have flown in the Mediterranean
What did I learn from this trip?
• How to scud run!
• Make your own go/no go decisions.
• Be prepared to give it a try, you can always do a circuit and land or divert
• That the Piper Arrow DOES fly in a 45 kt tailwind
• To call my aircraft type a P28R as controllers did'nt understand 'Arrow’
• How to do 'wing down’ crosswind landings
• Short-field grass strip take-off techniques (for real)
• Mobile computing, WiFi and AvBrief is definitely the way to go
• It would help refuelling if I could get a French credit card
• Too many destinations on a trip are more tiring that flying long ‘two-leg’ days
• I must brush up my IMC skills (Timothy has offered me ILS coaching)
• The Arrow runs nicely at 36 lph and can easily do 3.5 hours with reserves
That is my big trip for 2006. I will do a couple of cross-channel weekends and maybe a long weekend Scotland trip and I must do my IMC revalidation, but other than locals, that will be it for 2006.
Several possibilities for 2007, but I will change jobs and have a far less generous holiday entitlement, so I must use my holidays wisely – I will be joining the ‘cash-rich, time-poor’ brigade. The options are:
• One week ‘fly-fly’ holiday in west coast USA
• See what Flyer Forum are doing next year for a Safari
• Do my own trip to Morocco (Marrakesh?)
• Do my own Nordic trip to the three Nordic capitals
Hmmm…. decisions, decisions!
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Flyer Forum Safari - 27th May
Dinard to Gloucester
Route: LFRD – GV – MP – KATHY – GWC - EGBJ
Up early for breakfast but the ‘mobile computing and Avbrief’ crowd were already poring over the weather. Bad news – the forecasts for Blighty were for very low cloud or fog, rain and crap visibility, BUT getting ‘less bad’ in the afternoon – probably do-able for a scud run or an IMC approach.
So we decided to go into St Malo for a wander and coffee. Dan looked destroyed and needed no further encouragement to return to his bed.
We walked into town and wandered the ramparts. The sky was solid cloud, but not very thick and it looked to me like 1500’ base. Then shopping. Timothy bought 16 or so croissants for his gang back in the UK and for reasons best known to themselves, the Teeside guys bought some animated seagulls to hand from their ceilings.
We settled down to a coffee and croissant in St Malo and watched while the clouds broke up to reveal glorious blue sky.
Having killed time, we wandered back to the hotel at 11:30 and I roused Dan. Derek (the pilot from Jersey) has a people carrier car permanently based at Dinard airport and kindly left his wife and guests at the hotel while he ferried us all to Dinard. The hydro-electric tidal barrage was up so there was a traffic jam on the way.
We got to the airport and again, Dan loaded and checked the aircraft while I filed the flight plan. I planned to route up the Cotentin peninsula and out over the MP NDB at Cherbourg using the VFR route to the Isle of Wight and then to the GWC VOR.
I rang Gloucester and the weather at Gloucester was still truly horrible, but do-able for an NBD/DME approach. I spoke to the tower who had nothing to do and only to happy for me to do an NDB/DME approach any time I liked today! Alternatively, I had the plates for both Cardiff and Filton and it was clearer in the east of the country. Anyway, if worst came to worst, I could fly all the way back to Dinard and land in bright sunshine! So off we went at about 13:30 local.
I climbed in VFR to FL50 and was handed over to Deauville Information. Half way up the Cotentin peninsula, the clear skies gave way to a broken undercast (still see some of the ground and could descend if required) and I elected to continue, as I knew we were heading into ‘not-very-nice’ weather.
By mid-channel, the undercast had become solid and I was flying VMC on top. I climbed to FL55 to abide by IFR rules and contacted London Information. They were as quiet as I have ever heard them and very helpful indeed. They warned me about the Class A airspace north of GWC at FL45 and various airways further north. I explained that on that track I would descend to FL45 for IFR rules and would therefore remain clear of controlled airspace. On the way from GWC to Gloucester, the GPS showed 100kts groundspeed – so we were hitting a 25 – 30kt headwind – oh great!
Approaching GWC, we turned and I descended to FL45 and was from then on in and out of the soup. I was in it and flying on instruments most of the time, when I was out, I was just out at the top of the layer and between another layer. I got the latest weather for Gloucester and it was pretty much unchanged – FEW007, SCT008, OVC010. However, I also heard the weather for Southend (air show) was OVC at 3000’ – so I mentally noted that if I couldn’t get in anywhere locally, I should head east.
As we trundled along, I noted some broken cloud with ground visible through holes big enough to get down over Popham. I stored this in memory in case I needed it later.
I reported at Newbury and changed to Brize Radar. Again, they were quiet and helpful. At one point I missed a bit of their transmission, but heard something like ‘multiple contacts in your 12 o’clock’. Thinking ‘who the hell would be up here in this weather?’ I asked for height information and was about to ask for vectors to avoid, when the controller said ‘no, the radar is picking up rain and showers’. Right on que, rain started spattering the windscreen but fortunately little turbulence. Dan noted some small holes around Cirencester, but I wasn’t going to try them as the ground is too high at this point.
I got the ATIS for Gloucester who were giving runway 22 in use and wind as 200/12. OK, so I can now look forward to a crosswind NDB/DME approach – this just gets better and better!
I contacted Gloucester and was offered my choice of approaches. I opted for the full approach without the hold and had to report beacon out. I descended to 3000’ on the QNH. As we closed in to the beacon, we both noted sensible sized holes with good views of the ground, but what the hell – I haven’t shot and NDB/DME for a while, so lets get some practice.
Reported beacon out and told to report base turn complete. Established on 095, I descended in the procedure to 2300’ then left rate 1 turn to establish 264. Base turn complete, I descended in the procedure. I confess, I had to re-establish 264 track twice as the crosswind toyed with me. Gear down, flaps on and landing checks complete, I was now below 1000’ with the odd tantalising glimpse of the ground. Closer now and 800’ – nearly out, then 700’ and yes – I am out. Now where the hell is the runway – oh there it is over to the right (crabbing due to crosswind threw me for a second or two).
Gloucester did offer me a circle to land 22, but I opted for the crosswind on 27.
Final stage of flaps, MP is right, PAPI’s look good, in we come. Over the displaced threshold and down. Not the most elegant of landings, but hey - we are down!
We taxi in and switch off. There is only one other aircraft flying and that comes in shortly after us. Gloucester is very quite, but a very welcome sight.
Dan unpacks while I sort out the tech log, the locker and the paperwork. The plane is a bit dusty despite the rain, so Dan sets about it with a bucket and car shampoo. We hose it down and get the worst of it off, along with all of the bug-splats. I will leave the oil and fuel for Tim to do tomorrow as he is due to take the plane up then.
We stagger with all our luggage and loot back through the terminal and the lady on the desk remembers us from ‘those crazy people that went last Friday’ and says we look a lot more tanned now.
The car is till there and we load up and drive home. Marion is out, so I start to unpack and upload the photos to the computer etc.
What a great trip! But I am tired and will sleep well tonight (after I have bored the wife to death over a beer in the pub of course)!
Route: LFRD – GV – MP – KATHY – GWC - EGBJ
Up early for breakfast but the ‘mobile computing and Avbrief’ crowd were already poring over the weather. Bad news – the forecasts for Blighty were for very low cloud or fog, rain and crap visibility, BUT getting ‘less bad’ in the afternoon – probably do-able for a scud run or an IMC approach.
So we decided to go into St Malo for a wander and coffee. Dan looked destroyed and needed no further encouragement to return to his bed.
We walked into town and wandered the ramparts. The sky was solid cloud, but not very thick and it looked to me like 1500’ base. Then shopping. Timothy bought 16 or so croissants for his gang back in the UK and for reasons best known to themselves, the Teeside guys bought some animated seagulls to hand from their ceilings.
We settled down to a coffee and croissant in St Malo and watched while the clouds broke up to reveal glorious blue sky.
Having killed time, we wandered back to the hotel at 11:30 and I roused Dan. Derek (the pilot from Jersey) has a people carrier car permanently based at Dinard airport and kindly left his wife and guests at the hotel while he ferried us all to Dinard. The hydro-electric tidal barrage was up so there was a traffic jam on the way.
We got to the airport and again, Dan loaded and checked the aircraft while I filed the flight plan. I planned to route up the Cotentin peninsula and out over the MP NDB at Cherbourg using the VFR route to the Isle of Wight and then to the GWC VOR.
I rang Gloucester and the weather at Gloucester was still truly horrible, but do-able for an NBD/DME approach. I spoke to the tower who had nothing to do and only to happy for me to do an NDB/DME approach any time I liked today! Alternatively, I had the plates for both Cardiff and Filton and it was clearer in the east of the country. Anyway, if worst came to worst, I could fly all the way back to Dinard and land in bright sunshine! So off we went at about 13:30 local.
I climbed in VFR to FL50 and was handed over to Deauville Information. Half way up the Cotentin peninsula, the clear skies gave way to a broken undercast (still see some of the ground and could descend if required) and I elected to continue, as I knew we were heading into ‘not-very-nice’ weather.
By mid-channel, the undercast had become solid and I was flying VMC on top. I climbed to FL55 to abide by IFR rules and contacted London Information. They were as quiet as I have ever heard them and very helpful indeed. They warned me about the Class A airspace north of GWC at FL45 and various airways further north. I explained that on that track I would descend to FL45 for IFR rules and would therefore remain clear of controlled airspace. On the way from GWC to Gloucester, the GPS showed 100kts groundspeed – so we were hitting a 25 – 30kt headwind – oh great!
Approaching GWC, we turned and I descended to FL45 and was from then on in and out of the soup. I was in it and flying on instruments most of the time, when I was out, I was just out at the top of the layer and between another layer. I got the latest weather for Gloucester and it was pretty much unchanged – FEW007, SCT008, OVC010. However, I also heard the weather for Southend (air show) was OVC at 3000’ – so I mentally noted that if I couldn’t get in anywhere locally, I should head east.
As we trundled along, I noted some broken cloud with ground visible through holes big enough to get down over Popham. I stored this in memory in case I needed it later.
