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Corfu - August 2006

This article describes an IFR trip from Shoreham to Ljubljana, Dubrovnik, Tirana,
Corfu, and back via Venice.

It is written to highlight the additional capability which an Instrument Rating
provides, in the context of a single engine unpressurised aircraft and a pilot
who is already instrument capable; for example holding the IMC Rating.

A glossary for non-aviation readers is here.

 

Objective

Geographically, this trip was similar to previous trips to our previous Crete
and Santorini trips: to visit a number
of interesting locations and to enjoy the views from the air.

The stops were chosen to be interesting enough so that if we were stuck due
to weather it would not matter. Also, one has to choose airports that have both
Customs and Avgas; this is harder than one would expect.

The above map shows the full extent of the flight planned route, on airway
routings validated by the Eurocontrol CFMU
website.

A recently acquired IR opened up the flight planning options with legal instrument
flight at whatever level was required to avoid the weather. The Crete and Santorini
trips from previous years were planned and flown as IFR but had to be filed
and flown under VFR.

The aircraft is a Socata TB20, with a range of about 1200nm, a ceiling of 20,000ft,
155kt TAS at 10,000ft at 60% power. Main navigation equipment is a KLN94 IFR
GPS with a KMD550 multifunction display. The aircraft is on the N (USA) register
and the pilot has an FAA PPL/IR with about 700 hours total time. It is an ideal
aircraft for this type of trip. It’s a 4-seater with excellent load carrying
capability but with 2 people (myself and my partner Justine) and enough stuff
for 2 weeks one is not far short of being full in volume if not weight.

 

VFR versus IFR Capability Comparison

This is just a summary of the two types of flying rules. I am not writing on
how and where to get weather, etc. Please note this is not exhaustive and some
of the rules differ around Europe.

 

VFR Legal Requirements

One must be clear of cloud at all times (in essence). A UK PPL holder also
needs to be in sight of the surface, worldwide, unless he holds the IMC Rating
or an IR in which case he can fly above an overcast layer in any airspace where
this is not prohibited. He also cannot depart or arrive at an airport which
has published VFR minima and the weather is below these. He must also remain
outside controlled airspace (CAS); any entry into CAS (which for VFR is Class
B,C,D) requires an ATC clearance.

VFR Practice

Some pilots bend the clear-of-cloud rule which is obviously unenforceable while
enroute but the others are strict and usually obvious in their violation. The
VFR departure requirement in particular can keep one stranded for ages. One
can usually get a CAS transit (particularly outside the UK) but it’s never guaranteed.
Even if one can legally fly out of sight of surface, the natural tendency in
VFR is to fly below the clouds (to avoid getting snookered at the destination)
and this introduces a terrain clearance issue with scud running or even having
to land and wait for an improvement. It’s difficult to fly long routes, say
500-800nm, under VFR because it’s hard to ensure that the maze of legal requirements,
weather, terrain, CAS transits, will be met over such a long distance, with
the flight spanning perhaps several weather systems. Flight above clouds
can be a great solution and that is how I did all my previous long trips, but
one cannot climb into Class A; ATC could also refuse any requested level if
within CAS (in practice they are very accomodating if the climb is “due
weather”) and finally you have to be very sure of being able to land under
VFR (which requires a really good look at the destination weather). It’s a paradox
that the full legal privileges of VFR cannot be exercised without instrument
navigation and other flight capability which is not trained in the PPL syllabus.
A competent instrument-capable pilot with a confident radio manner and a well
equipped IFR aircraft can go a long way with VFR but the inability to descend
through cloud and fly an instrument approach is a major problem. The only way
to do it legally is by declaring an emergency.

VFR Flight Planning

This starts with obtaining the VFR charts and working out a route which
falls outside CAS and which – for navigation options – uses navaids as much
as possible. The route will normally be flown with a GPS but a VOR/DME/NDB backup
is always worth having. The VFR charts are normally paper ones but the Raster
Charts add-on for Jeppesen Flitestar offers an alternative allowing en-route
chart sections to be printed out before the flight.

Next, you work out an alternative (usually much easier) route which takes advantage
of any CAS transits you can get while airborne. Transits cannot usually be arranged
prior to the flight although one can phone up various ATC units en route to
discover their attitude to granting transits – the replies range from a totally
noncommittal UK or Italian one, to “Well of course Sir, Class C is fine
for VFR” from Belgium. Some units will tell you about preferred routings.

Next, you get the notams in the form of a narrow route briefing, to
check there are no airshows etc enroute. A full ICAO flight plan must
be submitted if crossing national boundaries (some countries have additional
requirements).

Next, you need VFR airfield charts for the VFR joining/circuit details;
for UK only one can use the Pooleys or similar but for abroad one probably ends
up buying a pile of the heavy, expensive and often inaccurate Jeppesen Bottlang
guides. On a 2004 VFR flight to Crete I carried 20-30kg of these guides… Alternatively
one could print off parts from the national AIP if it is online (the Greek one
isn’t).

A big catch with VFR is that ATC can require you to fly via a specified VRP;
this can be a major hassle since many of these require local knowledge and the
fact that you have no idea where “Silver Point” is (which is probably
a mis-pronounced version of “Sierra Point” which is a point marked
S on the VFR airport chart, which is some chimney or whatever) will cut
no ice with the controller. The perfect navigation you have been doing the preceeding
800nm goes out of the window in an instant! You might want to be helpful and
– knowing he has radar and can see exactly where you are – give him the option
of vectors or an airways waypoint but he is entitled to refuse to consider anything
that isn’t “VFR”. This is also a problem if you cancel IFR – suddenly
you are back in the world of VRPs and you better know them! Anally retentive
controllers everywhere use this to deliberately wind up pilots, especially “foreign”
pilots.

