Florida ‘08 - 4

In the air… but not the usual one ! Before coming to Florida, I got in touch with a local school, which directed me to an experimented CFI, Carlo. With him, I’ve been able to fly a bit there on a Cessna 172. That was a great experience, especially when we were over the Everglades,  thinking about what would happen if our only one engine would fail… pretty sure alligators like the taste of pilots

Here are some pictures from our flight :

The end of (bad) times.

Finally, summer holidays arrived… I’m now done with this college year, I’ve passed my exams and graduated last week. Besides that, interviews for next year are also over, meaning I’m on holidays. I know that sounds redundant, but I can’t get myself used to that idea thus I must repeat it.

Let’s celebrate that, and before champagne, a little flight would be great…

Yesterday, we had a lot of thunderstorms here, and I had to wait until the sky clears a bit before flying. Great idea that was… we went in the air just before the sun set. Enjoy the pics !

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…

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 !

Sunset flight

We had a nearly perfect weather yesterday, really seemed like summer: clear sky, no wind, and above 25C… it was time to fly. But we decided to wait for the evening, hoping to go see the sunset on the ocean. First it looked like a bad idea, as some clouds showed up, but we stuck with our initial idea and went to the airfield at 7:30PM.

The planned flightpath was a return trip to Mimizan, which is ~90km south of our departure field. We refilled the plane with gasoline, checked charts and weather forecasts… everything looked OK: start the engine ! Backtrack the runway, line up, call on the radio for take-off, and here we are: we’re airborne.

Taking off on runway 13 allowed us to go almost directly on our first turning point, a few miles northeast of Arcachon, then straight to Sanguinet, Biscarosse. A few minutes later, as planned, we discovered Mimizan LFCZ airfield, nested in the middle of the Landes’ forest. But the clock was ticking, and if we wanted to be back in Andernos before the night, we had to speed up a bit. We only performed a touch’n'go then headed back home. Then we understood going so late was a really great idea: we had the sun setting on the ocean during the whole return leg ! And the few clouds we were worried about were just making the scenery even nicer…

To enjoy it completely, we took a different path which took us above the shore, from Mimizan to Biscarosse-Plage, then directly over the Banc D’Arguin, Cap Ferret, and finally across the Bassin d’Arcachon. It was now time to prepare the aircraft for landing: flaps extended, carb’ heater on, and for once useful, landing lights ! We were back on the ground at 9:02PM, for an official sunset time at 9:01PM (nothing “illegal” here: day VFR is allowed until 30′ after the sunset).

Open the hangar doors, turn on the lights, push the plane inside, and we’re done. Just one more hour on my logbook, but what a pleasant flight !

Some photos we took:

By the way… we took around 250 pictures. The best 75 are now online in the Gallery.

«/exams»

That terrible week is now over: exams are done … let’s hope results will be fine. To keep up with the good news, the Sun is back at least for the weekend, and I’m packing my things to go flying tonight. Pictures ASAP.

After the rain is gone…

Back on earth after that great CeBIT, march has been less and less funny every day. Exams during the weekdays, and even worse: rain everytime… A combination which must have been designed by a psychiatrist’s lobby to sell Prozac pills ! But we had a great chance yesterday: the Sun was back ! And on a saturday ! No questions to ask, just seize the day, let’s go to the airfield, it’s been a while without being in the air.

Everyone seemed to have the same idea in mind, so the plane was booked all day long, except around noon. Let’s skip lunch, we can eat when it rains, not fly. Clear sky, just a bit of gusty crosswind… control the amount of fuel on board, follow the checklists, and here we are, lined up and ready for take-off !

Visibility was excellent, and as usual on week-ends, there was no military flights, thus meaning we could go almost everywhere we wanted. We went for a local flight over the Bassin d’Arcachon, whose colors were astonishing. We overflew the Ile aux Oiseaux, a small island located in the center of that inner sea, it’s only a few meters high, and partly covered during high waters. Flight time was less than one hour, but was definitely worth a whole week of waiting !

Good thing to remember: go flying as soon as the weather allows it, don’t wait for the perfect day, or you’ll never go… it’s raining again today…

Here are some pictures we took, more are in the gallery, as usual.

Sunday flight

On this chilly sunday, we were looking for a place to visit with a friend who also flies planes. After reading the weather reports, it appeared that in the north, the visibility was better, so we decided to fly that way. One hour away are two nice islands, Ré and Oleron, which was our destination. At 11AM, we refueled the Tecnam, loaded our things and took-off.

Sundays are usually great days in the air, commercial traffic is lighter, and there are no air force trainings. That last point is the most important, because we have military airspaces all around us with jet fighters taking part in exercises, and they often forbid us to fly in their areas, reducing a lot our playground !

But yesterday, we had none of these issues and the ATC cleared us to go directly to our destination field. The good thing in flying with another pilot is that you can let him drive while you take pictures. Even better, when the friend knows how to use the camera himself, you’re sure you won’t miss a bit of your trip, and that was the case.

We went directly to Oleron, overflew the airfield and headed for the western tip of the Isle of Ré, then to La Rochelle to see the bridge which connects the island with the mainland and finally back to Oleron where we landed. Unfortunately, there was nothing open on the airfield, so we didn’t stay there for more than a few minutes. We exchanged our seats in the plane, and Arthur took the commands for the return trip to Andernos.

Total flight time for the day : 2:10 hours - Pictures : >1000 ! I kept the best 150 and uploaded them here.

Yak 52

At Andernos’ airfield, we have the luck of seeing every kind of people flying together. That means all sorts of planes too… from the ultra-light category, to the businessman with his professional crew… but also aircraft makers, and weekend pilots. But on this Saturday, all the attraction was definitely focused on one single plane : the Yak 52 which usually rests at the far end of the hangar.

His pilot was here to fly, and the weather allowed him to practice his aerobatics. From fly-bys to a complete loop, there was much to see over the airfield, and we were a lot with our cameras trying to keep pictures of that moment.

Here are some of mine, I’ll get in touch with the others and try to update the gallery when I get theirs.