Salamanca 2014

I think you may be referring to Passive FTP? That uses variable ports.

The other thing is that when you are roaming with data, the gateway to the internet is still in the country of the SIM provider. So the data is sent over the GSM (or whatever cellular) network from (in this case) Spain to (in this case) Vodafone UK. I don’t think the network being roamed on has a meaningful opportunity to inspect the packets to the extent of being able to chuck out say FTP UP transfers (though anything is in theory possible). Incidentally this of course means that the IP you get allocated by DHCP is the Voda UK one, not some Spanish one. It’s a bizzare system but probably necessary to enable billing to work in all the circumstances. If the roaming connection in Spain is blocking FTP, that must be implemented by Vodafone UK, so a good test would be whether FTP upload works on non-roaming data also.

As with so much these days, a VPN is the way to go. Especially as Voda are blocking VOIP… I just can’t get a VPN working on my phone (spent way too much of my time on it).

Hotel WIFI is no better and is a nightmare in most places nowadays, which is why 3G solutions tend to work better – at a cost, potentially.

I will post some pics soon from the return flight…

On the way back out, one needs to allow 1 hour if Schengen and 2 hours if non Schengen. You need an hour because it takes them that long to enter the data into a PC, and for the latter case you need the extra hour because they will prob90 forget to phone the police who have to come from some distance and it takes then 15 minutes (=30-45 minutes in Spanish time). Everyone was friendly but slooooww.

It’s pretty obvious that they get maybe one GA flight per day, and maybe something similar in commercial flights. It’s a vast airport which must cost tens of millions a year to keep open. We should be grateful that not every country runs stuff the British way…

The airport was €48.91 which includes €30 for 2 nights’ parking.

Here we go… a lot of haze so I tweaked the raw files a bit in Lightroom

IR image just after departure

Looking at the shade of grey of the bit over NW France I would have judged the tops at FL150 (and in the end that would have surprisingly been pretty close)

By landing time the front had moved eastwards but flying through it could obviously not be avoided if you are to get into Shoreham

The MSLP looks a lot more scary, which makes this a great example of why one should never cancel a trip on the basis of a forecast!

The IR images never lie as a “cloud tops metar” – but they can sometimes mislead if there is irrelevant thin cloud at a very high altitude.

When you look at the crap that’s behind it, however, you see why hanging out in Spain for a day or two would be a lousy option, especially since getting out of Salamanca to somewhere useful would be a massive procedure. Justine looked at the airline option and found some (2 flights plus massive hassle) at 500 quid one-way. In this case GA travel is hard to beat.

Departure

Initially you fly north to ZMR and then haggle with another unit

Initially FL110 between layers. The bottom end of the big front moved through during the night but it was just some thin cloud layers, and now I had to fly through it

Further east in Spain, an impressive ridge sticking up through the cloud – about 4000ft high

You can tell the wind was blowing left to right

This is the long beach N of Biarritz. It being a weekend I got cleared straight up, through the infamous R31A1 which is normally inactive then. The distance to land was always in glide range though

FL110 all the way along

Ille de Re, near La Rochelle

The said front is some distance away (to the west of the track) here – clearly it isn’t much of a “front” and most of the high altitude IR signature is due to the high wispy cloud above

Eventually it was crossed very comfortably at FL130, and here we are to the west of it

Nice ground speed at FL130

The TAS was about 145kt and the flow rate was 10.0 USG/hr. It would be amazing if one could get 170kt TAS for 10GPH but there would be significant compromises…

Parts of the front would have needed FL160 to climb over

By the N French coast, it was nice and clear at FL130

An even nicer GS in a -300fpm descent to (initially) FL090

Left base into Shoreham. The pic is cropped so it looks closer than it is; I had to get behind some traffic trying to park on Truleigh Hill

I would say this GFS-based winds forecast was within about 5kt

2014 was certainly the “year of the headwind” with some spectacular examples and it was nice to get something back

Seeing the benefits of 170-180kt on the way back due to the 30-35kt tailwind (slightly over 4hrs in the air LESA-EGKA) it makes me want a plane that can do that anyway, but there aren’t any that will do 180kt economically. A Jetprop remains the only realistic TB20 upgrade

Two images of LESA which seem to represent how busy it is

This bit is always satisfying

It was just a throwaway comment

Unfortunately going faster introduces big compromises, starting with it being almost impossible to get decent photos through pressurised aircraft windows… maybe there is a solution involving special optical glass which one could use for the LH and RH windows, but these windows cost well into 4 digits and the front ones with the built-in heating wires cost 25k upwards (C421C example). Not being able to take photos would take out 99% of the fun for me.

This is the whole of Salamanca – I did all I could to remove the haze

Another pic of that ridge… you really want that just below the MDA when flying the GPS/LNAV+V advisory glideslope and not knowing +V is not “quite” the same thing as an ILS or LPV

Spanish scenery never ceases to impress – this is near San Sebastian

It’s funny how condensation (sometimes frozen!) forms on a wind after landing, following a descent from a high altitude. You can see where the fuel was and I suppose it does prove there was “some” fuel in the tank at the time 36 USG actually – not bad for LESA-EGKA given the full tank is 86 USG.

Some random pics:

Didn’t get the name of this one

For the return trip, a completely clean sferics image

despite the “interesting” MSLP

and even now, with the radar image showing this

there is no strike activity where you might expect to see some

This is the mystery runway again, just north of a place on the map called Alcazaren

It is here somewhere but not marked