Then you get the weather and check the route can be flown under the
clouds without hitting something, or can be flown above the clouds and
the departure and destination areas will be sufficiently cloud-free to remain
legal. You better have a lot of hair, because you will tear a lot of it out!

Last but not least, in much of the “3rd world” (in which I include
some parts of Europe) there is an anti-VFR attitude at airports, whereas if
you turn up “IFR” you get treated like commercial transport which
is something every airport is used to. However, it has to be said that a pilot
who has plenty of time and patience can indeed go “everywhere” under
VFR.

Flight Planning Software

Navbox is probably best known and
every European pilot should have it. It does not contain pretty maps which (due
to copyright/licensing) keeps the cost way down and is updated every month.
One uses the printed chart for terrain and CAS reference anyway. Of course one
can do it all on paper but Navbox does save a great deal of time in the generation
of the route plan (the plog). At about Euro 100, Navbox is excellent value.

 

IFR Legal Requirements

One is limited essentially only by available airways/ATC-assigned routes and
by aircraft performance. If your aircraft can climb to FL500 then you could
fly at FL500. CAS becomes irrelevant, as do national boundaries. The entire
flight is under an implicit clearance end to end. The only catch is ….. weather!
You also need a full IR.

IFR Practice

There are very few issues beyond a general strategy for weather avoidance while
airborne, and regular routing changes to comply with ATC requirements. You fly
the aircraft, do what you are told, and try not to fly into something nasty.

IFR Flight Planning

This uses IFR airways charts which cover vast areas and thus work out
much cheaper than VFR charts. However, these charts are very cluttered and it’s
difficult to find even the right country on them in a hurry (it helps to highlight
the filed route with a yellow highlighter). These are published by Jeppesen
and Aerad; I prefer the Jepp ones because the Aerad ones contain both upper
and lower airways and are more cluttered as a result.

One has to file an ICAO flight plan with a route which uses the airways
system which gets sent to a computer in Eurocontrol
(CFMU)
in Brussels. The bad news is that working out this route is often
complicated because the chart does not tell the whole story; some routes are
permitted only on some days, some are permitted only for some (local) departures
or arrivals, most have permitted levels, etc. The information is contained in
various national Standard Route Documents (SRDs), but these don’t tell the whole
story either. The computer summarily chucks out the route if it doesn’t like
it. There are several ways to arrive at an acceptable route; one is using this
free website (which is very helpful
but not 100% successful); another is using the Jeppesen Flitestar flight planning
program whose database contains the airways (which is good but not 100%), and
the option of last resort is to state on the flight plan that ATC may amend
the route (this works provided the filed route was more or less right to start
with). I have written a lot of notes on the IFR flight planning process here.
Route planning can be a big hassle but once your route is accepted by CFMU you
“just” need to fly it! Edit 3/2009: two new airway route generation
tools have been recently developed – Autoplan
FlightPlanPro

One still gets notams but enroute information is much less important
than under VFR because the route flown is normally under ATC (radar) control
all the way. Airport notams remain crucial and often turn up non-working
navaids and thus unavailable instrument approaches.

No VFR airfield guides are required but you need the approach plates
and these include an airport diagram.

ATC will assume that you can fly the filed route, at the filed level, and that
you can comply with their instructions unless you advise otherwise. The key
factor is aircraft performance versus weather; specifically avoidance of icing
and turbulence, especially embedded CBs, which in turn means making sure the
flight can be done in VMC as far as possible – especially the enroute section
which is usually plenty long enough to pick up an unacceptable amount of ice
if the outside air temperature (OAT) is in the right range. This usually means
above any clouds. Jets are no different but they can climb above the
weather, get up there quickly, get back down quickly, and they usually have
weather radar and good anti-ice systems to keep them going while they are making
the transitions.

Even if you have VMC enroute, you still have to climb and descend and if these
sections involve IMC then you can’t see what you are about to fly into. Weather
radar is very helpful but is rare on piston singles; a stormscope is much more
commonly found but this provides limited information on stuff which can be nasty
but has not yet started to generate discharges. So, even if one is very sure
of being able to fly VMC enroute (and thus avoid CBs etc visually) one is still
likely to cancel if CB activity, plus a layer of solid IMC for it to hide in,
are forecast or reported in the departure or arrival areas. An exception is
if a descent is possible well away from the forecast-CB region to get below
the CB bases and in effect proceed to the destination visually. The descent
situation is better than the climb situation because when descending into
IMC one can get a good idea of what is underneath it from what the top surface
looks like; if it is smooth at say 8000ft then a CB won’t be hiding underneath
it.

But a mountain might, so accurate navigation is crucial. All the old
anti-GPS nonsense has to be discarded. A BRNAV navigation capability (being
able to navigate to points which are not navaids) is mandatory for IFR at FL095
and above in Europe, which means basically everywhere, and an IFR certified
GPS is the only way to do this (airliners do it with inertial nav equipment).
If a flight is on an airway route then the airway MEA (minimum enroute altitude)
takes care of obstacle clearance, but all bets are off if routing off-airways.
It can be pretty handy to carry a VFR chart and check any DCT legs against that.

