And I thought my legs were nice…now I’m jealous!
greg_mp wrote:
what a nice leg!
Yes it is. One that I have done maybe a dozen times and that I enjoy a lot. It requires pre-briefing or else things happen too quickly and you end up busting the circuit at Luchon at the wrong altitude or circling or…gotta be careful with so much granite and gliders around…
Parasails are explicitly allowed within the circuit at Luchon, although there is a designated descent area just North of the circuit for gliders where the one in the video was flying when the 210 was entering the landing circuit.
Be careful out there (was it Furillo that said that?)
So I was lucky again yesterday being the pax on Antonio’s mountain rating renewal. Pax, not co-pilot, because Antonio’s timing always seems perfectly aligned to a certain event which makes the ‘8-hour bottle-to-throttle’ rule come into play.. And worse, he called me up during that event!
The air was not crystal clear but at least quiet enough. As last time, Z departure from Son Bonet LESB, change to IFR over the sea and canceling once over the Pyrenees. Fun to see Antonio being quite busy working and monitoring all kinds of controls and displays in his plane, which he does expertly. At my age I think I would struggle to get up to speed with this to be honest.
Antonio did not lose his touch and after the customary recon circuit made a fine landing. No other aircraft there and little activity as it is basically a skiing resort. Some bikers though and a cable car installation just having been built which brings just enough business in to have one of the local restaurants to open up. How about ‘duck hearts’ for lunch?
Fortunately, when we came back to the field some more aviators came in, including two very kind Frenchmen from the Toulouse area. The owner of this Bristell told us that, contrary to PPL’s, ULM flyers don’t need to get and maintain a mountain rating. But this wise pilot makes sure he goes here every month or so to keep current. What a sacrifice..:
We had already planned to go back after lunch as the forecast indicated a high probability of CB-activity over the mountains. Circling the Aneto, the Pyrenees’ highest peak at 3.400 m. To our surprise, still quite a bit of snow on the southern side, second pic:
A lot less snow at Barcelona LEBL:
In spite of quite some headwind, we approached our island in no time. Actually, we were chatting about all kind of things that we almost forgot to do some decent descent planning and in the end poor Antonio had to manually fiddle with his pressurization knob to keep our eardrums from popping. I say ‘we’ but it’s so good to be a dumb pax and not bear any responsibility in this you see..
After landing checked the wx at the Pyrenees just to see if the forecast was any good. Seems like this little monster was right over LFIP. And actually, during the flight, Sebastian’s excellent Golze ADL system showed us some of these popping up already.
Thanks again Antonio and I’ll let you know in time when I have this ‘event’ again, just for your planning purposes! 
Beautiful landscape!
