Off again!

It's been a couple of years, so the usual suspects are going for a tour de Europe.

6 of us this year, all in Microlights, but I am the only Fixed wing.  

I joined the party a little late having enjoyed an extra night in my own bed whilst the other 5 gathered themselves from various corners of England and assembled at Ripple, near Deal in Kent.

Up at 5am, airfield for 0630, and airborne on time at 7am to meet the guys mid channel enroute to Calais, and here the entertainment started.

Matt called London Info passing details of the five flexes for flight plan activation, but the controller responded saying he could only find 4 of them.


Matt switched frequency back to the group and asked Graham about his flight-plan and I listened in.  "I definitely did it. I've got a confirmation email here. You watched me do it whilst we were drinking beer last night".

At this point I smiled quietly thinking, I wonder how many beers exactly!

Anyway, the controller seemed content enough as we were all in formation to continue on.  After landing at Calais, we checked Grahams flight-plan confirmation....he had somehow put Andys aircraft reg in !

We are now all through customs, no rubber gloves. Coffee, croissant, and the lads need fuel having travelled several hours yesterday.  Fortunately the airbus has big tanks and having departed with just over 100 litres, I'm probably now at around 85, so don't need fuel. Perhaps a other coffee whilst the guys all struggle with the fuel machine.


Next stop is Sedan Douzy, about 180 miles east near the Belgian border.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Utterly Epic.

Image
We sat at the airfield restaurant in Northern Slovenia waiting for the temperature and thermals to settle down for a looong time and planned a departure that would follow a VFR route through the mountains to Postojna. Matt picked up a transit from Ljubljana info and they cleared us to 5000ft and so we climbed slowly into the mountains. After 15 minutes it became apparent Paul E was having some issues with unserviceable instrumentation. No Speed, No height, and a transponder telling ATC he was halfway to the moon. We worked out he must have something wrong with his static pressure port which controls all this instruments....this alongside his partially knackered Flydat giving him sporadic information about his engine.  Matt notified ATC to disregard Paul's transponder readings and the controller asked for him to reboot his transponder.  Knowing the issue at hand, Paul's somewhat animated response to Matt was that "it won't make any f difference, the ASI is F'd, but ...
Read more

Mosbach Lohrbach, Germany

Image
Been a long day today, over 6 hours flying all with a headwind, but we have made it well into Germany. I had a bit of back ache creeping in on the last leg, so opened the taps and flew the last 50 miles ahead of the group. I was rewarded with a shower and a cold beer on arrival which was very welcome after 6+ hours in a hot cockpit! Just sent out for Pizza.... Update 7am. Finally figure out how to add some photos. Whilst getting camp set up last night, Matt had a txt from Lille ATC asking for a phone call. This is normally bad news, and a sign that one or all of us has busted some airspace. Matt replied and said, Yes, free for a call anytime.  To our relief it seems nobody did anything wrong, they just suggested it would be useful to get a flight information service for such a large group. Ironically, when we tried to get a flight information service to activate our flight plans from France to Germany, Lille didn't answer, and Strasbourg would barely able to...
Read more