Timothy wrote:
With all that stuff,and your blobby suit and full fuel you might have to go overweight. You need to take decision about the relative safety cases of having too little stuff with you (fuel, survival equipment) and being overweight.
I haven’t been that far North but I can’t recall a remote area flight in the North Atlantic where I have taken less than as much fuel as I can fit in the tanks.
Noe wrote:
Also, at these latitudes, how is day / might calculated? Did part of my night rating in tromso but many years ago and only the flight we did in actual darkness counted, even though the sun never rose.
Do you just look at civil twilight?
If you took you night rating in Norway pre-EASA, I would guess that the rules for darkness were the same as they were in Sweden: “…when a prominent unlighted object at a distance of 8 km cannot be seen due to lack of light.” Today, of course, civil twilight is the only thing that matters: by definition darkness begins at the end of civil twilight.
JasonC wrote:
I haven’t been that far North but I can’t recall a remote area flight in the North Atlantic where I have taken less than as much fuel as I can fit in the tanks.
Well quite. But there are a couple of people on this forum (Peter thinks they are on a different forum, maybe he is right) who have the rule book so tightly shoved up their arses that they would either go with air in the tanks or not go at all.
Noe wrote:
Also, at these latitudes, how is day / might calculated?
I don’t know what you mean by “how is it calculated” but I can explain what it feels like.
Firstly, remember that (even in our common European experience) it doesn’t get dark as the sun goes below the horizon. It actually remains usably light for, what, half an hour.
So, although the sun is below the horizon for six months, you do not get six months of dark and six of light. You get a good glimmer of light in all but the very darkest months (Dec/Jan) and so the perma-dark is relatively short lived.
There is quite a short period when you get a proper day and a proper night. I would guess around 10 days twice a year, around the spring and autumn equinoxes. Apart from that, it is pretty much light all the time from about the beginning of April onwards (I am not sure when it stops again.)
I would suggest to you that the best time to go is just as it’s getting properly light for extended periods, by which I mean end of March to, say, the end of April.
You have light to do things in, but nothing has warmed up yet, so it is still like pure Arctic winter, but you can see it.
Are you ever in this part of the world? I would happily go through some photos with you. Or we can do it as a teleconference.
A trip report to Longyearbyen is in this month’s French magazine Aviation & Pilote, if you can source it.
Every G1000 installation I have seen has a limitation N of either 70 or 72 degrees. In some aircraft, the limitations make the airplane downright unairworthy íf you cross that line, while others just say you cannot navigate using the G1000, or as in the DA-42, you can only fly day VFR up there.
As ENSV is 78 degrees N, it does matter. Even though the GPS and DME and ILS will work, I imagine it could be confusing trying to fly IFR without a dependable heading reference, and autopilot capability will be restricted at best. This might be one of not many scenarios where you would miss having the old manually adjustable gyro that could be set showing some kind of stable reference, north or otherwise.
Many years ago, someone (British, I think) flew his Mooney 201 to Svalbard and back and wrote about it. If I find it, I’ll post a reference. It wasn’t Timothy, was it?
No, I have written up two trips to Svalbard, both in the Aztec. The first in formation with a C310 and Bonanza, the second on my way to crossing the Pole.
There is no problem with normal magnetic reference or dip just as far as Svalbard, In fact it is barely affected by either because the Magnetic pole is more or less due north, the other side of the world.
However, once you head much further north, the magnetic compass becomes quite unusable (being jammed at a steep angle) and you have to unslave the HSI and set the GNSS navigator to True. But that really is not a problem to Svalbard.
I have found the North Pole article. Here is the extract about Svalbard, for what it’s worth.
I’ll have a look for the original Svalbard article.
The sun doesn’t come back before mid February there, and from mid April it’s up 24/7. It’s only the two months in between that there is “normal” day and night. Something to take into account when planning. Regarding flying, you can find official information here and here. as well as the AIP in general.
Thanks all, especially Timothy.
I’ve been to Tromso in early Jan a couple years ago, and did some flying from there. Rented a 172. The beauty of it is one of the reasons I want to go back! (The friendlyness of the club would also make a good case for the thread about clubs being good or bad for aviation!)
The question about Night has to do with Insurance liability, since i’d only be able to fly Day VFR (and I imagine the insurance would have a look at it if I asked them to pay out something).
The pictures I have above are at a time where the sun never rose, but it was considered Day VFR (I did other flights at night to get night hours, since it was so difficult to do so in the UK – Also got to see plenty of northern lights while flying which was great).
I’d still want to have some true night (to get some northern lights), so have to go around mid feb I think:
VFR day include civil twilight also (I think the definition say so?)