Flight Planning Software

This is more of an issue than with VFR, in that it is both more necessary but
also the only choice, Jeppesen Flitestar
or Jeppview, is of not particularly great quality. Arguably the key feature
for an IFR flight planning program is the ability to enter an airways route
(i.e. a route which refers to airways names e.g. L609) and the software understands
this and works out all the waypoints through which the airway passes, allowing
a route plan (plog) to be printed out with all the waypoints which are to be
loaded into the GPS. If Navbox had this one feature, it would do fine for IFR
flight planning…Flitestar does this, and also contains a database of the airways
so is able to automatically generate airways routings but this capability is
limited, resulting in routings that are often wrong and one has to amend them
manually to make it acceptable to Eurocontrol.

Another key feature of Flitestar is the ability to print out en route chart
sections. These will be a lot more readable in the cockpit, in a hurry, than
printed airways charts and this is important because ATC often send you to unexpected
intersections. One has to choose a printing scale at which the intersection
names appear; this happens at about 1"=10nm. For say a 600nm flight this
will generate around five A4 section charts. But there is a catch: the software
often fails to print the name of an intersection, especially (it seems) if the
intersection has more than one or two airways going into it. This is one of
a number of silly bugs in the Jepp software and it means that one has to go
over the printouts afterwards and manually fill in any missing names. One does
need the intersection names, because a typical enroute IFR flight is a series
of DCTs (issued by ATC) to various intersections and little else.

Jeppview v3 is another Jeppesen product which does most of what Flitestar does
in the flight planning department (minus the automatic routing) but its key
feature is that it provides a database of instrument approach plates. The cost
varies according to the geographical coverage; each database CD contains the
whole world and the money you pay gives you a code which unlocks the appropriate
region.

Jeppesen products are usually very expensive; Jeppview for a part of Europe
costs about Euro 2000 which is way beyond what most private pilots are going
to pay. Flitestar IFR is much more reasonable but it leaves you with having
to get the approach plates from elsewhere; many countries publish these free
of charge on national “CAA” websites and also via the Eurocontrol
site.

Jeppview also comes with a program called Flitedeck which imports the route
generated in Flitestar or Jeppview, accepts a GPS input, and provides a moving
map showing the planned route, terrain clearance, and other features. Flitedeck
can be installed on any PC but is clearly intended to be run on a tablet PC
and used in-flight. It displays the standard Jepp enroute chart, with an added
“killer feature” of displaying your position over the approach plate.
Flitedeck is a particularly clunky application which you do not want to be playing
with when you really need it.

I think the Jeppesen software is poor by modern standards; it has various quirks,
weird behaviours, counter-intuitive features, some really obvious bugs which
have not been fixed, regular crashes but – particularly with Jeppview and its
approach plate database – nobody else provides the data in a unified and convenient
form over such a large geographical area and it is the data which you really
pay for.

I use Jeppesen Flitemap for IFR flight planning. This is a recently discontinued
product which is basically Flitestar with a GPS input option so you can get
a moving map over the planned route. I also have access to Jeppview/Flitedeck
but I use these only for printing off approach plates.

UK IMC Rating: this does not really apply here since an IMC-R holder
cannot fly IFR outside the UK. He also cannot go into Class A. The removal of
the UK PPL sight-of-surface requirement is valid worldwide where not locally
prohibited (I have this confirmed by the UK CAA) which is a very useful tool
but one has to get up there and down again without breaking the VFR rules. Few
countries have the sight-of-surface requirement anyway so, in effect, a UK IMC-R
holder will be flying under plain old VFR when abroad. Finally, the normal sort
of IFR flight around the UK, sub-airways, is like VFR in that there is no ATC
clearance for the entire route.

 

In summary, IFR flight planning is more deterministic than VFR. The end-to-end
ATC clearance is a huge plus. With good planning, there is a lot less potential
for nasty suprises when airborne which is probably the main reason why most
IFR-capable pilots fly IFR whenever they can.

 

Universal Requirements – VFR and IFR

A top tip, VFR or IFR, for outside the UK, is to fax every airport in advance:

Aircraft reg and type (including the ICAO code)
MTOW
# of passengers and their nationalities
A range of dates for arrival and departure
Avgas and Customs availability
PPR requirements and acceptable methods of transmitting the request
Phone and fax number of ATC
Anything else I need to know?
Please hand-write your reply on this fax and fax it back, or email to xxx

The responses are often suprising. A lot of the information published in the
flight planning guides (Jeppesen, usually) is fiction; sometimes Jeppesen get
it wrong but I think a lot of the information in the national AIP (which is
where Jeppesen etc compile their guides from) is rubbish. By the time you get
to Spain, Italy or beyond it’s rare to find a published phone number that is
correct. There is no substitute for getting the information from the airport
directly. Fax numbers change a lot less often than phone numbers so faxing a
week or two in advance is the best initial approach to this.

Long trips like this one do not need a great deal of forward planning; a couple
of days in advance is plenty. However, kicking off the process of extracting
the essential information out of airports a few weeks early is a good idea.
Some never reply and have to be telephoned, which can be a problem if the published
number is the recorded information line for scheduled flights………

A landing permit requirement is not uncommon even in what we call Europe;
in this case we had to get one from Tirana’s Aviation Ministry and this took
a couple of weeks.

