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The Italian and French Rivieras in early wintertime

OK, here is my last trip report for 2013.

This past saturday (7/12) was just the day after the strong winter gale “Xaver” had passed through Northern Germany. See the tightly spaced isobars over the Northeast of Germany.

However, what you can also see is a giant high pressure area which at the time was already starting to move in from the west. Mind you, it’s the same high pressure area that is still dominating central Europe today – almost one week later!

These conditions were promising for our short three-day trip to the med. What’s the destination of choice? Well, in december, if one is looking for nice warm temperatures and sushine, but without wanting to fly as far as the Canaries oder Egypt, only the Italian Riviera di Ponente (the stretch from Genoa all the way down to the French border) and the Cote d’Azur (from there on down to Toulon) qualify. As a nice side-effect, I was hoping for some nice tailwinds on the way down south, even though I knew there would probably be a lot of “west” and only a bit of “north” in that spectacular 70 knot northwesterly wind up there.

So we chose Albenga (LIMG) airport as a first stop in order to enjoy lunch at the beautiful seaside town of Alassio.
This was our routing, which was pretty much a straight line, except for the departure and arrival bits. As always, I initially filed for FL110, end then up to FL140 to cross Frankfurt TMA and the Alps via airway N850.

On Saturday morning, of course the most important thing of all was the look at the IR satellite image in order to judge if the flight could be conducted entirely “on top”. Well, this is what it looked like.

As you can see, there was nothing but greyish color on our entire route, so that looked good. On the other hand, it was clear that the flight would be mostly above clouds all the way roughly to the Zuerich area. In fact, we knew there was a band of snowfall lying straight across central Germany, but we also knew it was not very strong and that coincided with the low cloud tops we gathered from the IR satellite image. I was merely a little worried about the ice that we might pick up on our way up, even if the cloud layer was not thick.

Here we are, ready for startup, 8:20 local time at Luebeck (EDHL). Several snowshowers from the day before had left a coating of snow on the ground, but fortunately, the access to our hangar was no problem. The cloud cover didn’t look bad and there were actually a few small holes with the early morning sun shining through.

On departure, we entered the clouds somewhere around 4000 feet. I asked Bremen Radar for a top report and got a “FL90” from an airliner. However, it turned out that the clouds were not solid at all, but layered instead. Here we are after level-off at FL110. During the climb, we picked up a little bit of ice on the unprotected surfaces, which quickly sublimated.

Here’s me and my father.

Once past Kassel, we were cleared inbound to BOMBI (Frankfurt area) and climbed to FL140. Still no sight of the ground, so the most exciting thing to do was to watch the impressive ground speeds on the PFD.

In the Frankfurt area, we got a very nice “DCT ODINA”. Now that’s all the way to the Swiss-Italian border at the northern tip of the Lago Maggiore…nice!
Ground speeds improved even more, although the wind speed actually decreased as we proceeded southbound.

I like these kinds of photos.

Just as expected, when approaching the Zuerich area, the undercast disappeared. This is the eastern part of Lake Zuerich.

And this is the western part. I like this photo, with Zuerich and the Alps’ highest mountains (including Mont Blanc) all in one view!

Here, you can see the city, plus Duebendorf (LSMD), Zuerich’s would-be GA airport that will never be.

Here’s a close-up of Zuerich.

I believe these are the Zuger See and the Vierwaldstaetter See in the background.

Here’s Duebendorf (LSMD) and Kloten (LSZH) in one view, with the latter only just emerging from the fog.

The Sihlsee.

The Vierwaldstaetter See with Buochs (LSZC) airport (barely visible).

The Matterhorn comes in sight.

A view to the left. Flying N850 at FL140 is always fantastic. It feels like flying very close to the mountains. In fact, I was a little surprised about FL140 being available with these outside temperatures (as you know from PPL training…“the mountains are higher in the winter…”).

And another look to the right: the highest mountains of the Western Alps, all in one single view!

