EPZG, Zielona Gora Babimost is not far away from EPZP (16NM). It’s 2500m with ILS.
As for family attractions, they have some horses at EPZP. Should keep little girls busy :)
Actually, I believe most towns in Poland that have a CAT airport also have a aeroclub one on the other side of town, so both kinds (country and western!) can be tended to and meet in town. At EPLL (and EPRZ, possibly others as well) the runways are literally next to each other, but then I wouldn’t consider either a top tier destination for a fly-in. Then again, this can’t be unique for Poland, so maybe we can all get together after all :-)
Jan, EPOD might be interesting – both grass and concrete, albeit only 850m, possibly NOTAMed down to 550m, and a scenic approach. No instrument approaches, they were working on a GNSS one, was due to be implemented in 2013, don’t know where that went.
I really think there should be a more general activity on EuroGA to do meet-ups.
That way, many more people can meet each other, without the constraints which we of practical necessity have on the two main meet-ups i.e.
All our meet-ups are informal. Nobody is taking €€€ for hotel bookings, etc. It’s really easy for someone here to just propose something and post it.
Go for it!
Peter,
yea, that sounds about like it.
Add to that if at all possible no alpine crossings for the majority of participants if there are VFR and non-turbo IFR crews involved. I find that this is the major hurdle for most flights. When I look at the planning my pilots do, almost all flights which stay N of the alps are done while only about 30% of those which plan to cross the alps are happening…
You can easily cross the Alps non-turbo. A PA28-181 will go to FL140.
Obviously if crossing Eurocontrol IFR then a PA28-181 will only just about make the airway MEA on the “middle crossing” (N of SRN). But the terrain there is about FL100 so fine for a VFR flight, and very scenic.
Obviously one needs reasonable wx… If the Alps have a solid overcast with a top of FL180 then you will need a TB20, SR22, or something better still. And a lot of confidence in your plane
A lot of people cancel on the day anyway, for various personal reasons, not connected with flying. I can think of 2 trips I did in 2014 to Italy on which there were going to be 2-3 other planes. On one trip, 1 came, for a lunch only. On the other trip, 0 came. Even in good wx, a 50% dropout rate is normal.
That is why certain GA organisations have a guy who books everything in advance, hotels, the lot, and gets everyone to pay a few hundred € up front. Then, almost nobody cancels for personal reasons 
I am not keen on that myself because (a) I have enough to do on EuroGA anyway; (b) I don’t know anybody who would want to do it; (c) it puts unfair pressure on people to fly in conditions they are not happy with; (d) I think anybody with enough IQ to get a PPL is way smart enough to get onto airB&B / booking.com / etc and book what they like.
If that wouldn’t be possible I wold never have crossed them. But I did, in a 150 hp Warrior (about 40 times VFR up to FL130) and in the NA SR22 … about 15 times now (VFR and IFR up to FL160).
Peter wrote:
You can easily cross the Alps non-turbo. A PA28-181 will go to FL140.
Of course.That is not the point however.
If you plan an event which requires alpine crossing on a set date way ahead in the future, the chances that a lot of folks can’t make it due to bad wx are quite a bit higher than if you plan a location which does not require a crossing. I’ve been working on statistics in the last few months and what I’ve seen so far is that the VFR routes across the alps have a usability of about 30% over the whole year. I’ll post the end results once they are released to the public, but it has been a bit of an eye opener I have to say.
On the other hand, if you have a destination which is on the side of the alps where most of the participants come from, chances that it is flyable go up to about 60% north of the alps and 70-90% south of them for the VFR folks. So my estimate would be that if you plan a destination which does not require an alpine crossing, chances that you will get most of the participants there on the weather basis will be about double.
Flyer59 wrote:
If that wouldn’t be possible I wold never have crossed them. But I did, in a 150 hp Warrior (about 40 times VFR up to FL130) and in the NA SR22 … about 15 times now (VFR and IFR up to FL160).