In the real 3rd world overflight permits are also required regardless
of flight rules and while I have no experience of this, they can be problematic
and/or very expensive. One well known endurance record breaking pilot spend
US$ 60,000 just paying his way through the length of Russia, just a few years
ago.

Going to a non-IFR airport. This is one without an instrument approach.
In the UK, one can legally fly a DIY approach to an airfield without an IAP
(not in an N-reg aircraft though; ref FAR 91.175(a)) but abroad this tends to
be done more formally by cancelling IFR and flying a visual approach. This is
a long subject but it is rarely an issue on foreign trips like this one because
one usually needs Customs at every stop anyway, and most international airfields
have instrument approaches. The biggest problem with such an IFR to VFR arrival
is maintaining terrain clearance during the transit, so a good grip on the destination
weather is essential.

 

Planning for this trip

Due to the unreliability of anything computer-based, I always print out everything
essential. For this trip, we had six legs to plan so ended up with six lots
of printouts

each of which contained the overall route picture, several enroute sections
(the scale on these being chosen so that airways intersection names showed up
– Jepp software is poor in getting “little details” like this right),
the plog, and all SID/STAR and approach charts for the destination and the alternate,
and a printout of the CFMU screen showing the accepted flight plan route:

Because IFR routes are relatively predictable, it really pays to work out all
the likely routes (as shown above) before leaving home, by making sure each
one is acceptable to Eurocontrol. The actual flight plans can be filed shortly
before each flight using the internet (I use the excellent Homebriefing
service which charges Euro 36/year flat rate) or even by fax or telephone.

 

Mobile Computing & Communications

This is pretty well essential when doing a long trip. This kind of flying –
VFR or IFR – is a long way from that of an airline pilot who steps into the
cockpit having just been handed a folder with all he needs to know. The private
pilot needs to be able to plan flights, get weather, file flight plans, fax
prior permission (PPR) notifications, etc. One can manage without but then one
ends up hunting around for internet cafes and messing about at airports where
nobody (that can speak English) knows where the pilot information service is
– if indeed one exists.

I use an old Dell L400 laptop with a Sierra 750 PCMCIA GSM/GPRS card which
also does GSM fax, and the Canon IP90 inkjet printer. The printer is lightweight
and prints in colour. There is a much smaller (and pricey) printer from Pentax
but it is B&W only and uses special paper. It’s a good setup except for
the poor battery life on most laptops – in reality this isn’t a problem because
one can usually plug it in somewhere. The whole lot is not light but it easily
fits into a backpack and gets left in the hotel room anyway.

Unfortunately one cannot rely on WIFI to the extent the popular media
might suggest. Nowadays (2006) most city networks are secure and if you can
find one you have to pay for it. Hunting around for internet cafes is a major
distraction. I find that spending a few quid getting weather data via a GPRS
connection is a whole lot easier. Some notes on mobile connectivity are here.

I also have been running a Motion LS800
tablet computer in the cockpit, mainly as a backup for the main IFR GPS. Unfortunately,
as detailed further below, the hard drive fails at higher altitudes.

 

Shoreham to Ljubljana

The weather planning was tricky. The atmosphere was thoroughly unstable over
most of continental Europe, with thunderstorms (TS) all over the place. Luckily,
the first possible day for our holiday, Friday 25/8/2006, provided a situation
(MSLP chart 1200 and
1800, SigWx chart 1200
and 1800) which was worth examining
more closely. There was a chance of thunderstorms along the entire route, so
the question was whether one could climb high enough to be in VMC and thus avoid
them visually. I looked at several forecast tephigrams (vertical profiles of
the atmosphere) along the route whose temperature/DP spread suggested chart1
chart2 chart3
that there would not be any solid IMC enroute. I telephoned a professional forecaster
too, and he agreed. I also got a radar image on the morning of the flight, from
this fantastic Meteox weather radar site.
The sferics (stormscope) data didn’t show
much activity until the very end of the route, and the weather there was forecast
to be moving on anyway. (Note that the Meteox radar site does not display full
coverage over the geographic area which it depicts; N Italy is not covered for
example).

Looking at some of the cloudbases down below (TAFS)
relative to the terrain, doing this flight under VFR would have required balls
made of solid brass, not to mention the possibility of having to stop somewhere
for a while. Bending the VFR rules and flying in cloud would not really be on
due to widespread forecast CB activity. We did a similar leg under VFR in 2005,
Shoreham to Trieste, and that was possible only because the clouds over Belgium
and Germany were scattered and much lower down, and by the time the cloud tops
started rising we were in airspace which was uncontrolled to FL195.

So off we went, IFR. The airways route, filed for FL150, was reasonably
direct (alternate: Trieste LIPQ) with an actual distance of 689nm versus a great
circle distance of 647nm:

EGKA MAY R8 DVR L9 KONAN L607 RUDUS L984 ASKIK Z74 DONIS L603 CHIEM P995 ARNOS
P735 GILIN LJLJ

Warning: This article includes route illustrations (like the one above)
produced by Jeppesen Flitestar/Flitemap, which include a vertical (terrain)
profile at the bottom. It has recently (Feb 2007) come to light that the Jepp
terrain elevation data is grossly inaccurate and can be several thousand feet
out. Furthermore, the error is usually in the unsafe direction. This feature
of the software is therefore useless for any flight planning or terrain avoidance
purpose, even in an emergency.