I reported at Newbury and changed to Brize Radar. Again, they were quiet and helpful. At one point I missed a bit of their transmission, but heard something like ‘multiple contacts in your 12 o’clock’. Thinking ‘who the hell would be up here in this weather?’ I asked for height information and was about to ask for vectors to avoid, when the controller said ‘no, the radar is picking up rain and showers’. Right on que, rain started spattering the windscreen but fortunately little turbulence. Dan noted some small holes around Cirencester, but I wasn’t going to try them as the ground is too high at this point.
I got the ATIS for Gloucester who were giving runway 22 in use and wind as 200/12. OK, so I can now look forward to a crosswind NDB/DME approach – this just gets better and better!
I contacted Gloucester and was offered my choice of approaches. I opted for the full approach without the hold and had to report beacon out. I descended to 3000’ on the QNH. As we closed in to the beacon, we both noted sensible sized holes with good views of the ground, but what the hell – I haven’t shot and NDB/DME for a while, so lets get some practice.
Reported beacon out and told to report base turn complete. Established on 095, I descended in the procedure to 2300’ then left rate 1 turn to establish 264. Base turn complete, I descended in the procedure. I confess, I had to re-establish 264 track twice as the crosswind toyed with me. Gear down, flaps on and landing checks complete, I was now below 1000’ with the odd tantalising glimpse of the ground. Closer now and 800’ – nearly out, then 700’ and yes – I am out. Now where the hell is the runway – oh there it is over to the right (crabbing due to crosswind threw me for a second or two).
Gloucester did offer me a circle to land 22, but I opted for the crosswind on 27.
Final stage of flaps, MP is right, PAPI’s look good, in we come. Over the displaced threshold and down. Not the most elegant of landings, but hey - we are down!
We taxi in and switch off. There is only one other aircraft flying and that comes in shortly after us. Gloucester is very quite, but a very welcome sight.
Dan unpacks while I sort out the tech log, the locker and the paperwork. The plane is a bit dusty despite the rain, so Dan sets about it with a bucket and car shampoo. We hose it down and get the worst of it off, along with all of the bug-splats. I will leave the oil and fuel for Tim to do tomorrow as he is due to take the plane up then.
We stagger with all our luggage and loot back through the terminal and the lady on the desk remembers us from ‘those crazy people that went last Friday’ and says we look a lot more tanned now.
The car is till there and we load up and drive home. Marion is out, so I start to unpack and upload the photos to the computer etc.
What a great trip! But I am tired and will sleep well tonight (after I have bored the wife to death over a beer in the pub of course)!
Flyer Forum Safari - 26th May
Carcassonne to Dinard / St Malo via Bergerac (as it turned out)!
Route:
Leg 1: LFMK – GAI – SAU – LFBE
Leg 2: LFBE – CNA – NTS – REN – LFRD
Up early again, but this time, buoyed by my long trip to Carcassonne and the fuel left, I decided to try for a direct to Dinard, weather permitting and unless there was a howling headwind.
Well, the weather kind of settled that one. The back of a warm front was still crossing the west coast of France and the cloud base was horrible and only lifting in the afternoon. So change of plan – we could all go to La Rochelle for a leisurely lunch then onto Dinard for the late afternoon.
So off we went. Did an orbit of the old town for some pictures then set track to 2500’ for GAU. The height of the hills on track and the cloud base made me change my mind in flight and asked Tolouse Information to be routed via the overhead of LFIT (and lower ground). They agreed after a while but advised us to fly east of LFCX due to aerobatics.
I was beginning to wonder what the fuss was about the weather as we started to see blue skies with scattered lower clouds. As we approached SAU, I changed to Aquitaine Information and advised them of our plans. They asked if I wanted the weather for La Rochelle – uh oh! They told me it was 200’ cloudbase in 300m visibility! I guess a VFR approach is out then? I asked about Royan (one of my alternates) and that was worse. OK, looks like the coast is out and so is a run for Dinard. Then the helpful controller advises me that another G registered aircraft had diverted to Bergerac – inland and to the east. I checked the weather and it was OK – 1500’ cloudbase with good vis. So that settled it – lunch in Bergerac.
We diverted and landed on runway 28. As we taxied in we spotted G-BRCD and G-BBSA already on the stand – looks like we all made the same decision – but where was N2923N? It turns out that Derek had made it into La Rochelle (FAA IR) and now felt like one of the kids at school that no-one else liked!
Bergerac is a nice field. Fairly primitive arrivals and departures buildings, but an excellent runway. We taxied over to the pumps (may as well fill up) and caught up with G-BRCD and G-BBSA there as they had also diverted to Bergerac. We parked up and decided on a leisurely lunch with a check of the Meteo, hoping the clag would blow through by the afternoon as predicted.
We trudged over to the Meteo office which was manned by a very helpful guy, who printed out all of the synoptics, TAF’s and METAR’s for us to analyse over lunch. We went to the restaurant and I ordered a Tuna salad. The service was friendly enough, but erratic and painfully slow! The meteo again suggested mid-afternoon would be OK with a bit of scud running and clearer on the northern coast.
We started to wander back to the planes and on the way, both Dan and I bought a ‘three-pack’ of the local Bergerac wine for EUR15. We made our way through departures, where some low-cost FlyBe passengers were waiting for the call. Dan and I had our hi-vis ‘captioned’ T-shirts on again and as we passed, I overheard a woman passenger read the back of our shorts and say ‘thank god we’re not flying with them1’ – Damn – how did she figure me out so quickly! The security people were amused with our shirts and decided not to bother asking for my flying license – good, coz I left it in the bloody plane didn’t I?
We saddled up and taxied out behind a lo-cost BAE125. Pretty cool! Off we went into an easy 2000’ cloudbase and headed north. Timothy first in G-BRCD, followed by Geoff in G-BBSA, then us.
Soon after departure however, we were forced down to 1200’ or so to stay VMC by a broken low layer. I was hoping it was a band of cloud that we would break out of as it looked like it.
I tuned to the Cognac military frequency just in time to hear Geoff get an automated announcement to say that zone transits were approved but flights though the overhead must be at least 1000’ (yep – Friday afternoon and the military have packed up). By now I was struggling to maintain 1100’ on the QNH, so decided to route east around the airfield.
Once past, I called Poitier Information, but was obviously too low for contact. I did however get an air-to-air from Timothy and for a good ten minutes, our three aircraft used Poitier Information as an air-to-air frequency to work out where each other was, as we were all scraping our heads on tops of the cloud and following identical routes with the last two aircraft all scheduled to overtake each other – gets a bit uncomfortable, certainly Dan wasn’t too happy.
Later, still at 1000’ in and out of light thin cloud, but still in sight of the ground, I established that I had overtaken both of them and felt happier. I changed to Nantes Information and requested routing through their overhead (we were VOR hopping). They asked me to continue and would advise me later. As we got nearer, the cloud started to break and lift and I thought ‘great – we are starting to come out of this’. The now broken overcast was pretty thin and I thought I would be on-top by 3000’, but resisted the urge on the basis that it looked like it was clearing up anyway. How wrong I was. The clearing bit was a tease and soon disappeared with me at 1000’ scraping my head on the cloud approaching Nantes.
I was not surprised when they refused overhead transit at that altitude and I routed around the east of the zone. Having been here before, something was nagging at me and on checking the map, I recalled what it was. Buried on the map at the junction of the zone and the approach area was a bloody great big TV mast, right on my track. I spotted it about 2 nm away and started to turn right just as Nantes came on warning me of it – thanks. By this time, I was getting pretty fed up with this and when G-BBSA came on and said they were VMC on top, that was it.
I requested and got authority to climb and the next ‘hole’ I spotted, I also went VMC on top to 3000’ (yes, with glimpses of the ground). Aaahhhh – blisssss! Now that is much better! We headed on to Rennes and changed to Rennes Information. We were granted transit through the overhead and relayed Dinard weather, which seems fine – basically a 2500’ cloudbase and good VFR. I have to say that both Nantes and Rennes Information were very on-the-ball and helpful.
Shortly after passing Rennes, I got an air-to-air from Timothy asking me (as I was now no 1 in our gaggle of three aircraft) to confirm if Dinard was definitely VFR (as he was concerned about fuel in the event of a diversion back to Rennes or elsewhere). By now, the clouds were thickening and we would have to either climb to 5000’ or descend. The holes we came across seemed to show the base of the lowest layer was lifting, so I circled and descended in a hole to 1700’ and was below the cloud. As I went on towards Dinard, we could climb to 2500 with excellent forward visibility. Just to be sure, I picked up the Dinard ATIS which confirmed VFR and I relayed a message through Rennes to Timothy that it was definitely VFR-able.
As we approached, Dinard airfield was clearly visible with Dinard on the left and St Malo on the right of the estuary. We were given a right base join for runway 35 with only a minor crosswind. We were quickly cleared to land and I happily brought the plane in for probably the next best landing of the trip (the best being at Lille where I honestly didn’t realise the wheel were already touching).
We taxied up to the fuel and Dan went off to get the key and ‘do his French stuff’. We struggled with the instructions while both Timothy and Geoff landed and pulled in behind us. Eventually, we called a pompier over who casually flicked the handle on the pump over to reset the litres dispensed reading to zero, whereupon the pump came to life (It says to do this in the French version of the instructions, but not the English version!).
We fuelled up and parked and were starting unload as a Ryanair jet came in to land. This added some urgency on our part as we were determined to beat the passengers to the taxis. I paid the firecrew and walked smartly through a deserted arrivals, where four of us piled into a cab for St Malo. We were lucky that the barrage wasn’t up and we quickly got across the hydro-electric tidal barrage and into St Malo. We were deposited at the Mercure on the sea front within easy walk of the town. A quick shower then Dan and I took off into town by 18:00 for a look-see and a few beers while the rest caught us up and we RV’d at a café at 20:00.
When we met at the restaurant we had booked, it was quite posh, but did not understand vegetarian. Timothy was justly outraged when he was offered only fish or that universal panacea – le omelette! (‘since when was a fish a vegetable’ he queried in his best English accented French!). He decided that he couldn’t eat here and would see us all later. The general feeling was that we should stay together for our last meal of the trip so we all trooped out. Maybe one day the French will cater for vegetarians properly – I have great sympathy as we struggled with this with our vegetarian daughter.
