Unfortunately my DA42 is at service shop for a yearly check and I had to fly commercially to LEGJ. Actually, it was two flights (from LDZA to LFLL via EHAM) and three trains (to Lyon, Dijon and finally Dole), totally 13 hours or travelling instead of less than 3. However, I guess it will be two fun days of Saab 340 flying.
Big bird, kind of…
Gloucestershire EGBJ to Perugia LIRZ on Friday, with a refuelling stop in Lyon Bron LFLY. Then today from Perugia to Sion LSGS.
Lots of weird weather around. Heading SE across France we had strong headwind components unusually, necessitating the fuel stop. The arrived in ‘sunny Italy’ to a massive rainstorm necessitating a very long and painfully bumpy full procedural IAP to the ILS and landing with about 12 kts of tailwind (better than circle to land in marginal conditions). Coming into Sion, there was complete cloud cover all around Switzerland for hundreds of km – but the magic of adiabatic warming provided a beautiful big sunny hole over the Valais.
The weather here (LFMN) has ben truly awful today, so not surprised to hear it was painful. LFMN had 060@30G40, very unusual direction. Weather here generally is weird, with lots of tiny pressure systems that interfere with each other and the Atlantic-dominated big systems. We had a very dramatic frontal passage a couple of hours ago, and just in the last 30 minutes we have the beginning of the occluded front – resulting from a different pressure system – that will follow it.
Up to 17 degrees in the southern half of Germany today. A few pics of Frankfurt… these never grow old. Love these shots against the sun and with the haze on the ground…
Just done a day trip to LFAT, bumping into some old friends on the way back.
Back to usual miserable wx soon
The first one was not so precise but later on I got headings
Just a quick trip IFR to Grenchen with RNP 24 and circling 06, have a coffee and back to Basel. The brush-up was necessary, quite a few small mistakes that wouldn‘t have happened last summer when I was proficient.
I went to Le Touquet today in my TB20 and saw Peter’s plane there. Walking along the sea front I saw this precarious looking scaffolding. I wonder how they’ll deal with it.