The weather turned out to be more or less as expected. Initially, UK weather
was nice so we asked for a stop climb at FL100. This improves the TAS a little
(the optimum for most non-turbocharged 250HP tourers is about 8,000-10,000ft)
and conserves oxygen. This was good for about 100nm; then we had to go higher
to remain VMC.

There was a lot of CU/TCU stuff up to about 20,000ft to the left of our route
– exactly as expected from the radar image

In fact we had to deviate "due weather’ up to 50nm to the right of the
filed route. This actually helped to reduce the distance by bringing the route
flown closer to the GC route. ATC were entirely co-operative (they have no choice
really) and it was only at one point, approaching DINKU, that they were increasingly
keen to get us back on track. I simply refused, explaining what was to our left;
the following picture shows the tops at about 22,000ft:

The stormscope showed almost nothing enroute, which was undoubtedly correct
– no TS so no discharges. We did enter IMC for a few minutes at a time, and
in the OAT of -10C we did reliably collect a very thin coating of rime ice on
the leading edges. This disappeared immediately when back in the sunshine. I
have a TKS de-iced propeller and use it on the max setting anytime in freezing
IMC.

We gradually climbed en route from FL100 to FL120, FL140, FL150, FL160. The
TB20 was delivering a TAS of about 140kt at FL160

which with a 20kt tailwind resulted in good progress. Weather to the right
of the route was excellent:

A lot of Germany was visible enroute, including this most impressive house
on an island:

At about FL140, the LS800 tablet computer (running Flitedeck) died. It rebooted
itself but would not load windows again. It worked OK back on the ground, reporting
an invalid shutdown. Most likely, the hard drive stopped working at the altitude.
This is something to be watched with anything that has a hard drive in it! The
obvious solution is a flash drive replacement but I have not found one which
would fit the LS800, and in any case they are very expensive.

The Alps are not particularly high along this route

Unsuprisingly given the long time spent at FL150-160, we used up nearly the
whole cylinder of oxygen on this flight, so it was as well that I had recently
purchased a second cylinder which we carried in the back of the aircraft. This
will be required for the return leg to the UK which is over the Alps again.
Clearly oxygen duration is a major flight planning issue on long trips like
this one. Some notes on oxygen equipment are here.
We use an Aerox portable oxygen kit with
a four-person regulator, the 13 cu. ft cylinder and cannulas. The system uses
the standard Aerox cannulas as shown below:

I have recently purchased a Nelson Oxygen automatic
demand regulator
which should make the cylinder last a lot longer; unlike
the older Mountain High electronic demand regulator this ingenious device does
not use batteries but uses a different type of cannula which does not have the
under-nose reservoir and has two separate tubes going all the way back to the
demand regulator. This regulator costs about US$350 and you have to have one
per person; I bought just one initially to see if it works and it worked perfectly
at FL160, keeping my blood oxygen at about 92% (heart rate 76). More controlled
experimentation is required to verify the supplier’s claim of a 2x to 3x saving
(over a constant flow cannula) but it certainly looks like it is working just
fine.

Even though the approach plates do not mention radar, I was offered a radar
vectored ILS. I periodically fly an ILS with the autopilot (a “coupled”
approach) because this mode is obviously what would be used in any emergency
or high workload situation, so the equipment must be tested regularly. However,
when Ljubljana ATC gave me a base leg heading which was at 90 degrees to the
localiser, the autopilot did not capture the localiser. Whether ATC realised
this or not, they gave me another heading (the runway heading, more or less)
at about the moment I was going to do something about it and disconnect the
autopilot, and I completed the approach manually.

Upon departure from Ljubljana 2 days later I asked for an ILS approach so I
could check out what happened, but it wasn’t possible due to inbound traffic.
However, the autopilot tracked the localiser fine into Dubrovnik, so I guess
the KFC225 autopilot is unable to intercept a localiser at 90 degrees – not
exactly suprising.

Ljubjana

Ljubljana is an absolutely lovely city. It’s compact and easy to walk around.
It contains a mixture of both old and modern architecture, and a mixture of
the Mediterranean and the northern European.

Picture Gallery

Everything is clean and well organised. There are regular buses from the airport
into the town. The airport has an excellent GA office where on departure they
hand you a briefing pack with the weather, relevant notams, and drive you in
a minibus to the aircraft. It takes less than 10 minutes to sort everything
out. The Avgas bowser accepts credit cards and the Air BP card. We paid about
Euro 50 for landing and 2 nights’ parking which is excellent value. There was
some sort of PPL training going on, using modern composite aircraft, during
quiet periods which appears to be much of the day on weekdays.

There were few “obvious” tourists, and there was a huge number of
young people around who obviously live there. The population is a far cry from
that seen in a typical UK city; it is healthy, fit, happy, and shows none of
the aggressive fashions and behaviours so commonly seen in the UK. Yet the country
is strongly pro-Western and clearly feels closer to northern Europe than to
anywhere else. I know from other connections that their education system is
excellent and the country is technologically advanced. This is a country with
huge potential in Europe but we wondered with some sadness that perhaps we are
seeing it at its best and it’s going only downhill from here. Britain is a fine
example of how bad things can get, with a decrepit State education system, gross
obesity starting with very small children, and a strong anti-intellectual bias
culminating in “freak shows” on TV like Big Brother. MacDonalds have
opened up shops in Ljubljana so it’s only a matter of years before the population
catches up…. of course I hope I am wrong and that they work to preserve what
they have.