We didn’t have to go far to find a very nice Pizza and other stuff restaurant just inside the main gate on the left. Dan ordered the one-litre beers for a few of us and got stuck in. Dan eventually successfully bartered his ‘Canada’ baseball hat for the beer mug with the waitress. This collection of beer glasses is getting pretty huge I can tell you.
Suitably replete and becoming increasingly boisterous, we wandered back to the Mercure where I collapsed into a semi-drunken snoring heap.
Route:
Leg 1: LFMK – GAI – SAU – LFBE
Leg 2: LFBE – CNA – NTS – REN – LFRD
Up early again, but this time, buoyed by my long trip to Carcassonne and the fuel left, I decided to try for a direct to Dinard, weather permitting and unless there was a howling headwind.
Well, the weather kind of settled that one. The back of a warm front was still crossing the west coast of France and the cloud base was horrible and only lifting in the afternoon. So change of plan – we could all go to La Rochelle for a leisurely lunch then onto Dinard for the late afternoon.
So off we went. Did an orbit of the old town for some pictures then set track to 2500’ for GAU. The height of the hills on track and the cloud base made me change my mind in flight and asked Tolouse Information to be routed via the overhead of LFIT (and lower ground). They agreed after a while but advised us to fly east of LFCX due to aerobatics.
I was beginning to wonder what the fuss was about the weather as we started to see blue skies with scattered lower clouds. As we approached SAU, I changed to Aquitaine Information and advised them of our plans. They asked if I wanted the weather for La Rochelle – uh oh! They told me it was 200’ cloudbase in 300m visibility! I guess a VFR approach is out then? I asked about Royan (one of my alternates) and that was worse. OK, looks like the coast is out and so is a run for Dinard. Then the helpful controller advises me that another G registered aircraft had diverted to Bergerac – inland and to the east. I checked the weather and it was OK – 1500’ cloudbase with good vis. So that settled it – lunch in Bergerac.
We diverted and landed on runway 28. As we taxied in we spotted G-BRCD and G-BBSA already on the stand – looks like we all made the same decision – but where was N2923N? It turns out that Derek had made it into La Rochelle (FAA IR) and now felt like one of the kids at school that no-one else liked!
Bergerac is a nice field. Fairly primitive arrivals and departures buildings, but an excellent runway. We taxied over to the pumps (may as well fill up) and caught up with G-BRCD and G-BBSA there as they had also diverted to Bergerac. We parked up and decided on a leisurely lunch with a check of the Meteo, hoping the clag would blow through by the afternoon as predicted.
We trudged over to the Meteo office which was manned by a very helpful guy, who printed out all of the synoptics, TAF’s and METAR’s for us to analyse over lunch. We went to the restaurant and I ordered a Tuna salad. The service was friendly enough, but erratic and painfully slow! The meteo again suggested mid-afternoon would be OK with a bit of scud running and clearer on the northern coast.
We started to wander back to the planes and on the way, both Dan and I bought a ‘three-pack’ of the local Bergerac wine for EUR15. We made our way through departures, where some low-cost FlyBe passengers were waiting for the call. Dan and I had our hi-vis ‘captioned’ T-shirts on again and as we passed, I overheard a woman passenger read the back of our shorts and say ‘thank god we’re not flying with them1’ – Damn – how did she figure me out so quickly! The security people were amused with our shirts and decided not to bother asking for my flying license – good, coz I left it in the bloody plane didn’t I?
We saddled up and taxied out behind a lo-cost BAE125. Pretty cool! Off we went into an easy 2000’ cloudbase and headed north. Timothy first in G-BRCD, followed by Geoff in G-BBSA, then us.
Soon after departure however, we were forced down to 1200’ or so to stay VMC by a broken low layer. I was hoping it was a band of cloud that we would break out of as it looked like it.
I tuned to the Cognac military frequency just in time to hear Geoff get an automated announcement to say that zone transits were approved but flights though the overhead must be at least 1000’ (yep – Friday afternoon and the military have packed up). By now I was struggling to maintain 1100’ on the QNH, so decided to route east around the airfield.
Once past, I called Poitier Information, but was obviously too low for contact. I did however get an air-to-air from Timothy and for a good ten minutes, our three aircraft used Poitier Information as an air-to-air frequency to work out where each other was, as we were all scraping our heads on tops of the cloud and following identical routes with the last two aircraft all scheduled to overtake each other – gets a bit uncomfortable, certainly Dan wasn’t too happy.
Later, still at 1000’ in and out of light thin cloud, but still in sight of the ground, I established that I had overtaken both of them and felt happier. I changed to Nantes Information and requested routing through their overhead (we were VOR hopping). They asked me to continue and would advise me later. As we got nearer, the cloud started to break and lift and I thought ‘great – we are starting to come out of this’. The now broken overcast was pretty thin and I thought I would be on-top by 3000’, but resisted the urge on the basis that it looked like it was clearing up anyway. How wrong I was. The clearing bit was a tease and soon disappeared with me at 1000’ scraping my head on the cloud approaching Nantes.
I was not surprised when they refused overhead transit at that altitude and I routed around the east of the zone. Having been here before, something was nagging at me and on checking the map, I recalled what it was. Buried on the map at the junction of the zone and the approach area was a bloody great big TV mast, right on my track. I spotted it about 2 nm away and started to turn right just as Nantes came on warning me of it – thanks. By this time, I was getting pretty fed up with this and when G-BBSA came on and said they were VMC on top, that was it.
I requested and got authority to climb and the next ‘hole’ I spotted, I also went VMC on top to 3000’ (yes, with glimpses of the ground). Aaahhhh – blisssss! Now that is much better! We headed on to Rennes and changed to Rennes Information. We were granted transit through the overhead and relayed Dinard weather, which seems fine – basically a 2500’ cloudbase and good VFR. I have to say that both Nantes and Rennes Information were very on-the-ball and helpful.
Shortly after passing Rennes, I got an air-to-air from Timothy asking me (as I was now no 1 in our gaggle of three aircraft) to confirm if Dinard was definitely VFR (as he was concerned about fuel in the event of a diversion back to Rennes or elsewhere). By now, the clouds were thickening and we would have to either climb to 5000’ or descend. The holes we came across seemed to show the base of the lowest layer was lifting, so I circled and descended in a hole to 1700’ and was below the cloud. As I went on towards Dinard, we could climb to 2500 with excellent forward visibility. Just to be sure, I picked up the Dinard ATIS which confirmed VFR and I relayed a message through Rennes to Timothy that it was definitely VFR-able.
As we approached, Dinard airfield was clearly visible with Dinard on the left and St Malo on the right of the estuary. We were given a right base join for runway 35 with only a minor crosswind. We were quickly cleared to land and I happily brought the plane in for probably the next best landing of the trip (the best being at Lille where I honestly didn’t realise the wheel were already touching).
We taxied up to the fuel and Dan went off to get the key and ‘do his French stuff’. We struggled with the instructions while both Timothy and Geoff landed and pulled in behind us. Eventually, we called a pompier over who casually flicked the handle on the pump over to reset the litres dispensed reading to zero, whereupon the pump came to life (It says to do this in the French version of the instructions, but not the English version!).
We fuelled up and parked and were starting unload as a Ryanair jet came in to land. This added some urgency on our part as we were determined to beat the passengers to the taxis. I paid the firecrew and walked smartly through a deserted arrivals, where four of us piled into a cab for St Malo. We were lucky that the barrage wasn’t up and we quickly got across the hydro-electric tidal barrage and into St Malo. We were deposited at the Mercure on the sea front within easy walk of the town. A quick shower then Dan and I took off into town by 18:00 for a look-see and a few beers while the rest caught us up and we RV’d at a café at 20:00.
When we met at the restaurant we had booked, it was quite posh, but did not understand vegetarian. Timothy was justly outraged when he was offered only fish or that universal panacea – le omelette! (‘since when was a fish a vegetable’ he queried in his best English accented French!). He decided that he couldn’t eat here and would see us all later. The general feeling was that we should stay together for our last meal of the trip so we all trooped out. Maybe one day the French will cater for vegetarians properly – I have great sympathy as we struggled with this with our vegetarian daughter.
We didn’t have to go far to find a very nice Pizza and other stuff restaurant just inside the main gate on the left. Dan ordered the one-litre beers for a few of us and got stuck in. Dan eventually successfully bartered his ‘Canada’ baseball hat for the beer mug with the waitress. This collection of beer glasses is getting pretty huge I can tell you.
Suitably replete and becoming increasingly boisterous, we wandered back to the Mercure where I collapsed into a semi-drunken snoring heap.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Flyer Forum Safari - 25th May
Ajaccio (Corsica) to Carcassonne
Route: LFKJ – CV – LONSU – STP – TLN COAST FG – LFMK
Up and out to the airport reasonably early. I am beginning to think we may have tried for too many overnight stops, when it might have been better to go for fewer stays and two nights at each. Something to consider for future trips.
We check the met courtesy of various laptops, Avbrief and WiFi etc (I have got to get some of this stuff). Looks good to go. I am already fuelled up (rule no 1 – always fuel up on arrival and not on departure) and ready to go.
Dan loads up and checks the plane out while I file the flight plan. Timothy has to fuel up, so we start up and taxi out and are the first of the now reduced group to take-off. We are routed out via the VRP’s (they are very keen on these in Corsica) and head up the coast to Calvi. We climb to FL45 and are routed again via VRP’s at Calvi out to sea.
Blue sky and excellent visibility – I could get used to this Mediterranean flying lark you know!
We trundle along and are handed over to Nice Information. We coast in near STP and descend to 1000’ to follow the required altitude and trail of VRP’s that mark the low level VFR route around the south coast of France (again, clearly marked on the Jeppesen charts).
In short order we are handed over to Hyeres Tower, who release us to Marseilles Information. They advise us of opposite direction traffic also following the VFR route as a Cessna 210 at 1200’. We descend to 700’ and spot him shortly afterwards.
