Trip from Shoreham EGKA to Mali Losinj LDLO and Brac LDSB, May 2021

based on the theories of Erich von Daeniken

I read Chariots of the Gods back in Czechoslovakia, mid-1960s. Amazing how long the guy managed to make money out of a totally fabricated (but highly convincing to a child) proposition

In theory not legal, but most of the times the only way you’ll get cleared. In fairness, it should be ‘C’ and it is in practice treated as ‘C’

When the video is up, you can all analyse it

I would have stopped in Mali Losinj, but though they were about to close

A pity; I have a car and would have met you to say Hello Enjoy Greece. I will be very interested when they accept just a vacc certificate like Croatia does.

This sums up a lot of business here

This probably shows the big chunks of snow about to fall off

FR24 track

Here is the video

What are all the beeps? Terrain warning?

I think it is the Aera660 telling me I am flying IFR in CAS in Europe and it just cannot grasp the concept

I wonder would it be useful to attempt to contact the Swiss controller by phone a day to two beforehand to explain what you are trying to do, if attempting something similar again? I can’t imaging that they would say anything other than fob you off with “Sorry. Can’t promise anything. If we can’t help we will. But it will depend on if the military allow it in the day.”

Ideally, yes, but when I have tried that with ATC, even with ELP 100% units (UK) you get a completely useless noncommital reply, and that’s after you spent ages trying to find the phone number. I would not even know where to look for a Swiss phone number.

So, for Switzerland, I asked on the forum full of Swiss experts and was told that the DABS site is the place to look. I should have known that this would be a dodgy lead (the poster has a “form” there, from years ago) and indeed it was somewhere between meaningless and totally useless. Swiss ATC (who act as the “front” for the military, like in most places) were simply not interested at all. I doubt ATC had even heard of the site.

And the most challenging part of the trip both in navigation and climb rate

That was the toughest walk I’ve done for a while

Thanks @Frans for the detailed explanation. It probably just means there is no way to check this out in advance – other than weekend flying improving one’s chances a lot. This is why I told ATC exactly what I wanted, more than once (as you can hear), very slowly and clearly, they didn’t seem to be short on ELP, and in aviation that’s about all you can do. Sometimes it works ok (the 1st long circular flight to Jungfrau etc), sometimes perfectly (the circular one to Mt Blanc), and sometimes not (this week).

Otherwise, it seems ok at FL160, with a long lens on the movie camera and a means of panning it. Or below FL130 and then you just get pics like everybody gets when skiing there

That’s how “flying life” is. Some years ago I was flying from Shoreham to somewhere “north” (probably Wellesbourne) and sods law was that this was the one flight in years that I didn’t get notams! So I got a service from Farnborough who said “are you aware of a TRA at xxxx” and I said “no, very sorry, could you vector me to avoid it” and the answer was NO. IOW, “fu*ck you”; we will hang you to dry. And no lack of ELP there So I did a 180 to fly back on the same track, which surprised the controller who was obviously hoping to teach me a lesson, and I got vectors, albeit some 30nm off track and he then pretended to have forgotten about me Like I say, this is life. The best one can do is talk to ATC, explain the plan, and hope. The worst was that I wouldn’t get any pics, but actually I got a reasonable movie (not a stunning one though, like the Mt Blanc one). Maybe with great local knowledge it can be arranged, but on a ~800nm flight you can’t always pick the date on which you will get good wx all the way down.

The wider issue is that I am pretty convinced that both French and Swiss ATC are scared of calling up their “military” unless they absolutely have to. The French make it quite obvious to anyone with more than half an ear. The Swiss are better integrated but still there seems to be a big element of “we own the air, we are the military, we might let civilians play there, sometimes” Well, this is “European military”; unlike the Americans they fly very little and way too little to justify the airspace they take up, so they play hardball on declaring “active” areas.

On Brac now for a couple of days. Got a ton of great pics, plus another movie of the flight to Brac which I don’t know if I will get time to edit before I get home. And I don’t know when I will get home because the return wx is pretty convective. I will relocate back to Losinj, to get a shorter distance for the return flight (which is likely to need max power to outclimb stuff) and sit there until the IR image looks ok in the morning. Sat/ Sun look possible currently.