All food in Ljubljana was really excellent. The prices were slightly below
Western European prices.

 

Ljubljana to Dubrovnik

Like all flights on this holiday, this flight was pre-planned IFR back home
with this route (alternate: Corfu LGKR):

LJLJ SABAD L862 SPL L607 DBK LDDU

However, CBs were forecast
in the vicinity of Dubrovnik and this was a regular feature for a number of
days. It was thus apparent that while there would be no problem flying it at
whatever it took to get into VMC, say FL140, we could get snookered into ending
up at FL140 near the destination and having to descend through a great deal
of very turbulent muck. The tephigram for LDDU
suggested there would not be solid IMC in the area but on balance I decided
to take the much more visually attractive low level VFR route. With hindsight
this was not the best decision since the high level route would have worked
out fine – with detours around weather as usual.

The VFR route was the obvious picturesque one along the former Yugoslavian
coast, filed for 5000ft:

LJLJ RJK ZDA SPL DBK LDDU

The days when one could fly around Europe without one’s passport even being
looked at (while airline passengers endured various levels of hassle) may be
coming to an end. On the way out through Ljubljana airport we were thoroughly
searched, with us having to take off our watches, everything else metallic,
and unpack a heavy backpack full of equipment, with a queue of airline passengers
behind us. I protested that this is a “private aircraft” (i.e. we
are hardly going to blow ourselves up) but the security man said that we are
getting access to airside where other aircraft are parked.

Going VFR proved to be of marginal benefit as we were unable to – due to terrain
and cloudbase being rather too close – head straight for the coast and soon
had to climb, in stages, to FL110 to get on top of a lot of cloud which despite
being scattered extended vertically almost all the way down to the mountainous
terrain of Slovenia and Croatia. The stormscope was showing heavy returns all
above the mountains, and this was exactly where the CB activity was visually
evident, with the lightning probably being at a very high level. My error here
was not having got TAFs and METARs for airports along the route – something
one should always do when going VFR!! Probably, the reason I didn’t do it was
because the flight was expected to be at low level along the coast and thus
below any likely weather. In fact the WX500 stormscope amazes me how accurate
it is in azimuth – though not in range which can be out by 2x or more.

The weather cleared up about halfway down and we headed for the coast. The
flight continued at low level along the beautiful scenery comprising of the
Croatian coast and many islands of various sizes

Slovenia and Croatia ATC were totally helpful, with a radar service all the
way. The route actually flown is shown in this rather poor screen photo from
Flitedeck running on a tablet PC:

I asked Dubrovnik Approach for an ILS which they were happy to offer. However,
this was when things started to get interesting. We were down to 2000ft, just
below the scattered cloudbase and in perfect sunny VMC. The stormscope was showing
heavy returns all over the place which were clearly above us. As I was established
on the localiser, an Airbus A320 which landed minutes before us reported a CB
with lightning over the airport, 37kt of wind shear (not sure how he worked
out it was precisely 37kt) and then we saw the runway shortening in front of
us as rain heavy enough to be totally opaque worked its way along the runway,
from the far end towards us. Concurrently, several bolts of lightning struck
from the cloudbase into the sea, no more than a few hundred yards to the right
of the approach path. The picture below shows (yellow dots) where the lightning
was going:

At this point we were still a few miles out, in perfect calm sunshine and I
was rather enjoying the amazing picture and thinking about what to do about
it, but Justine started to get very concerned so I decided to do a 180 back
and advised ATC I would go back to the NDB located about 10nm further back;
their response was “smart choice”. We spent about 20 minutes flying
backwards and forwards at 1000ft among the islands until the CB moved on. During
this time, some airliners landed, amazingly… Our landing was uneventful, in
very light rain and nearly calm wind.

So this is what PROB40 TEMPO 0915 TSRA FEW020 FEW030CB can look like, on the
rare occassions when it does materialise at the worst possible place.

Massive CBs and showers like I have never seen before are clearly a feature
of this place. On the evening of the landing another storm arrived, thoroughly
flooding the town. In fact the weather was like this for the entire holiday
to this point; every TAF had a PROB30 TEMPO of TS and CB or something similar.
One can see why weather radar is so useful.

In retrospect this flight would have been better done under IFR, at high level,
and then descending near the destination for a visual approach. The view along
the route would have been nil though.

There were just a few GA aircraft parked at Dubrovnik, and appeared to have
been sitting there for a very long time. However they did have several business
jets moving about.

The airport at Dubrovnik is nothing like Ljubljana. It is very busy with tourists
and disorganised, with buses running only a few times each day when there is
a commercial flight arriving or departing, and to no apparent timetable even
then. The avgas bowser man accepted only Mastercard or Amex; a strange combination.
There is no support for GA; not that I needed any since I have long been completely
independent but it took me a while just to find somebody who knew where to go
to pay the landing fee. The airside bus came back several times while we were
sorting out what to take back with us; this appears to be the one thing which
one can rely on at every airport.

We headed for the famous “old town” of Dubrovnik

The 10-mile bus ride into the old town is stunning, both for the views as it
weaves around the mountain roads and for the kamikaze drivers who were overtaking
the bus on blind bends.

The old town is a great piece of history. It is very old but most of it was
rebuilt 400 years ago following an earthquake. It was also thoroughly shelled
in the 1991 conflict, taking a huge number of hits
most of which appear to have been very well repaired.