We are handed over to Montpelier Information and start to transit the Carmargue – a series of salt lakes and marshes long ago converted into salt drying pans for sea salt.
Just past Montpelier, I ask for and am granted a climb to 3000’ and direct track to Carcassonne. We try to raise Toulouse Approach as instructed on the Carcassonne plates, but even at 3000’ we are apparently out of line of sight. A helpful aircraft relays my message that I am changing to Carcassonne Tower and this is approved.
As we approach Carcassonne, I am struggling to make out the famous walled old town – and then I spot it – WOW!! I hope our hotel is near there.
I seem to be racing a German registered aircraft in (he is joining from the north) but I appear to have won as I get a right base join for runway 28 with a wind something like 260 / 20. I come in for a nice landing and can see what they mean about the wind.
We taxi over to the pumps and join a queue of about four planes in front of us – all German. I speak to one of the pilots and it is a club flyout to Spain. The fuelling takes some time and as I wait, Derek Fage and Paul Venton and wives land in their Cherokee 6 – they were behind us all the way but didn’t catch up – shame – I was hoping for some air-to-air pictures. This is one of the few airfields that take the BP Fuel Card I have and the pompier is delighted to see it. He tells Dan that it is so much quicker to process.
We are instructed to park on the hard apron to the east of the tower and they are disappointed when I tell them that we are down to some four aircraft.
Dan and I secure the plane and make for the terminal. We get a taxi just before a Ryanair comes in to land. Our hotel is right by the old city and only a 100m walk – and a nice modern and clean hotel to boot.
I have a quick shower and we meet up and head into the old walled city. It is a bank holiday in France and the place is crowded on such a nice sunny day. We beat our way though crowds to find a slightly more out of the way bar and grab a beer – EUR5 for a half a litre of beer!
Dan and I then go sightseeing around the old town and find a really nice looking restaurant for the evening – wood-smoke fire for cooking, live music – great! We bump into Derek and Tammy and they check out the restaurant and we book it for all of us for the evening.
We grab another beer in the main square – this time an even more outrageous EUR6 for half a litre!
We head back to the hotel, shower, changed and head into town as a group for the evening.
The restaurant does not disappoint (well, not me anyway – I had the casoulet). The live music is local folk played by a very enthusiastic and animated guy, but it certainly does not meet with approval from Timothy (who is more accustomed to opera and classical).
A good day, with a nice long trip (3.4 hour leg) from Corsica to Carcassonne along the French Riviera in glorious sunshine. This is the life!
Route: LFKJ – CV – LONSU – STP – TLN COAST FG – LFMK
Up and out to the airport reasonably early. I am beginning to think we may have tried for too many overnight stops, when it might have been better to go for fewer stays and two nights at each. Something to consider for future trips.
We check the met courtesy of various laptops, Avbrief and WiFi etc (I have got to get some of this stuff). Looks good to go. I am already fuelled up (rule no 1 – always fuel up on arrival and not on departure) and ready to go.
Dan loads up and checks the plane out while I file the flight plan. Timothy has to fuel up, so we start up and taxi out and are the first of the now reduced group to take-off. We are routed out via the VRP’s (they are very keen on these in Corsica) and head up the coast to Calvi. We climb to FL45 and are routed again via VRP’s at Calvi out to sea.
Blue sky and excellent visibility – I could get used to this Mediterranean flying lark you know!
We trundle along and are handed over to Nice Information. We coast in near STP and descend to 1000’ to follow the required altitude and trail of VRP’s that mark the low level VFR route around the south coast of France (again, clearly marked on the Jeppesen charts).
In short order we are handed over to Hyeres Tower, who release us to Marseilles Information. They advise us of opposite direction traffic also following the VFR route as a Cessna 210 at 1200’. We descend to 700’ and spot him shortly afterwards.
We are handed over to Montpelier Information and start to transit the Carmargue – a series of salt lakes and marshes long ago converted into salt drying pans for sea salt.
Just past Montpelier, I ask for and am granted a climb to 3000’ and direct track to Carcassonne. We try to raise Toulouse Approach as instructed on the Carcassonne plates, but even at 3000’ we are apparently out of line of sight. A helpful aircraft relays my message that I am changing to Carcassonne Tower and this is approved.
As we approach Carcassonne, I am struggling to make out the famous walled old town – and then I spot it – WOW!! I hope our hotel is near there.
I seem to be racing a German registered aircraft in (he is joining from the north) but I appear to have won as I get a right base join for runway 28 with a wind something like 260 / 20. I come in for a nice landing and can see what they mean about the wind.
We taxi over to the pumps and join a queue of about four planes in front of us – all German. I speak to one of the pilots and it is a club flyout to Spain. The fuelling takes some time and as I wait, Derek Fage and Paul Venton and wives land in their Cherokee 6 – they were behind us all the way but didn’t catch up – shame – I was hoping for some air-to-air pictures. This is one of the few airfields that take the BP Fuel Card I have and the pompier is delighted to see it. He tells Dan that it is so much quicker to process.
We are instructed to park on the hard apron to the east of the tower and they are disappointed when I tell them that we are down to some four aircraft.
Dan and I secure the plane and make for the terminal. We get a taxi just before a Ryanair comes in to land. Our hotel is right by the old city and only a 100m walk – and a nice modern and clean hotel to boot.
I have a quick shower and we meet up and head into the old walled city. It is a bank holiday in France and the place is crowded on such a nice sunny day. We beat our way though crowds to find a slightly more out of the way bar and grab a beer – EUR5 for a half a litre of beer!
Dan and I then go sightseeing around the old town and find a really nice looking restaurant for the evening – wood-smoke fire for cooking, live music – great! We bump into Derek and Tammy and they check out the restaurant and we book it for all of us for the evening.
We grab another beer in the main square – this time an even more outrageous EUR6 for half a litre!
We head back to the hotel, shower, changed and head into town as a group for the evening.
The restaurant does not disappoint (well, not me anyway – I had the casoulet). The live music is local folk played by a very enthusiastic and animated guy, but it certainly does not meet with approval from Timothy (who is more accustomed to opera and classical).
A good day, with a nice long trip (3.4 hour leg) from Corsica to Carcassonne along the French Riviera in glorious sunshine. This is the life!
Flyer Forum Safari - 24th May
Aprilia to Ajaccio (Corsica)
Route: APRILIA – TS LORENZO – WPT1 – WPT2 COAST LFKJ
Up early, breakfasted and paid up and off to the airfield. The chap who knew how to operate the fuel bowser wasn’t there yet, so I set Dan to packing and checking the aircraft while I did some flight planning revisions with Timothy and Derek. I had planned a northern loop around Elba, but they found a way to go direct over the sea with a dog-leg to avoid two danger areas, so of course I copied them!
The fuel guy turned up, but I was worried about the effect of the strip on the landing gear, so I only put 40l of fuel in so I was reasonably light.
We all walked the length of the runway to inspect for ruts, holes and debris. The wind (such as it was) favoured a 04 departure, but we noted that this was slightly uphill and of course you have to clear the cables at 30’ at the end of the runway, whereas 22 was slightly downhill, albeit with a tailwind and pylons about half a mile out. We all decided on a tailwind 22 departure.
Andy and Timothy were first up and attracted quite an audience, with curious motorists stopping on the road at the end of the runway to watch the spectacle. We paid particular attention of course! The take off run looked good and they were up about 2/3rds along the runway and clawing their way into the air. Timothy later tiold me that the stall warner was blaring for quite some time and he feels they staggered over the power lines.
Next up was Ben in his Piper Dakota, with it’s big and powerful engine. Then me. I held it on the brakes and let her run holding the nosewheel as light as I could. At nearly 60, I popped one stage of flap and the mainwheels were very light. I held her in ground effect for a moment, but probably got the rudder pressure wrong as she veered slightly to the left off the runway track. No drama as we were airborne and climbing, but a lesson for the future. We made it over the pylons, but failed to get a response from Pratica Approach so called Rome Information instead.
Rome cleared me to a heady 1000’ and asked us to report every 30 minutes. Rome seems to have an enormous zone of class A airspace that extends for miles out to sea from 1000’ up. We scuttled out for what seemed ages at 1000’ and could hear Timothy in front and Derek behind us. Eventually we cleared Rome airspace and I climbed to 3000’.
Rome handed us over to Olbia and this is where the fun started. The Olbia controller did not seem to be on the ball. By this time, we had passed Timothy heading for the first dog-leg waypoint on the GPS to keep us clear of Italian D017 and also clear of French R66.
I was about to call, when Timothy came on frequency and passed his message, including details of the route. Several parts of the message were repeated and I think the route was explained two or three time, with particular emphasis that we were aware of the danger areas and were taking this route to avoid them all. The controller eventually acknowledged and warned of the perils of D017 and that we must remain clear!
So I piped up immediately after and said basically, same as G-BRCD except that we are a P28R and current position is x etc.
At random intervals, this guy would call us up and warn us of D017. Timothy got fed up with this and blurted out in a posh English accent ‘are you sure that you understand our routing?’ and proceeded to explain again that we would dog-leg shortly to avoid his precious danger area. After Timothy had finished – you guessed it ‘Roger, avoid danger area 017 it is active’ – AAAARRRGGHH!
By now Derek had overtaken Timothy and Timothy was last. Needless to say Olbia then came on and asked Timothy to change to Figari (Corsica). I then requested frequency change Figari as I was first in the gaggle. I’m afraid I again held off on my call and sure enough, Timothy made the call and concluded by saying ‘I am the last of three aircraft on an identical routing and I have been handed over to you first – I don’t know why’ (exasperated). I then chimed in ‘same as G-BRCD except…’. Such fun!
Suffice to say the French controllers were a model of professionalism compared certainly to Olbia!
Land was looming and we could clearly see Sardinia on the left and Corsica on the right. Corsica is a beautiful island with lots of sandy beaches and turquoise seas. We saw a huge five masted sailing cruise ship – I thinjk it must have been the Club Med one.
We were routed by both Figari and Ajaccio via their VRP and these were obvious and easy to spot (thank heavens for Jeppesen maps).
