What have you done with, or on your aircraft, this week-end? (9-10 December 2023)

Impressive stuff 😲 especially looking back at the ridge in the second video.

Nothing exciting to post from me, just a 1h local before going away for Christmas

Did my annual checkout flights on the Bristell and on the Cherokee 235 in my Egelsbach club, on a VFR but blustery day.

The weather changed this Sunday afternoon surprisingly into some decent VMC. Time to finally fly our local Robin DR401 again.

It resulted in a quick flight to Grenchen (LSZG). Nice GA aerodrome, even though it’s close, I’ve never been here before! It has even full ATC… A bit pricy though… 34,35 Francs is even for Swiss aerodromes clearly above average. Some bigger airports with ATC are cheaper!
Overhead Zofingen. It has a lovely old town, especially this weekend with its Christmas market. Not a tourist hotspot, like Lucerne or Zurich, but still extremely nice.

I was all the weekend with aviation. Saturday morning had a familiarization flight in the Cessna 172 with which I’ll finish my IR training after having flown all hours so far in my Comanche. Getting my grip on the last 10 hours, finally! Weather forecast was quite bad, but then there was the blue hole™ over the airfield and we jumped in to get that done. I was there anyway.

By the way, it’s not good to take over a company while trying to proceed on this rating. took me much more calendar time to get my hours due to simple lack of time. On the other side, I’ve had such a whole bunch of experience! When I’m done with it I should write it up, because I’ve had it all. Including some fantastic international flights. But also alternator failure, PFD failure, standby horizon failure, different icing scenarios and actual icing, very low vis departure, arrivals at exact minimums and nearly had to deviate once in the night due to quickly deteriorating weather. Not all at once, of course not. Those are things I’ll never forget. Makes me a lot more confident for future flights. Those are the exact decision making processes that I wanted to see and learn that you can’t see in a simulator.

Later that day came @ultranomad and we made very good progress on some items that had to be fixed on my Comanche. Engine and avionics. It was a great pleasure to proceed with four hands on all that stuff (and not only that, he also can sign off the work). So all in all we checked the “extra items” that were due this year, and I got nearly through all stuff due for the annual. Forgot the right grease for my landing gear so that will come next weekend. But other than that the annual is losing its “terror” that it had earlier for me. Also thanks to the good support of @ultranomad in checking the “extra items”, I have to say.

Sounds great on the IR, Udo. That gives you a big headstart over other new IR holders that still need to make all these experiences.

Not much flying in the past weeks for me: short local flights for airplane- and pilot-currency . Hangar tidy-up last weekend. Maybe an upcoming ski-trip and a short Christmas hop to Spain’s mainland but not much more before year-end.

Great to se you guys up in the air!

We flew from Gloucestershire EGBJ to Bologna LIPE on Sunday. The flight exemplified many of the interesting features of European IFR GA aviation, so I thought I would post this in case it is of any interest.

Aircraft – PA46 Jetprop. Hi speed cruise at ceiling of FL 270 is about 255 kts. Max effective range with normal IFR reserves about 850 NM.

Weather – EGBJ at departure was low overcast OVC 600), moderate rain just coming in, and cloud all the way to upper flight levels, so icing certainly something to think about. Fog or low vis forecast at Bologna until midday or so, with the possibility of it continuing all day. So we planned several alternates including Rome Ciampino and Pisa. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the weather was a low jet stream with the possibility of 75 kts tailwinds for much of the flight. Eccelente!!

Here is the filed route, thanks to RocketRoute (I love this system). As you can see at lower left the planned route distance was 749NM. So not quite at max range, but enough to keep us on our toes.

EGBJ tower were their usual polite and friendly selves and were off the runway less than 10 minutes after start up.

We were in heavy clouds in less than a minute, and stayed in heavy cloud all the way to FL 250 and in heavy cloud in the cruise. I had never seen this before. Here is the view from the cockpit at 25,000 ft. Spooky. I would also add that with all the usual heading changes and altitude stops provided by London Control in the IMC climb I had some of the most intense experience of spatial disorientation I had ever had as an IFR pilot, for example with the plane banking 25 degrees right and my “seat of the pants” telling me we are banking sharply left. IFR rule number 1 – FLY THE INSTRUMENTS!

I mentioned a concrn about ice in the climb. Indeed, with the ground temp at 5 degrees we did indeed encounter some light ice by 4,000 ft. From experience, in my old piston PA46 Mirage this would almost certainly have overwhelmed the plane, in the sense of increasing drag and reducing power to the point where the normal 800 fpm climb becomes zero. One of the great things about the Jet Prop and its extra 200 hp in the same airframe is that the extra power translates into a 2,000 to 2,500 fpm climb rate, so we blew right through he icing level in 2 minutes and were clear.

The next surprise was that the tailwind was already over the forecast 75 kts and that there was unusually heavy turbulence in the cruise. Several commercial airliners were asking for turbulence reports for the FL 20s so I did something which is extremely rare in Europe and provided a formal US style PIREP to report moderate turbulence at FL250, mid channel. Based on informal reports we heard back from other pilots we asked for and were given FL270, our ceiling, for the rest of the cruise and it took us out of the bumps completely. Even better it took us into an amazing tailwind. Here we are with a 102 kt tailwind and doing 350 kts ground speed, with the power pulled back for efficiency.

And here is the enroute weather, downloaded in flight, from the very useful Golze ADL system on my ipad. Note that the highest available report is FL160, so the winder was much higher where we were. I also use the ADL link track the evolution of destination and alternates METARs, which I find very useful for long distance IFR flying.

Getting late here. Maybe more tomorrow.

Interesting. Flew Easyjet tonight Torino/Turin to Gatwick, FL340 or so, GS was 360kt most of the time which is probably a 100kt headwind.

The Jetprop is an amazing aircraft. I went through a phase of wanting to upgrade to one – it is the first realistic upgrade from a TB20; the SR22 isn’t really – but don’t have the right “ground situation” to keep one and look after it.

Thx @Buckerfan

Nice report, nice airplane and nice tailwind!

Three important safety aspects you mention are useful for the rest of us to ponder:

-Icing: this flight would be a CNL in our SEP, as hinted by @Dan
-Spatial disorientation: a non-issue if your priorities are right, fatal if not
-Turbulence: us pilots tend to underestimate the importance, but persistent moderate turbulence will result in a terrible experience for our pax and will thus be grossly impacting in different ways during and after the flight.

Congrats on tackling all three with (literally) flying colours