In complete contrast to Ljubljana, while some people do live in the town, it
is packed solidly with tourists. This does not detract from the beauty of the
place which is probably best appreciated early in the morning before the crowds
come out and when the light is better. We were lucky though in having a place
to stay which was yards from the main street.

Picture Gallery

There is only one hotel inside the old town which was predictably sold out,
but they referred us to a very nice apartment just around the corner for Euro
140 per night. This turned out to be an excellent location and much better than
most of the hotels which need a bus or a car to get into the town. All the food
was really excellent; prices were on par with most places in Europe.

The landing+parking charge (3 nights) was about Euro 50 which is very reasonable.

 

Dubrovnik to Tirana

The filed route (OK with CFMU at anything above FL110) was (alternate: Corfu
LGKR):

LDDU DBK R45 TAZ POD L604 TRN LATI

The weather picture was mixed (SigWx,
TAFs/METARs) with a probability
of TS and CB. On the morning of the flight there was no TAF available for Tirana
but others in the area were pretty similar. The Tirana METAR showed a nil (24/24)
temperature spread but high cloudbases; this would be pretty weird if seen in
the UK… anyway we had plenty of fuel and the alternate looked good.

I had faxed Tirana ATC some weeks before the trip asking them for any specific
information. They were very helpful and replied by email with details of their
“CAA” address and contact to which to send a bunch of aircraft documents;
permission is required to land in Albania. I faxed these over but they didn’t
come out too well at the other end so I referred them to a website URL from
which they could download them. Unfortunately the permission had not arrived
by the time of our departure from the UK but I got a phone call from the contact
to simply phone him the day before we are going to go there and he will arrange
it. An email arrived the day before this flight with a permission number, so
that was that problem solved. They also faxed it to my UK office number. The
permission number was entered in the flight plan remark field.

Dubrovnik was operating a SID (rather than a
radar departure) which takes one way out over the sea and then back again, climbing
the whole way to a minimum 9000ft. Our clearance specified FL100 by TIBRI; we
were about 300ft short and the controller (who was obviously watching us on
radar) requested a 360 turn to get the extra height. This was curious as there
was no obstacle clearance issue at that level. We climbed initially to FL100,
gradually going up in 1000ft increments to FL140 to stay above clouds. We were
given a direct TAZ-RETRA but had to fly slightly right of the route due to weather
anyway. ATC were totally helpful, with me requesting weather avoidance every
minute or two. The Tirana VOR was unserviceable (this was notamed so known in
advance) so they were operating the NDB18 procedure;
also it meant that their STARs were inoperative because they join onto the VOR
approaches only. As a result of all this, perhaps 1/3 of the total distance
flown on this flight was spent on the two instrument procedures!

The flight was bumpy in a few places early on, where a cloud had to be transited
and could not be reasonably avoided. The rest of it was fine. At one point,
at FL140 and above a smooth overcast layer with no turbulence at all, we encountered
an updraught which – with the autopilot holding a constant altitude – pushed
the IAS from about 120kt to 160kt. It’s hard to say what the vertical speed
of the airflow was but probably over 500fpm. I did check out (on a later flight)
what VS value would have the same effect at FL140 and it is about 500fpm. The
most likely cause was wind from the sea going up the mountains which were inland
(east) of our route. If this had been a downdraught then we would have
had to turn right (west) to get out over the sea, just to hold altitude. It
lasted only a minute or two.

Several airliners were inbound also and one had to hold while we flew the long
NDB approach. One of them descended to 6500ft instead of 8500ft; he got a polite
warning by ATC but he would have got a mountain instead if he did it a bit further
to the west, and in IMC

Once we were past RETRA, Tirana ATC gave us stepped descents to 6500ft over
the NDB; then we did a procedure turn back out to fly the approach plate, descending
6500ft to 3300ft once established on the outbound leg.

The KLN94 GPS database contains these procedures as overlays and I always use
these in conjunction with the real navaid, but some of these overlays leave
a lot to be desired; the LDDU SID being one a fine example of a half-complete
and misleading representation.

The final part of the approach was well visual but there was about 20kt of
crosswind

The airport – Tirana’s only accessible one – is big; no doubt built for communist-era
military transports

We were taken on the usual bus to the terminal, and had no problems getting
out. We had to pay Euro 10 each for an entry visa and there is a similar payment
to get out again. The landing+parking charge is made up of a list of items which
can include airport lighting if landing at night, and at Euro 223 it was not
at all cheap…

Unsuprisingly given the landing charges, there was only one GA aircraft parked
on the vast apron; a G-reg Piper turboprop

This flight could have been done under VFR, along the coast over the water,
so long as the cloudbase over the piece of Albania from the coast to the airport
was at least 2000ft; there is some terrain at 1000ft. I don’t know if there
are mandatory VFR routes in Albania though, or indeed their attitude to VFR.
A bigger problem is a lack of VFR charts for the area; Jeppesen don’t cover
it and the only option is the U.S. ONC/TPC chart whose most recent edition is
1998 and which shows no controlled airspace and is thus useless for anything
other than basic terrain. Presumably the Albanian AIP contains enough information
to plot the CAS outlines, and flight planning software that gets updates from
national AIPs (Navbox and Jepp Flitestar / Jeppview) should also contain it.
But flying IFR does away with all that stuff.

Tirana city is about 15 miles from the airport; no doubt this distance was
intentional given the well-known tendency of aircraft operated by the former
Eastern Block countries to fail to remain airborne…

We had just two nights in Tirana so we did not see much and in any case one
could never do justice to this beautiful country in a few paragraphs.