As we approached Ajaccio, I was given a left downwind join for runway 20. Good landing then a long taxi to the pumps. Ajaccio is a large commercial airport with a lot of flights for the holiday trade, but it was very quiet. I was followed ten minutes later by Derek, then five minutes after that by Timothy, so we all arrived pretty much together.
The French pompier came and said it was French credit cards or cash. I pointed out that that was only true if we used the automated facility and that I am sure they would accept Visa – Dan did his French stuff and the guy said he would ask. That worked and we had to be ferried in the back of his van back to the office while he proceeded to try to get the van onto two wheels on every corner he could find.
We were then accosted by a second wave of ground staff who relieved us of EUR30 per aircraft for landing and handling. We were ferried to the police bit where they checked our passports and got us to fill in a form. They apologised and said they thought it was all pretty pointless as well.
Timothy got a message on his phone that we were being joined by Geoff Hill and Rob Winship who had set out on Saturday and got stuck at L2K and could only catch up with us here. We later found out that this was Geoff’s first trip out of the UK and that he had flown from Teeside. I have to say, we were all pretty impressed with an effort like that.
We checked in but the hotel was 25 minutes walk from town and needed Pete S ID and signature (as he did the booking) so they could get the funds from the agent. Could be a problem as he had to cancel and wasn’t there. Timothy got on the phone and got Pete to fax his passport and we signed pp.
We hoofed it into town and had a beer stop at the marina. Then on up the main street until we fetched up at the old harbour, which was lined with cafes etc. So of course we had to eat at a restaurant called ‘The Forum’.
Had a very nice meal of tuna steak with beer and wine. We wandered back to the marina for another beer while some got a taxi back to the hotel, while we walked to take in the air.
Route: APRILIA – TS LORENZO – WPT1 – WPT2 COAST LFKJ
Up early, breakfasted and paid up and off to the airfield. The chap who knew how to operate the fuel bowser wasn’t there yet, so I set Dan to packing and checking the aircraft while I did some flight planning revisions with Timothy and Derek. I had planned a northern loop around Elba, but they found a way to go direct over the sea with a dog-leg to avoid two danger areas, so of course I copied them!
The fuel guy turned up, but I was worried about the effect of the strip on the landing gear, so I only put 40l of fuel in so I was reasonably light.
We all walked the length of the runway to inspect for ruts, holes and debris. The wind (such as it was) favoured a 04 departure, but we noted that this was slightly uphill and of course you have to clear the cables at 30’ at the end of the runway, whereas 22 was slightly downhill, albeit with a tailwind and pylons about half a mile out. We all decided on a tailwind 22 departure.
Andy and Timothy were first up and attracted quite an audience, with curious motorists stopping on the road at the end of the runway to watch the spectacle. We paid particular attention of course! The take off run looked good and they were up about 2/3rds along the runway and clawing their way into the air. Timothy later tiold me that the stall warner was blaring for quite some time and he feels they staggered over the power lines.
Next up was Ben in his Piper Dakota, with it’s big and powerful engine. Then me. I held it on the brakes and let her run holding the nosewheel as light as I could. At nearly 60, I popped one stage of flap and the mainwheels were very light. I held her in ground effect for a moment, but probably got the rudder pressure wrong as she veered slightly to the left off the runway track. No drama as we were airborne and climbing, but a lesson for the future. We made it over the pylons, but failed to get a response from Pratica Approach so called Rome Information instead.
Rome cleared me to a heady 1000’ and asked us to report every 30 minutes. Rome seems to have an enormous zone of class A airspace that extends for miles out to sea from 1000’ up. We scuttled out for what seemed ages at 1000’ and could hear Timothy in front and Derek behind us. Eventually we cleared Rome airspace and I climbed to 3000’.
Rome handed us over to Olbia and this is where the fun started. The Olbia controller did not seem to be on the ball. By this time, we had passed Timothy heading for the first dog-leg waypoint on the GPS to keep us clear of Italian D017 and also clear of French R66.
I was about to call, when Timothy came on frequency and passed his message, including details of the route. Several parts of the message were repeated and I think the route was explained two or three time, with particular emphasis that we were aware of the danger areas and were taking this route to avoid them all. The controller eventually acknowledged and warned of the perils of D017 and that we must remain clear!
So I piped up immediately after and said basically, same as G-BRCD except that we are a P28R and current position is x etc.
At random intervals, this guy would call us up and warn us of D017. Timothy got fed up with this and blurted out in a posh English accent ‘are you sure that you understand our routing?’ and proceeded to explain again that we would dog-leg shortly to avoid his precious danger area. After Timothy had finished – you guessed it ‘Roger, avoid danger area 017 it is active’ – AAAARRRGGHH!
By now Derek had overtaken Timothy and Timothy was last. Needless to say Olbia then came on and asked Timothy to change to Figari (Corsica). I then requested frequency change Figari as I was first in the gaggle. I’m afraid I again held off on my call and sure enough, Timothy made the call and concluded by saying ‘I am the last of three aircraft on an identical routing and I have been handed over to you first – I don’t know why’ (exasperated). I then chimed in ‘same as G-BRCD except…’. Such fun!
Suffice to say the French controllers were a model of professionalism compared certainly to Olbia!
Land was looming and we could clearly see Sardinia on the left and Corsica on the right. Corsica is a beautiful island with lots of sandy beaches and turquoise seas. We saw a huge five masted sailing cruise ship – I thinjk it must have been the Club Med one.
We were routed by both Figari and Ajaccio via their VRP and these were obvious and easy to spot (thank heavens for Jeppesen maps).
As we approached Ajaccio, I was given a left downwind join for runway 20. Good landing then a long taxi to the pumps. Ajaccio is a large commercial airport with a lot of flights for the holiday trade, but it was very quiet. I was followed ten minutes later by Derek, then five minutes after that by Timothy, so we all arrived pretty much together.
The French pompier came and said it was French credit cards or cash. I pointed out that that was only true if we used the automated facility and that I am sure they would accept Visa – Dan did his French stuff and the guy said he would ask. That worked and we had to be ferried in the back of his van back to the office while he proceeded to try to get the van onto two wheels on every corner he could find.
We were then accosted by a second wave of ground staff who relieved us of EUR30 per aircraft for landing and handling. We were ferried to the police bit where they checked our passports and got us to fill in a form. They apologised and said they thought it was all pretty pointless as well.
Timothy got a message on his phone that we were being joined by Geoff Hill and Rob Winship who had set out on Saturday and got stuck at L2K and could only catch up with us here. We later found out that this was Geoff’s first trip out of the UK and that he had flown from Teeside. I have to say, we were all pretty impressed with an effort like that.
We checked in but the hotel was 25 minutes walk from town and needed Pete S ID and signature (as he did the booking) so they could get the funds from the agent. Could be a problem as he had to cancel and wasn’t there. Timothy got on the phone and got Pete to fax his passport and we signed pp.
We hoofed it into town and had a beer stop at the marina. Then on up the main street until we fetched up at the old harbour, which was lined with cafes etc. So of course we had to eat at a restaurant called ‘The Forum’.
Had a very nice meal of tuna steak with beer and wine. We wandered back to the marina for another beer while some got a taxi back to the hotel, while we walked to take in the air.
Flyer Forum Safari - 23rd May
Sightseeing around Latina and environs
No flying today, instead we have an excellent programme laid on by Riccardo. The weather was beautiful – sunny and warm (hot even). After a leisurely wake-up and breakfast, Riccardo started ferrying forumites out to a very eclectic museum called ‘Piana delle Orme’. This was a series of large hangar type sheds, each with a theme. One was a toy museum, one was the story of how the Pontine marshes were drained in the 1920’s (I found this fascinating I’m afraid), vintage tractors, then the story of WW2 with stacks of military vehicles of every shape and size.
We wandered around by ourselves here until 13:00, then Riccardo picked us up again and back to the hotel for a few beers and a HUGE lunch, again with many courses. If you think we spent vast amounts of time eating vast amounts of food – you would be right!
This kept us going until 15:30, then off in the coach to some lovely gardens at Ninfa. We had a guided tour of the gardens and had them completely to ourselves. They are set in a ruined town and are quite beautiful.
Following this, we were picked up again by the coach and taken to the old hilltop town of Simonetta. Basically we walked up to the main square and parked ourselves outside at a bar and had a few beers. Most of us then maode our way to the lookout point to watch sunset over the Pontine plain. Again it struck me how the whole area looked like a series of grass landing strips!
Back to the bar to pick up Dan and Ben who had meanwhile witnessed a fight between apparently rival youths of different family clans (shades of Romeo and Juliet).
We found a local pizza restaurant but with 13 or so of us, Riccardo wanted to make sure they could cope. The owner said he would just check to see if he had enough pizza bases first (shades of the Monty Pythons cheese shop sketch I thought!). In the event, they obviously didn’t have enough ovens either as we were served the pizzas three at a time. I am certainly not complaining, I just thought it quaint.
After this, we were ferried back to the hotel and I went straight to bed. I don’t know whether others stayed up at the bar, but not me with a long over-water leg tomorrow, not to mention a grass strip take-off.
No flying today, instead we have an excellent programme laid on by Riccardo. The weather was beautiful – sunny and warm (hot even). After a leisurely wake-up and breakfast, Riccardo started ferrying forumites out to a very eclectic museum called ‘Piana delle Orme’. This was a series of large hangar type sheds, each with a theme. One was a toy museum, one was the story of how the Pontine marshes were drained in the 1920’s (I found this fascinating I’m afraid), vintage tractors, then the story of WW2 with stacks of military vehicles of every shape and size.
We wandered around by ourselves here until 13:00, then Riccardo picked us up again and back to the hotel for a few beers and a HUGE lunch, again with many courses. If you think we spent vast amounts of time eating vast amounts of food – you would be right!
This kept us going until 15:30, then off in the coach to some lovely gardens at Ninfa. We had a guided tour of the gardens and had them completely to ourselves. They are set in a ruined town and are quite beautiful.
