La Flèche city center is very nice.
Is there a way to support them ?
@Capitaine IIUC even shortening the rwy to 800m they still (as far as the DSAC/DGAC) have a problem with trees being too high.
Not sure how they are going to get round that. But where there is a will, as they say.
The club is obviously convinced that it will because they have just bought a 1969 DR315 at auction for just less than €11,000 and will be using this for the school once they have finished the maintenance which apparently they will do in house. The only major cost is a new radio at €4000 AIUI. This will add to their " fleet "of a DR 400 and a D112
They are also hoping to get their fuel station up and running again. I hope it all works out well for them they are a dynamic bunch and its been a bit depressing for them since the aerodrome was closed. Last November I think? Or is time passing.me by quicker than I thought?
La Flêche LFAL is applying to reopen to GA. They have shrunk their runway from 1400×80m to 800×40m, to limit maintenance, bring it closer to standard, and avoid a line of trees. They should know the decision by the end of 2023, and have bought some bicycles for visiting pilots in anticipation (town centre, river beach, and zoo are all cyclable in under 20 minutes).
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they had their restricted status imposed upon them at some point in the past due to runway dimensions and obstacles. I can’t find any relevant accidents on the BEA site though.
LSWS, taking place as of yesterday & today only, usually once a year when conditions (ice thickness) allow… and yes, requires special qualifications…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
It has been said here before: taking airplanes on a trip which taxes more than the one hour burger run is often even actively discouraged.Many pilots stay within their own country, as discussed before in some other topic. I know even a bunch of Swiss pilots who never saw any foreign airspace, even though the country is small and they have English proficiency. Some aeroclubs do indeed discourage pilots to take their planes abroad, others however encourage international trips (thankfully), and last category of clubs are neutral or just don’t care at all.
Airborne_Again wrote:
What would you want to see which is not in the syllabus now? (I ask because I teach PPL performance and next time will be in a couple of weeks and I can always use good suggestions.)
While I am not sure what actually IS in the syllabus, what I do notice is that lots of people I come across have never experienced the airplane they fly across it’s whole spectrum of performance, which includes flight at different altitudes and different weights up to service ceiling, actual engine management with fuel checks and real life cruise flight. How to conduct proper inflight monitoring, current endurance, current fuel flow, current TAS (lots of people do not reckognize the
On the theoretical side, I think general performance, i.e. how to read, interpret and actually use the POH to an extent that people understand how to plan flights with it, how to reckognize and determine “sweet spots” for their airplane (optimal altitude vs speed vs range, power settings, the effect of TAS vs IAS e.t.c. ) is often lacking.
What I come across are people who complain their airplane does not reach POH speeds because they look at IAS in flight but read TAS in planning.
Or you hear folks who take printed range figures from the POH out of some table and take them for granted without understanding how they have been calculated, the result often ending up with fuel starvation or near fuel starvation.
I have, as I said earlier, encountered pilots who have never flown above 2500-3000 ft AMSL or are scared to do so, because their airspace or local terrain does not neccesitate flying higher. I don’t need to tell you what the implications of that is: They fly their airplanes inefficiently, well below their prime, are scared of leaning (because they are told to lean only over 5000 ft) and use only a fraction of the plane’s performance envelope. Apart from the safety point that the higher you fly the more time you have to find a good landing area in case of engine failure.
It has been said here before: taking airplanes on a trip which taxes more than the one hour burger run is often even actively discouraged.
I would try to put more practical use of the airplane into both theoretical and practical instruction. I don’t think it is quite adequate to tell students who wish to know how to venture further than their home airports that “they will pick this up once they have the ticket”. Maybe this has to do with the problem that many FI’s are not travellers either.
Fiddling with performance is fun and can, if done properly, lead to quite a different understanding how to operate and understand the capabilities of your airplane. I think it is a pity that this part comes often very short. One friend of mine with whom I’ve worked on performance before put it in comparison to teach student drivers only the first 3 gears of their 5 gear transmissions, as they never get outside a city or roads where you actually use higher speeds.
