San Sebastian adventures.

After all that great weekend, the upcoming Monday was not going to be funny… and Arthur was still on vacation ’til Tuesday morning. Decision was quite easy to make, I won’t go to the lab today, and I’ll stick with him at the airfield.

This time, we planned a longer flight, a real navigation. I’d do the first leg, and he’d fly the plane for the return trip. The real question was about where to go, in a one-hour flight time radius around Andernos LFCD… Except on the western side where there’s nothing but the ocean, there are plenty of airports around us ; first requirement was to go somewhere neither of us has ever been, that cuts off around half the fields. Being stuck with 10 instead of 20 choices is not of a great help, and we started to ask around for advices. According to some of them, and checking on our side if this destination is that interesting, we finally picked San Sebastian.

ICAO code: LESO

Time to work. Browse the Spanish aviation authority website to get the approach charts, check the NOTAMs, find out you must call them before coming to ensure you’ll have a place to park the aircraft… first contact with Spanish language in years, great thing they do speak English too !

Once this is ok, create and file a flight plan for the round trip, including estimated times when we’ll cross the border. That’s it : our first international flight !

Then, seriously prepare the navigation, including the possibility we’ll have to divert to an alternate field on the way cause of the rather bad weather we had. Check for weight and balance, double-check for the required fuel amount… and it’s now time to open the hangar. Load it with our stuff, without forgetting the camera, do the pre-flight checks, and here we go.

Line up runway 31, take off, once out of the airfield pattern quit the frequency, and contact Aquitaine Info to activate the flight plan. Next we started heading south after calling the military control as our way crossed several of their zones, as usual with them, no problem to get the clearance, which allowed us almost down to Biarritz. Once approaching, we changed the radio for that civil approach control, which also allowed us to transit through his airspace, overflying all the city’s shore line. Wonderful view there

But a few minutes later, the ATC called back, advising us we were leaving his control zone and that we should switch to San Sebastian approach. Big deal, first time for us entering a foreign airspace with all that means, starting with radio comms in English… while we always did that in French here !

We worried a bit about that moment, about what to do if we fail at understanding (or at being understood) th ATC’s instructions… and after doing it, we realized that was just worrying for nothing: it’s not that difficult and controllers there are nice.

Once minute later, we were authorized to enter the final leg, two more turns to intercept the axis and glide path, and we’re established and cleared to land, runway 22.

This is a really special airport: the runway is built over the sea, and on the final 22, you end up a few feet above the roofs and boat’s masts (see pictures to make an idea on that). But anyway, we landed safely, then were ordered to follow a follow-me -what an appropriate name !- which led us to our parking spot.

After paying the 4.5€ landing fees (yes, four decimal five euros, that’s cheap), we left the airport for a walk in the city. Took some photos, I put them in the Gallery.

Return trip was almost as great as the first leg. Funny part when we got back at the airport, and discovered we had to get our bags X-rayed before being allowed to enter our own plane… someone really needs to inform airport authorities that when you’re piloting an aircraft, you don’t need to threaten yourself with a knife to divert to somewhere else, and that it’s called diverting and not hijacking… but that might be a bit too much to expect from them

We had to take-off in the opposite direction (runway 04) to avoid traffic on its way to land on the runway a few minutes later. Besides that, nothing special, after five minutes we left the Spanish airspace, and followed back the shore to get back home. One more nice view of the Basque coast, then the so long yellow line of sand separating the forest from the ocean. When the shore stops, turn right, look around for our distinctive water tower and you’re done. It was really time to get back on the ground, the weather had considerably worsened, and five minutes after landing an impressive rain shower started. We’d probably had to divert to another field if we arrived at this moment.

Total flight time for the day: 2:00 hours. Pictures: too many.

First international flight (even if LESO is located just across the border, it’s still abroad), and definitely something to do again, and again !

Thanks to Arthur for that super weekend, and to JB for all his help when planning the trip.

A weekend at the airfield

A friend of mine came from Paris for a short vacation, he’s a pilot too, thus making the planning easy to write… flying-watching planes-talking planes-flying-wat[...] Good news was learning there was some kind of a meeting on our usual airfield during this precise weekend, so we had new aircrafts to look at, and crews to talk with.

We’ve been in the air together from friday to monday, for various flights going from a simple airport pattern practice to our first international flight (more to come about this), and as always, I brought my camera… the whole folder is about 10GB, I definitely gotta be treated for that photographic-Parkinson syndrome

First flight: (full gallery here)

Then, on the two next days, we took advantage of the weather to go chasing the clouds (don’t misunderstand me here, we complied with the visual flight rules every time, that means staying out of that nice lil’ cumulus), enjoy the view :

After those great flight experiences, we decided to go a bit farther, that’ll be detailed in the next post…

Twilight

The Sun sets on the Ocean, we’re on the opposite side watching the nearly empty Bassin d’Arcachon changing colors every minute… Eating pizzas on the beach while looking at this, how can a week end start in a better way ?

More pics

Time doesn’t count there.

It has been a special weekend here, lasting from Thursday to Sunday, and fortunately the Sun was not on vacation somewhere else ! Just like the every day growing crowd of visitors, we drove to the Cap Ferret, our local attraction. In fact, it’s just a little village located at the tip of a peninsula, where the Bassin d’Arcachon opens up onto the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s rather nicely organized to attract tourists, with beaches on both sides, and a pleasant town to wander in.

That’s my favorite place to relax, it’s only twenty minutes away, but far, far away from any source of stress. There’s absolutely nothing serious to do, just have fun at the beach, go for a walk in streets where there are no cars, enjoy the calm while eating a banana split…

Some other pictures are in the Gallery

A hundred miles away

A hundred miles, close enough to get there in less than one hour, but far enough to be interesting. A friend of mine, Cyprien, is building time on his logbook and he offered me to join him for some short navigations. He flies the plane, and I take the pictures, that’s our deal.

During the last few weeks, we’ve been flying in that hundred miles radius around our departure field, and according to the direction you go, the scenery differs a lot. We headed first to Marmande, that’s on our southeast. On that day, weather was just good enough to go, and we discovered our aircraft is not water tight when we flew under a rain shower on our return trip. The club there is very friendly, has no landing fees, and lets you park almost where you want. Funny thing: there’s a golf course next to the runway, with not even a fence to separate them.

Here are some pictures from the Marmande flight, rest of them is in the Gallery, as usual.

Next, we went to Royan, that’s around 35 minutes north of here, across the Gironde estuary. In this direction, we follow the coast line almost all the way until we cross the river, then avoid overflying the city, and finally land. This airfield is really different, it’s more than busy: it’s no bigger than Marmande, but there’s a big skydiving club, some helicopters, and a lot of private pilots… need to watch around carefully and talk to the radio !

Some photos on the way : (link to the Gallery)

So we went east and north… we did south last week (the Mimizan flight, article below), and west seems difficult from here Where to go next ? Looks like we’ll have to enlarge our flying radius !