Following this, we were picked up again by the coach and taken to the old hilltop town of Simonetta. Basically we walked up to the main square and parked ourselves outside at a bar and had a few beers. Most of us then maode our way to the lookout point to watch sunset over the Pontine plain. Again it struck me how the whole area looked like a series of grass landing strips!
Back to the bar to pick up Dan and Ben who had meanwhile witnessed a fight between apparently rival youths of different family clans (shades of Romeo and Juliet).
We found a local pizza restaurant but with 13 or so of us, Riccardo wanted to make sure they could cope. The owner said he would just check to see if he had enough pizza bases first (shades of the Monty Pythons cheese shop sketch I thought!). In the event, they obviously didn’t have enough ovens either as we were served the pizzas three at a time. I am certainly not complaining, I just thought it quaint.
After this, we were ferried back to the hotel and I went straight to bed. I don’t know whether others stayed up at the bar, but not me with a long over-water leg tomorrow, not to mention a grass strip take-off.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Flyer Forum Safari - 22nd May
Cannes to Aprilia via Lucca
Routed:
Leg 1: LFMD – EW – NA – COAST ALB – COAST SES – COAST SESTRI LEVANTE – FOSDINOVO – VIAREGGIO – LIQL
Leg 2: LIQL – CASOLE D’ELSE – CINIGIANO – PASO CORESE – TORRENOVA – FRASCATI – CASTEL GANDOLFO – APRILIA
With a two-leg day to Aprilia, we wanted to get away as early as we could so we could go in to Lucca for lunch (as we had heard that this was a very scenic town).
We couldn’t repair my headset reliably and Ben was kind enough to offer me a loan of one of his DC’s.
Today was team T-shirt day and the big one – our arrival in Lucca. So I got the masterpiece out – a commercially printed high-vis yellow t-shirt each with ‘Pilot’ on the back of mine and ‘I’m with stupid’ and an arrow on the back of Dan’s.
The day was sunny with high cloud. We checked the weather and it was fine so we filed our flight plan for Lucca and out to the plane to load up. Dan loaded up while I did the checks.
We requested taxi by 09:30 and got airborne. We were routed a little inland to avoid the TRA around the film festival. Initially to Nice EW, then to Nice NA then E VRP’s at 2000’. We basically followed the motorway valley through to Monaco.
We crossed the FIR but couldn’t get any contact with Milan or Albegna, but we did get air to air contact with G-BRCD who were 15 nm in front and even they didn’t have contact. We continued coastwise as planned at 1500’ passing stunning scenery. Eventually we contacted Albegna and reported at their various VRP’s.
To the north of Albegna we came across some low cloud and were forced to 700’ to stay VMC – we entered some cloud for a few moment and Dan was disoriented by an island to the right and thought we were flying into the side of a mountain. I was hoping that this wasn’t the start of some nasty weather and was relieved when it lifted about 10 nm later – from then on it was sunshine and blue skies.
We contacted Genoa who gave us a transit out to sea at 500’ parallel with the airport and we had to push further out to avoid the track of their ILS while a 737 was using the approach. Past their area, we routed inland to avoid La Spezia danger area and had to climb to FL55 and even then were ‘brushing’ the impressive coastal mountains.
Once past La Speizia, we contacted Pisa Approach who routed us back to the coast at 1500’ to Viareggio VRP then to follow the road inland to Lucca.
Lucca looked lovely from the air. A real walled and fortified town with intact walls. The airfield was the far side of town and we spotted it easily. My first approach was too high so rather than pressure myself, I decided on a go-around. Next approach was better and we landed. I taxi’d in and was met by a formula one style refuelling set up as three people set about the aircraft falling over each other to get us re-fuelled. I had the not very pleasant task of telling them that the expected 15 aircraft had reduced to about 5 now.
We jumped in a very smart big black Mercedes taxi and were dropped in Lucca. The driver said not to bother paying as we could pay on the way back when she picked us up. We wandered around and had lunch in a square – EUR28 for 4 cokes and burger and a pizza slice!!
Many of the tourists seemed more interested in our T-shirts than the lovely middle ages architecture! Dan was of course taking great care to always stay on my right so the arrow pointed at me!
We were picked up and back to the airfield by 14:15 and paid for the fuel – at an eye watering EUR 2.20 per litre – no wonder they were pleased to see us!
We were airborne again by 14:35 and it was very hot and humid by then and I could start to feel it in the aircraft performance.
We went for the inland recommended VFR route with zone transits as marked on the Jeppesen maps. Initially we were at 2000’ then climbed to 3500’ or as required to clear hills (always a good idea). Radio contact was difficult due to the terrain, but we got some of Pisa, then Grosseto then Rome.
The scenery was sublime, with lovely hill-top tuscan villages passing underneath the wing as we passed low overhead.
Dan was helping with the flying but got a bit distracted in a descending turn that turned into the start of a spiral dive – a lesson well learned.
Closer to Rome we descended to 1500’ for the eastern VFR transit route. The bit where we headed to Frascati VRP was particularly interesting as Frascati is on the side of a hill and was basically level with our altitude of 1500’ as we headed straight for it. Needless to say, I didn’t exactly leave it until the last minute to turn south following the trail of VRP’s!
Castel Gandolfo is a huge lake and has the summer house of the Pope there. By now we were handed over to Pratica Information who asked us to call when visual with Aprilia. I broke out the aerial photos and plugged the GPS into the Aprilia co-ordinates I had entered back in the UK. We spotted the Bridgestone test track and tried to orient it to north to figure out where the airstrip was. My GPS was indicating that I was on top of it, but in that part of Italy, they farm in strips, so the whole bloody countryside looks like a series of grass strips! I figured we were on top of it so temporarily switched channels to 130.0 and Ben answered. He kindly vectored me until I was visual on the right downwind (despite other nasty forumites shouting at him to stop so they could enjoy the fun of my aimlessly wandering around at 1500’ looking for the strip – nice guys huh?
Unfortunately, the wind favoured 22, which involved PowerGen type pylons half a mile or so from the strip and telephone pole height power lines at the threshold – so a high and slow approach was called for. This I managed and chopped the power over the cables at the threshold, nosed down and flared on the stall warner to a good landing though I say it myself.
On taxi back up the strip, the aircraft was chased by a demented Alsatian dog! I was last in and Riccardo was mashalling me with beer bottles in hand – this guy clearly knows how to motivate! We stopped, switched off and Riccardo opended the door, shoved a beer in and said ‘Welcome to Aprilia’!
He had snacks laid on in the farmhouse and we pulled the aircraft in together to park and lock up. The farmer kindly looked after the aircraft and he had two guard dogs – we weren’t worried about theft!
Riccardo arranged a big coach to take us to our very posh hotel on the Appian Way. I had a fantastic room at the back by the BBQ area. Huge with aircon, a separate study area and a Jacuzzi bath.
I unpacked, had a bath and we met again at 20:00 to go to the Agro-Tourismo. Basically, these are farms with restaurants attached where only local produce is served and the menu is set. If you want a Coke – tough, they don’t grow it there. What a great idea.
We were joined by many members of the Latina Flying Club and had great discussions in broken English / Italian and universal gestures.
Ian Seager made the presentation of the signed print to Riccardo, and we also presented him with top quality English wine and some liquers. There were speeches and we were very surprised to be presented with a box of three local Italian bottles of wine and a lovely hand-made glass plaque for our visit. The number of courses and the amount of food and wine was astounding. The quality was excellent and all for…… EUR25 per person – no subsidy – that’s what it cost! Amazing!
Of course we had to toast with Grappa. Now this really makes me gag so Dan sneaked mine into a spare glass and poured water into mine – so I toasted with water (I was to pay for this indiscretion later when Riccardo found out).
We piled back to the hotel on the bus by 01:30. Dan and Riccardo and other foolish souls decided to go to the bar, but I was shattered and so toddled off to my bed. A great day indeed.
Routed:
Leg 1: LFMD – EW – NA – COAST ALB – COAST SES – COAST SESTRI LEVANTE – FOSDINOVO – VIAREGGIO – LIQL
Leg 2: LIQL – CASOLE D’ELSE – CINIGIANO – PASO CORESE – TORRENOVA – FRASCATI – CASTEL GANDOLFO – APRILIA
With a two-leg day to Aprilia, we wanted to get away as early as we could so we could go in to Lucca for lunch (as we had heard that this was a very scenic town).
We couldn’t repair my headset reliably and Ben was kind enough to offer me a loan of one of his DC’s.
Today was team T-shirt day and the big one – our arrival in Lucca. So I got the masterpiece out – a commercially printed high-vis yellow t-shirt each with ‘Pilot’ on the back of mine and ‘I’m with stupid’ and an arrow on the back of Dan’s.
The day was sunny with high cloud. We checked the weather and it was fine so we filed our flight plan for Lucca and out to the plane to load up. Dan loaded up while I did the checks.
We requested taxi by 09:30 and got airborne. We were routed a little inland to avoid the TRA around the film festival. Initially to Nice EW, then to Nice NA then E VRP’s at 2000’. We basically followed the motorway valley through to Monaco.
We crossed the FIR but couldn’t get any contact with Milan or Albegna, but we did get air to air contact with G-BRCD who were 15 nm in front and even they didn’t have contact. We continued coastwise as planned at 1500’ passing stunning scenery. Eventually we contacted Albegna and reported at their various VRP’s.
To the north of Albegna we came across some low cloud and were forced to 700’ to stay VMC – we entered some cloud for a few moment and Dan was disoriented by an island to the right and thought we were flying into the side of a mountain. I was hoping that this wasn’t the start of some nasty weather and was relieved when it lifted about 10 nm later – from then on it was sunshine and blue skies.
We contacted Genoa who gave us a transit out to sea at 500’ parallel with the airport and we had to push further out to avoid the track of their ILS while a 737 was using the approach. Past their area, we routed inland to avoid La Spezia danger area and had to climb to FL55 and even then were ‘brushing’ the impressive coastal mountains.
Once past La Speizia, we contacted Pisa Approach who routed us back to the coast at 1500’ to Viareggio VRP then to follow the road inland to Lucca.