It gets even more tragic if you see such obvious ignorance on the part of pilot-journalists who “review” airplanes in such ways, emphatizing visual and ergonomical aspects but are totally oblivious to the main function of the airplane.
Some of this is the reason why airports in the alps feel they need to introduce special briefings and special instruction flights, because people are not able to understand what altitude does to an airplane and how to interpret DA properly with their POH in front of them. Almost all performance related crashes at the alpine airports had this kind of background. If people do not know that their airplane will need up to 1 km or more to reach 50 ft AGL when it usually needs 300 m to do so, if they can not figure out their likely true achievable ceiling working with DA, if they lack the comprehension what an OAT of ISA+20 does to performance, then accidents where people simply find their airplane won’t do what they expect it are the consequence.
(and finally, there are also drivers like this. but that is another topic).
Airborne_Again wrote:
What would you want to see which is not in the syllabus now? (
I of course have no idea about the Swedish syllabus, but in general agree with @Peter that engine management seems to be under-taught in flatland Europe and perhaps also the flat parts of the US. I learned to fly in L.A. and as we are surrounded by 10k ft mountains on three sides, leaning and engine performance was definitely a thing. I’m not sure how that’s handled elsewhere.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I also wonder why perfomance is not instructed much more in PPL’s theoretical stuff. Performance is fun, if you get to know it, yet most people don’t know anything about it.
What would you want to see which is not in the syllabus now? (I ask because I teach PPL performance and next time will be in a couple of weeks and I can always use good suggestions.)
Airborne_Again wrote:
“Flatland” PPL’s will very likely have had no experience at all with mountains or high altitude airports during their training.
Peter wrote:
But you can’t get a plane to 8k-10k unless you lean a bit.
It’s funny how different PPL training in different places is even in the day and age of EASA, where PPL is PPL no matter where it’s trained from a FCL point of view.
The two statements above remind me of something far more basic than mountain flying.
Story one: In a well known forum someone from northern Europe was totally excited about getting his airplane to “high altitude” the first time. Which, I believe, was 10’000 ft somewhere over England. Well, most airplanes can do 10’000 ft but this guy, with about 250 hrs total time, said he never had actually climbed above 2500 ft ever.
Story two: A by now very good friend of mine was instrumental in creating a great flight planning solution for VFR airplanes. I loved it from the start, great mapping, great functions and more. But me, coming from the dispatching side of aviation, had a problem: That program based it’s whole perfomance section consisted on one parameter: IAS and an associated fuel flow. It took quite a bit of psychology to figure out why: In the country my friend resides nobody flies over 2500 ft so nobody ever bothered to find out about TAS and for that matter mixing. Many folks still teach no mixing below 5000 ft. Many POH’s say the same, no leaning above 75% power and no leaning below 5000 ft.
Conclusion from the above: Mountain flying is one thing considering all kinds of terrain considerations, orographic winds, turbulence and all that. But much more than that, it is a perfomance thing. And if people never even get to climb their planes over 2500 ft or so, they don’t know the first thing about it. IMHO, nobody should gain a PPL without having at least had the approach to service ceiling demonstrated but much better doing it themselves.
The contrapoint to that is people who look at Samedan or Aspen or similar and think, oh, super, long runway, no problem. If they ever have climbed their airplane at the equivalent density altitudes of 7000 ft or above, they might get an idea that this is not quite right.
Hence my wondering why there are so many PPL’s who lack this basic knowledge. You don’t need mountains to experience the change in behaviour of the airplane at high altitudes. Most airplanes fly much more economical at higher altitudes and having never done high altitude is simply no good. I also wonder why perfomance is not instructed much more in PPL’s theoretical stuff. Performance is fun, if you get to know it, yet most people don’t know anything about it.