Only minutes after…il Lago Maggiore…

…and the much awaited handoff to Milano Radar. After my initial call, my heart warmed when the controller replied: “Novemberrr-e fourr dzulu yankee, buongiorno a Lei…, squawk-e fourr treee six-e one-e, route-e… Odina, Sarronno, Voghera, maintain-e flylevel one-e fourr zeero.”
On the leg from ODINA to Sarronno, we saw these nice ground speeds:

Lake Como and the city of Como with its famous seaplane base. In the distance, you can see the Engiadina region with some of the highest mountains of the central Alps.

We then crossed the plains of the Lombardy and Piedmont regions until reaching the Ligurian Alps, north of Genoa…

…where we turned southwest, inbound to Albenga (ALB). Check the so called Maritime Alps to the right.

Here’s Genoa and its airport, LIMJ.

At this point, we cancelled IFR to allow us to make an early and gentle descent into Albenga.

The highway A10 (Genova – Ventimiglia), winding through the Ligurian Alps.

Descending towards Albenga, overhead Pietra Ligure.

Turning inland for a straight-in to runway 09. The runway is just appearing in the centre of the picture.

Final.

Some well deserved sunshine and 15 degrees Celsius OAT. That was a fantastic flight! Only 3:17h for just under 650NM. After landing, our tanks were still almost half full!

The “terminal” building at Albenga-Villanova airport. Last time I landed here was more than ten years ago.

We took a taxi to Alassio, which is a five minute drive. Just a few impressions. Alassio is highly recommended! (As always in Italy, stay away in high summer).


Mid-afternoon, it was time for today’s final jump over to the Cote d’Azur, which – for GA – means Cannes-Mandelieu (LFMD). I have done this flight several times in the past, but the famous VFR “sea-route” at 500/1000 feet will always be a favourite. The VFR flight plan was filed as a simple “DCT USANO DCT”. ETE would be about 25 minutes.

The only regret I had was that this flight (southwestbound) is normally best done in the morning, not in the afternoon. This way, we had the sun directly in our eyes and it would be difficult to take good photos.
Near San Remo…

Monaco (now at 500 feet MSL).


Nice (the city, I mean).

The Cap d’Antibes and the Eden Roc, with Juan-Les-Pins to the left and Antibes to the right.

Cannes and “La Croisette”.

Final for runway 17.

As always, some nice hardware at LFMD and a great place for aircraft spotting.


An Eclipse taxying past us. I like that airplane.

One of only a few handfuls of amphibs in Europe (at least this side of the Skagerrak), this is CS-DIU, a portugese-registered C185. It is possibile to do seaplane ratings on this one at Cannes.

I won’t bore you with too many pictures of the Cote d’Azur, just a few tiny teasers.


Fantastic weather we had!

St. Tropez.

Cannes again.


Monday was the day of our return to Germany. We elected to circumfly the Alps to the west and to make a fuel stop at Nancy-Essey (LFSN). The mentioned high pressure area was now at full power all over central Europe, so a calm and easy flight was anticipated, even though some fog had to be expected up in the eastern parts of France. There would be some headwind, but not too bad. Also, the North of Germany was still under the influence of a weak stationary front that implied rain (drizzle) and low IFR conditions. But first things first…here is our routing to Nancy. A certain amount of overhead is unavoidable when going north from Cannes.

By the way, early in the morning, we were issued a CTOT, but it coincided pretty much with our planned EOBT, so no major inconveniences.
All IFR departures at LFMD are towards the sea (runway 17), with a subsequent initial climb towards the south and then radar vectors enroute, so we came to enjoy yet another view of the Cote d’Azur.
Cannes, Cap d’Antibes and Nice.

Mandelieu.

A view of Monte Viso from the “other” side.

We crossed the Val Durance near Chateau-Arnoux.

Some interesting rock formations, resembling a bit the Chinese Wall.

Gap-Tallard airport (LFNA), from FL140.