Lucca looked lovely from the air. A real walled and fortified town with intact walls. The airfield was the far side of town and we spotted it easily. My first approach was too high so rather than pressure myself, I decided on a go-around. Next approach was better and we landed. I taxi’d in and was met by a formula one style refuelling set up as three people set about the aircraft falling over each other to get us re-fuelled. I had the not very pleasant task of telling them that the expected 15 aircraft had reduced to about 5 now.
We jumped in a very smart big black Mercedes taxi and were dropped in Lucca. The driver said not to bother paying as we could pay on the way back when she picked us up. We wandered around and had lunch in a square – EUR28 for 4 cokes and burger and a pizza slice!!
Many of the tourists seemed more interested in our T-shirts than the lovely middle ages architecture! Dan was of course taking great care to always stay on my right so the arrow pointed at me!
We were picked up and back to the airfield by 14:15 and paid for the fuel – at an eye watering EUR 2.20 per litre – no wonder they were pleased to see us!
We were airborne again by 14:35 and it was very hot and humid by then and I could start to feel it in the aircraft performance.
We went for the inland recommended VFR route with zone transits as marked on the Jeppesen maps. Initially we were at 2000’ then climbed to 3500’ or as required to clear hills (always a good idea). Radio contact was difficult due to the terrain, but we got some of Pisa, then Grosseto then Rome.
The scenery was sublime, with lovely hill-top tuscan villages passing underneath the wing as we passed low overhead.
Dan was helping with the flying but got a bit distracted in a descending turn that turned into the start of a spiral dive – a lesson well learned.
Closer to Rome we descended to 1500’ for the eastern VFR transit route. The bit where we headed to Frascati VRP was particularly interesting as Frascati is on the side of a hill and was basically level with our altitude of 1500’ as we headed straight for it. Needless to say, I didn’t exactly leave it until the last minute to turn south following the trail of VRP’s!
Castel Gandolfo is a huge lake and has the summer house of the Pope there. By now we were handed over to Pratica Information who asked us to call when visual with Aprilia. I broke out the aerial photos and plugged the GPS into the Aprilia co-ordinates I had entered back in the UK. We spotted the Bridgestone test track and tried to orient it to north to figure out where the airstrip was. My GPS was indicating that I was on top of it, but in that part of Italy, they farm in strips, so the whole bloody countryside looks like a series of grass strips! I figured we were on top of it so temporarily switched channels to 130.0 and Ben answered. He kindly vectored me until I was visual on the right downwind (despite other nasty forumites shouting at him to stop so they could enjoy the fun of my aimlessly wandering around at 1500’ looking for the strip – nice guys huh?
Unfortunately, the wind favoured 22, which involved PowerGen type pylons half a mile or so from the strip and telephone pole height power lines at the threshold – so a high and slow approach was called for. This I managed and chopped the power over the cables at the threshold, nosed down and flared on the stall warner to a good landing though I say it myself.
On taxi back up the strip, the aircraft was chased by a demented Alsatian dog! I was last in and Riccardo was mashalling me with beer bottles in hand – this guy clearly knows how to motivate! We stopped, switched off and Riccardo opended the door, shoved a beer in and said ‘Welcome to Aprilia’!
He had snacks laid on in the farmhouse and we pulled the aircraft in together to park and lock up. The farmer kindly looked after the aircraft and he had two guard dogs – we weren’t worried about theft!
Riccardo arranged a big coach to take us to our very posh hotel on the Appian Way. I had a fantastic room at the back by the BBQ area. Huge with aircon, a separate study area and a Jacuzzi bath.
I unpacked, had a bath and we met again at 20:00 to go to the Agro-Tourismo. Basically, these are farms with restaurants attached where only local produce is served and the menu is set. If you want a Coke – tough, they don’t grow it there. What a great idea.
We were joined by many members of the Latina Flying Club and had great discussions in broken English / Italian and universal gestures.
Ian Seager made the presentation of the signed print to Riccardo, and we also presented him with top quality English wine and some liquers. There were speeches and we were very surprised to be presented with a box of three local Italian bottles of wine and a lovely hand-made glass plaque for our visit. The number of courses and the amount of food and wine was astounding. The quality was excellent and all for…… EUR25 per person – no subsidy – that’s what it cost! Amazing!
Of course we had to toast with Grappa. Now this really makes me gag so Dan sneaked mine into a spare glass and poured water into mine – so I toasted with water (I was to pay for this indiscretion later when Riccardo found out).
We piled back to the hotel on the bus by 01:30. Dan and Riccardo and other foolish souls decided to go to the bar, but I was shattered and so toddled off to my bed. A great day indeed.
Flyer Forum Safari - 21st May
Dijon to Cannes
Routed:
LFSD – LTP – MTL – DGN – LFMD
For the trip, I figured it would get hot in the plane, so rather than get our normal shirts ‘sweated-up’, I thought I would make up some ‘G-GYMM Team T-Shirts’. We would wear these every flying day while part of the Flyer Safari. Today’s shirts are ones I did on the computer with special iron-on stickers – Dan is ‘The Beerhunter’ and I am ‘Grimace’ (the ‘handle’ they gave me at Air Combat when they saw me grimacing at 6G on the videos!).
The aim of today is to join what is left of the Flyer Forum Safari in Cannes. Yes, I know this coincides with the International Film Festival and the place will be packed!
As we pack the aircraft at Dijon for the trip, I press back on the front passenger seat and only when I get my headset from the back seat, do I notice that the wire from the headset to the battery box got trapped between the seat hinge and look crushed – oh crap! So I try it and of course no deal – the wires must be severed internally. I was thinking of bringing a spare, but of course I didn’t. So I tell Dan that I need to use his and he can sit in splendid silence. Dan is not feeling well and has a very raw throat but takes the news well and with my agreement, pulls out a Swiss Army knife and attacks the wire to see if he can splice them together.
We take off in scattered and high-looking cloud and easily get to our planned FL45 with very scattered fair weather cumulus below. My plan was to route through the overhead at Lyon, but this is refused and we are instead routed to LPT. I notice that this will take us through a ZIT that tops out at 4900’ so I climb to FL55 – forgetting that I am in controlled airspace! The controller asks if I am climbing and I confirm I am – I get a slap on the wrist and am cleared for FL55 – Ooops! After this the merciless Forumites refer to me a ‘Zonebuster’ to the strains of the famous ‘Ghostbuster’ tune.
After I get a call from Lyon, I get an ‘air-to-air’ call from Simon Holder in G-AXTA to say that both he and G-BRCD made it to Troyes and are behind me and will see me in Cannes. Good, that’s a couple more that made it out.
The French Alps look hugely impressive off to my left and once past Lyon, I climb to FL75 to route direct over the lower part of the Alps direct for Cannes. It is not very bumpy at all and the scenery is great, widely scattered cloud and blue skies.
I am still in the mountains with 30 nm to run to Cannes when the mountains drop away while I contact Cannes to be told to approach at 1500’ – FL75 to 1500’ without shock-cooling the engine? So I gave it a go with some orbits.
I was given a report overhead the field at 1500’, then given a left downwind join (out to sea) for runway 23 with the wind 230 / 10 – much better! I was high on final, so side-slipped this off but still landed a bit long.
Cannes was incredibly busy with the film festival and there are biz-jets parked all over the place. I taxi for fuel to find that the automatic machine will only accept French credit cards – so off Dan goes to do his French stuff and enlist the help of a pompier. Well, with full tanks (190l) at Dijon, we did a 2.5 hour run and only burned 76l of fuel – pleased with that!
We had a long wait after fuelling with the engine running for taxi clearance to parking and in the end we park at the far end with all the other cruddy little planes away from the nice shiny business jets. So we unpacked and walked to the terminal. We met a very nice lady (Stargate SG2) who announced ‘ah – G-GYMM, yes we have been expecting you’. I was flabbergasted, then I realised she was reading our ‘team T-shirts’!
Well, the weather was great – sunny and warm with a breeze, so we walked to our hotel (The Campanile) a mere 50 m from the main terminal. Nice rooms. We shower and Dan takes a nap. Eventually, I rouse him and we meet Ian Seager in reception. The original restaurant has been cancelled so we agree to meet up outside the main casino in town. So we dive into a taxi to see Cannes.
We wander around and see the bouncers in smarty suits and uniformed guards everywhere. We realise we have again missed out on lunch and can’t hold out until the evening meal, so we hit McDonalds. After this we sit in a street-side café with large beers and ‘people-watch’. We check out the old town and the view and spot loads of nice restaurants that will easily be able to seat us.
We meet up with the others as arranged at 20:00 and come up with a definitive list of people who made it. Rob P and Nigel Webb have gone to Albenga and will join us in Aprilia.
We had a nice meal in the old town, but at EUR46 a head. The taxi fares to and from the hotel varied between EUR14 and EUR32 – hmmm! The circus must be in town!
Routed:
LFSD – LTP – MTL – DGN – LFMD
For the trip, I figured it would get hot in the plane, so rather than get our normal shirts ‘sweated-up’, I thought I would make up some ‘G-GYMM Team T-Shirts’. We would wear these every flying day while part of the Flyer Safari. Today’s shirts are ones I did on the computer with special iron-on stickers – Dan is ‘The Beerhunter’ and I am ‘Grimace’ (the ‘handle’ they gave me at Air Combat when they saw me grimacing at 6G on the videos!).
The aim of today is to join what is left of the Flyer Forum Safari in Cannes. Yes, I know this coincides with the International Film Festival and the place will be packed!
As we pack the aircraft at Dijon for the trip, I press back on the front passenger seat and only when I get my headset from the back seat, do I notice that the wire from the headset to the battery box got trapped between the seat hinge and look crushed – oh crap! So I try it and of course no deal – the wires must be severed internally. I was thinking of bringing a spare, but of course I didn’t. So I tell Dan that I need to use his and he can sit in splendid silence. Dan is not feeling well and has a very raw throat but takes the news well and with my agreement, pulls out a Swiss Army knife and attacks the wire to see if he can splice them together.