Sure. I’ve crossed the alps many times when conditions were safe to do so.
That is not what I am trying to say however. It’s about the statistical probability of the crossing being available at a given date.
I X’ed VFR at the Austrian end – the mountain tops are about 6000’ – 7000’, but on both (four occasions, as I did get home) I had to climb FL100 to get ‘on-top’. On one occasion I collected ice on the way up. I was saying to myself ‘where are those tops?, where is that sunshine’ – I had to keep my nerves. I did not want to be high altitude scud-running.
Climb was slow (normal aspirated) no FIKI and no Ox. Arrow 200HP.
And I was forced to declare IFR to Ljubljana on the south side decent.
All seemed OK at the time – but afterwards I’m thinking ‘it could have all gone pear shaped’.
I had plenty fuel and my escape was to turn east to the low countries.
I frankly don’t think it was for the faint hearted – and you certainly focus on that single engine upfront and all those explosions and reciprocating parts.
It wasn’t a ‘sit back and look at those majestic mountains tops’ – even if I could have seen them much of the time!!
Nobody in the P2 seat on either occasion, but it would have needed to be an experience / lets go for it pilot or a very layed back PAX.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Jan_Olieslagers 20-Nov-15 13:56 #160
@N8225Y David: welcome to this forum! You make a strong entry by reminding us of the obvious truth < “you are never going to please everyone” > . That is why we are now considering several meetups every year, and myself think they might each have their own primary audience.
As for “the guy from Mallorca”: AFAIK there is one participant here from that place, would you be referring to him? Only knowing him from his postings, I rather doubt he’ll find a flight to Shoreham a blast! Or was “Mallorca” just a generic remote place, to you?
And < > it needs an IAP and them people will go because ultimately the weather will prevent the low time pilot going anyway < / > raises several question marks over here:
-) what do you mean by IAP? I reckon it was not the IAP but perhaps you meant an “Intermediate Approach Point”?
-) the rest of the phrase is a bit confusing, too, I’m afraid; I can only say poor weather will be more daunting to pilots with limited qualifications and/or minimally equipped planes. For one example, approaching an ILS equipped airfield in IMC comfortably above minima will be quite feasible for a low hours IFR-rated pilot in a suitably equipped plane, but legally (and otherwise) excluded for VFR-only rated PPL’er, or a pilot of glider/microlight/… however much more experienced. So what exactly did you mean to state?
-) who are the them_people you are referring to?
JAN There is definitely is a language barrier here that confuses people which in turn they misinterpret as put downs and other such nonsense. Which result in a belligerent seeming response.
Since it has been a while since you asked David your questions and nobody has stepped forward to answer them Ive decided to give it my best interpretation.
Here goes:
1. Mallorca was used to represent a place that is not local (within 1 hr of flying)* but rather a more distant location. But yet not so far as to be unbelievable for instance Moscow.**
2. IAP represents instrument approach procedures. It is the only thing that would make the rest of his statement sensible.
N8225Y wrote:
Central Europe with a theme ………. always seems to work but it needs an IAP and them people will go because ultimately the weather will prevent the low time pilot going anyway
If the airport has an IAP then those with IR would more or likely go and get in, if the weather turns sour while the VFR pilot would more than likely not go or even start. But he is only referring to a case where the weather is IFR or maybe even MVFR.
So the conundrum is that very local flying whether IFR or VFR will not support the probability that local pilots will show up because ____ (fill in the blank). However people from a distance will try to make the trip and if IR rated have a better chance of succeeding but only if the airport has an IAP.
“them people” probably was a grammatical error and should have been “those people”. He is referring to Instrument Rated pilots.
So what he is basically referring to is the probability that any of these things happening would be largely weather dependent. I believe when mooney pilot gives us his report for the probability that an event will happen backed up by statistics it should be eye opening.
I hope David is still with us to correct me if Im wrong.
