Super write-up and a great video Fabian! Thanks for sharing
As promised I just finished editing and uploading the video of this flight today: (about 8 minutes)
Some highlights are VFR on top, sightseeing above small islands in Croatia, flying over the mountains (Karavanken) at FL 100.
So many things to do and places to see… Thanks for sharing.
Appreciate the great feedback! :)
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Do I understand right that all flying was under VFR?
Yes it was all done under VFR. Had some look into, and discussions with people, about VFR on top of an overcast and came to the conclusion that with the advent of SERA this is legal throughout Europe, as long as you stay clear of airspace G. And keep in mind the distances to clouds prescribed for E and on.
For me the personal limit is that a descent through the cloud cover should be possible without the risk of getting to close to terrain. In our case the cloud layer was mostly so thin that you could see the terrain below when you were looking straight down.
blueline wrote:
beautiful pictures! Did you edit them? If yes, how?
Yes they were. The pictures are actually also from three different people and four different cameras. The ones from the city of Mali Losinj on the ground were already pre edited as I got them. The others were all edited at least in Lightroom to adjust curves (exposure and contrast) and saturation. As well as tweaking the white balance in many cases. Sometimes I also turned up the vibrance and clarity. Some were also further edited in Photoshop. Especially the pic of the overcast clouds, which was taken from a screen grab of the GoPro, straighten out with lens correction, some curves to pull up the cockpit which was at a lower exposure and noise reduction to get rid of the noise in the now brighter shadows.
If you are interested in any details, just let me know.
And thank you again for the tips you sent to me! :)
At some point there will also be a video of the flight, edited down to a few minutes. Had the GoPro running most of the time.
I also built my own neutral density filter for my GoPro case to get rid of the propeller. The disadvantage being that it pushes the GoPro to higher ISO settings, causing more noise in turn. Especially since I only got a Hero 2, not the best higher ISO performance.
A very scenic flight 
One just cannot imagine Yugoslavia having had a “hard” version of communism, with such beautiful scenery
@tomjnx: I am surprised (and sorry) to hear that. Never experienced something like that in LOAV or LOAN. IME, in at least half of the cases, the police don’t come at all because they have other things to. In the other half of the cases it’s just a quick look at the passport.
@fabian: beautiful pictures! Did you edit them? If yes, how?
fabian wrote:
we had to call the police and have a customs and immigration check at our local field
You must have been lucky.
Last time I called customs they came late, hid in some unmarked room so we couldn’t find them, then when we tried to depart (we were already at the holding point with the power checks done), Vöslau called us and we had to return, then they accused us of trying to evade customs checks. That made us miss our IFR slot, not to mention the appointment with customs at the other side.
I found that completely unacceptable behaviour by the Bundespolizei. Not entirely unexpected though, given what a friend who works for the police in Vorarlberg told me about them.
Very nice quality on the photos. Kudos.
Re “Unicom”. That is actually a US term, not used much outside the States. Unicom is for comms between pilots and FBOs.
What you mean is Air/Air radio procedures (CTAF on the US). It actually works like this all over the world, with the exception of Austria and Germany.
Great report! I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing!
Do I understand right that all flying was under VFR?