We take off in scattered and high-looking cloud and easily get to our planned FL45 with very scattered fair weather cumulus below. My plan was to route through the overhead at Lyon, but this is refused and we are instead routed to LPT. I notice that this will take us through a ZIT that tops out at 4900’ so I climb to FL55 – forgetting that I am in controlled airspace! The controller asks if I am climbing and I confirm I am – I get a slap on the wrist and am cleared for FL55 – Ooops! After this the merciless Forumites refer to me a ‘Zonebuster’ to the strains of the famous ‘Ghostbuster’ tune.
After I get a call from Lyon, I get an ‘air-to-air’ call from Simon Holder in G-AXTA to say that both he and G-BRCD made it to Troyes and are behind me and will see me in Cannes. Good, that’s a couple more that made it out.
The French Alps look hugely impressive off to my left and once past Lyon, I climb to FL75 to route direct over the lower part of the Alps direct for Cannes. It is not very bumpy at all and the scenery is great, widely scattered cloud and blue skies.
I am still in the mountains with 30 nm to run to Cannes when the mountains drop away while I contact Cannes to be told to approach at 1500’ – FL75 to 1500’ without shock-cooling the engine? So I gave it a go with some orbits.
I was given a report overhead the field at 1500’, then given a left downwind join (out to sea) for runway 23 with the wind 230 / 10 – much better! I was high on final, so side-slipped this off but still landed a bit long.
Cannes was incredibly busy with the film festival and there are biz-jets parked all over the place. I taxi for fuel to find that the automatic machine will only accept French credit cards – so off Dan goes to do his French stuff and enlist the help of a pompier. Well, with full tanks (190l) at Dijon, we did a 2.5 hour run and only burned 76l of fuel – pleased with that!
We had a long wait after fuelling with the engine running for taxi clearance to parking and in the end we park at the far end with all the other cruddy little planes away from the nice shiny business jets. So we unpacked and walked to the terminal. We met a very nice lady (Stargate SG2) who announced ‘ah – G-GYMM, yes we have been expecting you’. I was flabbergasted, then I realised she was reading our ‘team T-shirts’!
Well, the weather was great – sunny and warm with a breeze, so we walked to our hotel (The Campanile) a mere 50 m from the main terminal. Nice rooms. We shower and Dan takes a nap. Eventually, I rouse him and we meet Ian Seager in reception. The original restaurant has been cancelled so we agree to meet up outside the main casino in town. So we dive into a taxi to see Cannes.
We wander around and see the bouncers in smarty suits and uniformed guards everywhere. We realise we have again missed out on lunch and can’t hold out until the evening meal, so we hit McDonalds. After this we sit in a street-side café with large beers and ‘people-watch’. We check out the old town and the view and spot loads of nice restaurants that will easily be able to seat us.
We meet up with the others as arranged at 20:00 and come up with a definitive list of people who made it. Rob P and Nigel Webb have gone to Albenga and will join us in Aprilia.
We had a nice meal in the old town, but at EUR46 a head. The taxi fares to and from the hotel varied between EUR14 and EUR32 – hmmm! The circus must be in town!
Flyer Forum Safari - 19th and 20th May
Gloucester to Dijon via Lille
Routed:
Leg 1 EGBJ - BNE - LAM - DVR – BNE - VIMY - LFQQ
Leg 2 LFQQ – CTL – TRO – LFSD
Poor weather forecast for most of the latter part of the week and the weekend. There might be a chance to run for it between fronts on the Friday (which is when we planned to go anyway). Looked out on Friday morning and looked bad – low clouds and high winds. Decided to go to the airport anyway and see how it panned out.
Two French pilots at Gloucester had just flown in from Paris and said it wasn’t good and exchanged worried glances when Dan told them we were going VFR – even the lady who took out flight plan thought we were nuts! Decided to at least get airborne and if we had to divert or return, we could do that. In the event, we got to 2000’ with a helpful and occasionally bumpy howling tailwind which gave us an airspeed of 125 kts and a groundspeed of 172 kts!
Barrelling along the low level north London ‘corridor’ and so far so good, still 2000’ and bumpy, let’s have a sniff at the channel. That looked OK and even got to 3000’ coasting out until forced down at mid-channel to 1200’ to stay VMC. I was sure I heard a fellow forumite speaking to Lille Info as it was a ‘N’ registered aircraft out of Elstree – it turned out later that this was Ben – at least someone else has made it.
Better over the French coast, but down again to 1200’ near Vimy Ridge. Canadian monument covered in scaffold and plastic to headed for Lille and managed to get back to 2000’. I was glad I chose Lille as it has two runways and was given 20 with wind as 220 25G37. Very nice landing with one stage of flaps and parked up. It didn’t occur to me how strong the wind was until Dan tried to open the door and couldn’t – we were parked into wind and the force was quite something!
We went through the most ludicrous customs / arrivals and departures process I have yet seen, even the lady who escorted us through the process said it was mad and had driven much of the GA traffic away. Got refuelled and away again on runway 20 with the wind as 220 25G42 – I was at 800’ by the time I crossed the end of the runway!
We shower dodged all the way to Dijon at 3000’ odd, worse in the north. Called Dijon approach and cleared to land direct onto my choice or runways. I opted for 20 but left the approach descent far too late and ‘stuka’d’ the initial descent for a long final approach to land. Wind a reasonable 240 / 12. Dijon were amazingly helpful. They are part civilian and part military, of course the military had packed up by the time we got there. We were marshalled to the pumps, filled up very quickly and pulled to parking – we could sort the paperwork out in the morning (nothing to do I suppose with the airfield staff wanting to knock-off early?). The Brietling L39 Albatross display aircraft were in one of the hangars, but this was locked before I could get photos.
A particularly lovely girl ordered us a taxi and asked us to follow her (we decided she was a Stargate SG1) – of course!!!!
We stayed in the City Loft hotel in the centre of Dijon. I called one of the forumites to say we had gotten out of the UK and were on our way only to be told that he and many others had called it off. I was surprised as the weather wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but I guess every pilots has to make their own decisions based on their comfort levels.
By now we were both starving having missed lunch, so we showered and changed and hit a bar for four beers each in rapid succession. We then went to a posh restaurant feeling very under-dressed and had an excellent meal with a nice bottle of the local stuff. Followed by more beers and a sleep of the righteous.
Next day was simply sightseeing for the two of us. We had opted to do the first bit by ourselves a bit further south than Troyes where the rest were meant to be meeting.
Well, we were out of blighty and a fair way south – we knew Saturday was forecast to be poor with a front going through and so it proved to be – with light rain all morning, but starting to break-up by mid-afternoon. Our hopes were high for Sunday and the flight down the Rhone valley and across the lower Alps to Cannes.
Routed:
Leg 1 EGBJ - BNE - LAM - DVR – BNE - VIMY - LFQQ
Leg 2 LFQQ – CTL – TRO – LFSD
Poor weather forecast for most of the latter part of the week and the weekend. There might be a chance to run for it between fronts on the Friday (which is when we planned to go anyway). Looked out on Friday morning and looked bad – low clouds and high winds. Decided to go to the airport anyway and see how it panned out.
Two French pilots at Gloucester had just flown in from Paris and said it wasn’t good and exchanged worried glances when Dan told them we were going VFR – even the lady who took out flight plan thought we were nuts! Decided to at least get airborne and if we had to divert or return, we could do that. In the event, we got to 2000’ with a helpful and occasionally bumpy howling tailwind which gave us an airspeed of 125 kts and a groundspeed of 172 kts!
Barrelling along the low level north London ‘corridor’ and so far so good, still 2000’ and bumpy, let’s have a sniff at the channel. That looked OK and even got to 3000’ coasting out until forced down at mid-channel to 1200’ to stay VMC. I was sure I heard a fellow forumite speaking to Lille Info as it was a ‘N’ registered aircraft out of Elstree – it turned out later that this was Ben – at least someone else has made it.
Better over the French coast, but down again to 1200’ near Vimy Ridge. Canadian monument covered in scaffold and plastic to headed for Lille and managed to get back to 2000’. I was glad I chose Lille as it has two runways and was given 20 with wind as 220 25G37. Very nice landing with one stage of flaps and parked up. It didn’t occur to me how strong the wind was until Dan tried to open the door and couldn’t – we were parked into wind and the force was quite something!
We went through the most ludicrous customs / arrivals and departures process I have yet seen, even the lady who escorted us through the process said it was mad and had driven much of the GA traffic away. Got refuelled and away again on runway 20 with the wind as 220 25G42 – I was at 800’ by the time I crossed the end of the runway!
We shower dodged all the way to Dijon at 3000’ odd, worse in the north. Called Dijon approach and cleared to land direct onto my choice or runways. I opted for 20 but left the approach descent far too late and ‘stuka’d’ the initial descent for a long final approach to land. Wind a reasonable 240 / 12. Dijon were amazingly helpful. They are part civilian and part military, of course the military had packed up by the time we got there. We were marshalled to the pumps, filled up very quickly and pulled to parking – we could sort the paperwork out in the morning (nothing to do I suppose with the airfield staff wanting to knock-off early?). The Brietling L39 Albatross display aircraft were in one of the hangars, but this was locked before I could get photos.
A particularly lovely girl ordered us a taxi and asked us to follow her (we decided she was a Stargate SG1) – of course!!!!
We stayed in the City Loft hotel in the centre of Dijon. I called one of the forumites to say we had gotten out of the UK and were on our way only to be told that he and many others had called it off. I was surprised as the weather wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but I guess every pilots has to make their own decisions based on their comfort levels.
By now we were both starving having missed lunch, so we showered and changed and hit a bar for four beers each in rapid succession. We then went to a posh restaurant feeling very under-dressed and had an excellent meal with a nice bottle of the local stuff. Followed by more beers and a sleep of the righteous.
Next day was simply sightseeing for the two of us. We had opted to do the first bit by ourselves a bit further south than Troyes where the rest were meant to be meeting.
Well, we were out of blighty and a fair way south – we knew Saturday was forecast to be poor with a front going through and so it proved to be – with light rain all morning, but starting to break-up by mid-afternoon. Our hopes were high for Sunday and the flight down the Rhone valley and across the lower Alps to Cannes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