By the way, I was wondering why we weren’t issued the requested DCT to Le Tour du Pin (LTP) VOR, and then found out that the controller was – by default – trying to keep us inside class D airspace, whereas the DCT would have taken us through class E airspace at this altitude. Only once I stated that I was happy with that, Marseille replied, “roger, proceed DCT LTP, class Echo airspace, VFR traffic to be expected”.
Another interesting view, southwest of Grenoble. I later found out that the name of this massif is Vercors.

Grenoble.

Unfortunately, a high overcast soon blocked the sun, so the view of the Mont-Blanc from the west was slightly spoilt.

As we progressed towards Lyon and Dijon, we encountered the predicted fog. Lyon-St. Exupéry was right at minimums as we passed overhead.

By this time, the battery in my Nikon camera died, so these last few photos were taken with the iphone.
Dijon was socked in, too.

But just to the north of Dijon, the fog disappeared and gave us a few glimpses of the beautiful landscape of Burgundy.


Anyone familiar with the airspace in that part of France knows that it is full of military airports and restricted areas. Obviously, this not only affects VFR flights, but – to a certain degree – also IFR flights. As we were flying on a monday morning, we were not able to proceed direct to Nancy, but had to accept a few minor “kinks” in our route. However, Osprey Approach eventually cleared us for the ILS 03 (with a circling to runway 21, as that was the runway in use).
On the ILS approach, here is the city of Nancy.


Joining downwind for runway 21, with two other aircraft in the circuit.

Flying time was 2.5 hours. After quickly topping of the fuel tanks, we were eager to check the weather for our last leg.
The highest tops seemed to be at about FL140, which was OK, as we had enough time to climb before we would encounter the weather.
However, the METAR for Lübeck was BKN004 with visibility 3500 metres in mist and drizzle. And: alternates with better weather were quite a distance away. But since we had six hours of fuel on board, it was a go.
Here’s our flightplanned routing:

We took off and climbed to FL150. On our routing, we happened to cruise precisely along the Mosel River, which is a nice sight from altitude.

Here’s Koblenz:

Disregarding the wind for a second, the mileage was again fantastic on this flight (173KTAS @12.1GPH). Somewhere between FL140 and 150 is indeed the most efficient spot for the non-turbo ’22.

The remainder of the flight was again rather boring – on top of stratus clouds.

So no more photos. By the way, the cloud profiles predicted by both DFS and Ogimet were very precise – with the highest layers indeed occurring exactly at FL140.
When approaching Luebeck, the reported weather deteriorated even more (BKN003, 2500m visibility) but then fortunately stayed that way.
A nice ILS to just above minimums followed and put an interesting end to a fine short winter flying trip.
Dull weather and drizzle at Luebeck airport after landing.

Hope you enjoyed it. Wish you all a happy Christmas time!

Last Edited by boscomantico at 12 Dec 22:04
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Great! Some of the pics bringing back fond memories. Merry Christmas to you too and happy flying next year!

Lovely report. Nice memories of Albenga.

EGTK Oxford

Thanks for sharing.

E

eal
Lovin' it
VTCY VTCC VTBD

Thanks for this great report! Always inspiring!

EDXQ

Yes enjoyed verry much, why the landing in italy? Just for fun? With this wind Cannes would be a short non-stop flight :-)

EDAZ

Fantastic! I’m a fan of your trip reports, keep ’em coming. ;-)

Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany

Superb, very nice.

I mean to visit Albenga at some stage. Another Italian pilot recommended it highly, as a well organised airport, and a very nice town.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Would Philipp’s route from Albenga into France be available for a microlight too, i.e. feasible entirely outside controlled airspace?
As I read the Albenga website, the local aeroclub operates an “avanzato” so the availability of the a/d should not be a problem – unless an exception was created for the aeroclub, or “only for based aeroplanes”.
At the destination side I’d have to find an alternate for LFMD but that shouldn’t be too hard. LFMD does not accept microlights, even if I had the cheek to park my rag and tube thingy among all that shine expensive heavy metal!

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium
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