Hi Peter have you set off on your trip yet. I have flown with my husband to Sabadell a few times and would like to tell you that there is a very nice restaurant on the airfield where they do excellent lunches. A good set lunch is about 14€ including wine.
I tried in two or three ocassions to file a VFR FPL from LECU using EuroFPL and the TWR never got them. I've not tried again.
Argh, it sounds familiar to me. "PH-FLD we didn't receive your FPL", while I was 100% sure I filed it.
The problem is that EuroFPL by default puts the DOF (Date of Flight) at tomorrow's date. You need to manually change it to today if you want to depart the same day. I'm sure a lot of people make this mistake...
Nice trip, nice report and nice pictures. Very jealous. Well done.
I suspect the Skydemon flight plan issue is caused by Skydemon (or more precisely EuroFPL which is the service Skydemon uses) sending VFR flight plans to the departure aerodrome only.
Well, Skydemon simply does what is written in the VFR FPL addressing rules in the AIP of the country of departure. There are very differing rules across Europe as to what they require. For example, UK requires "direct filing" (direct from the AO to the involved ATSUs), whereas France exercises "indirect filing"(the AO files to the regional BRIA, whose job it is to distribute it to the concerned ATSUs).
These rules are coded into the flightplan filing softwares we are using nowadays. So, the issue of flightplans going "missing" is in 99% of all cases not the fault of the flightplan service providers like SD, RR and the likes, but rather the fault of some human being in the downstream flightplan distribution chain.
I suspect the Skydemon flight plan issue is caused by Skydemon (or more precisely EuroFPL which is > the service Skydemon uses) sending VFR flight plans to the departure aerodrome.
That is compliant with ICAO procedures but that doesn't mean that the departure aerodrome has to >like processing these flight plans.
Homebriefing (.com) does the same thing and back when I used it for foreign VFR flying I used to get >the same thing.
Have had this issue at least once each year during VFR touring trips. I do the filing via the Swedish flight planning center. They even send me an ACK, but I've learned that it only means that they have sent it to the departure country/aerodrome, as you mention Peter.
It actually happened when I departed from Shoreham once, had to quickly file another one via radio after I received taxi clearance :)
Carlmeek: Great write up! Thanks for sharing.
thx for the yourney with you, well done!
I suspect the Skydemon flight plan issue is caused by Skydemon (or more precisely EuroFPL which is the service Skydemon uses) sending VFR flight plans to the departure aerodrome only.
That is compliant with ICAO procedures but that doesn't mean that the departure aerodrome has to like processing these flight plans. Given they will usually be international, addressing them is non-trivial.
Homebriefing (.com) does the same thing and back when I used it for foreign VFR flying I used to get the same thing (the flight plan went "missing").
And if you do this with a UK departure, where the airfield no longer has the option of simply faxing anything that pops up to the Heathrow FBU without much looking at it, you will make yourself very unpopular because more than likely the radio operator will have to enter it all into his AFPEX terminal... while doing the radio, etc.
The method of discharging ICAO obligations by sending a VFR flight plan to the departure ARO is not going to work in the modern age.
As regards airport staff requiring to see printed flight plans, I recall this from years ago but suspect that they lost the will to live when the internet age caused nearly everybody who flies anywhere to file them via the internet.
I suppose it depends how many people are in them :)
Most of the PA28's I see flying around tend to be carrying 2.
Over 5nm per litre is very good.
Yeah, but you can't compare a two-seater with four- and six-seaters.
Avg Ground Speed 113kts. I was surprised this was so low
Well, after a few more bigger tours, you will see that -invariably- on average you'll have a headwind on 80% of your flights. It's just one of those joys of flying ;-)
At several bigger airports in Spain, security is instructed to ask pilots for a printed and stamped copy of the flightplan in order to let them and their passengers airside. I am surprised this didn't happen to you at Ibiza and Pamplona. Maybe things have changed recently?
The FPL in Elba was a problem, and he explained that they don't have a telex machine, so they don't get them and they should really be addressed to Pisa. No sooner had he told me than he found it.
In Sabadell, they had it immediately. Same in Ibiza. Pamplona was a mess - she had it, i saw the words "Created by skydemon" but she amended it and put the wrong reg!
Montpellier was a problem, they had it, but there was a problem with time at the boundary or something, so I filed another one and that worked.
In summary, using SkyDemon for the flightplans worked - but it was ever so slightly unreliable here and there. However, it made things quicker - as i could file during breakfast and not hang around at the airport.