The city’s large museum

has a truly spectacular mosaic on the outside (300k
jpeg
) depicting the various Albanian revolutionary phases. The museum covers
the Albanian history from centuries ago, through countless troubles, right up
to present day and is absolutely fascinating, despite most of the exhibits being
described only in Albanian.

Albania appears to have been in a nearly constant state of subversion, revolution,
counter-revolution, tyranny, isolation, poverty and a few other things, usually
several at the same time, throughout most of the 20th Century and until just
a few years ago. It’s been run by the worst possible people who consistently
made the worst possible choices when it came to foreign alliances. The content
of the museum and the art gallery is something which myself, having lived in
communist Czechoslovakia from 1957 to 1969, could recognise but it was still
pretty specialised stuff which only those well informed on communist doctrine
and propaganda generally and regional politics specifically could appreciate
fully.

Thankfully this era now appears to be behind them, but they have a huge amount
of reconstruction to do which is difficult because of lack of money, and management
expertise and – many say – poor political leadership and widespread corruption.
There is a number of Western companies operating there, however. Most of the
young people are doing their very best to look Western and, in the absence of
Western excesses in food consumption, they do look pretty good and are not dissimilar
to the people of Ljubljana. I hope they succeed.

We stayed in one of the “top” hotels, the Chateau Linza, which was
about Euro 150 per night for a double room; it looks like a typical communist-era
building from the 1960s but actually it was built in 1994. It lies on the side
of a hill with a regular minibus running into the city. A UK Health & Safety
inspector would have a fit if he saw this or
this, or even this,
but thankfully they have not yet acquired the West’s anally retentive safety
culture and – apart from the number of drunken communist party functionaries
who must have fallen onto that staircase – I admire their resourcefulness. The
minibus doubles up as transport for hotel
maintenance
. The hotel would have been very quiet at night – no traffic
in proximity – but there was a constant barking of dogs outside. Prices in the
hotel restaurant were fully to Western levels; at least double what most places
in the city would have charged.

The hotel had great views of the city

The hotel food was not great but fruit and vegetables were excellent; apparently
they are all organic because the farmers are too poor to use fertilisers or
pesticides. The food in the city itself was excellent and there is a huge number
of bars, cafes and restaurants. There is a strong Italian influence.

There is obviously a lot of money around in small pockets. This is evident
from the many very expensive vehicles and many upmarket shops. It just doesn’t
work its way down through the economy very well. Most of the city is run-down,
packed with a lot of poor people and decrepit traffic working its way around
the potholes. Many of the vehicles are old Mercs which are run nearly
into the ground – Tirana would be a great advertisement for the durability of
Mercedes cars!

Tirana has spectacular sunsets over the mountains

We used a Brandt travel guide for Albania, which was well out of date on several
counts. The funniest one was this supposedly nice hotel
which we found to be shut and then we found an article in an English-language
newspaper reporting that the hotel had been used as a brothel, at Lek 1000 (about
Euro 10) per “transaction”. Whether this is good value cannot be judged
without additional information…

There are a number of nature reserves and I think one week is the minimum time
needed to have anything like a good look around these. We will be back.

Picture Gallery

There are very few other airports. We saw this one

on the way to Corfu which was almost certainly Berat but it is military only.
This airport is not shown on the Jeppesen IFR charts (nobody publishes current
VFR charts for Albania, Greece and much of that region) but is shown on the
1998 U.S. ONC chart. Like Tirana, the runway is big enough for the space shuttle,
or an overloaded Tupolev departing downwind on one engine. The above picture
was taken at FL120.

Mobile internet access was something else. My Orange phone did not work at
all; clearly Orange have not bothered to set up a roaming deal with anybody
here. Vodafone worked fine but there was no GPRS access at all. There are plenty
of internet cafes in the city and we had internet access in the hotel (about
Euro 2.50 per hour). Strangely it was not possible – as in Dubrovnik – to run
a VPN (a secure network connection) even if an ethernet cable connection was
used rather than wifi. I wonder if the VPN ports are blocked in these countries.
I can run a VPN over Vodafone GPRS from anywhere but only if GPRS works in the
first place…

The only ways to get truly mobile internet in Albania would be with a mobile
phone used as a plain 9600 baud GSM modem (dialling one’s UK ISP and pretty
slow and expensive; also it is possible this service is blocked here too) or
with a very expensive satellite phone.

Fax worked fine, on Vodafone GSM, which is pretty amazing for a PAYG service.
With a suitable modern receiving fax, an A4 page would send in a few seconds.
Vodafone is one of UK’s more pricey networks but one can see why serious corporate
(contract) users go for it: except for GPRS in Albania, it works when you need
it.

Just don’t rely on the frequently defunct Vodafone website for topping up your
PAYG card account – my balance ran out and there was no way to top it up. Luckily
I had some other SIM cards with me. The entire UK “mobile data” business
is based around contract (not PAYG) customers and nobody cares for sporadic
data users. However, the generous GPRS/3G data allowances which come with contracts
tend to disappear when one is roaming, which is nearly all the time when abroad…
Obviously the networks have exactly zero incentive to end this lucrative little
earner. The nearest partial solution is to get a GPRS/3G contract phone
and use it as a bluetooth-connected data modem; then at least you combine voice
and data usage under the one contract.

The hotel had an “internet PC” but it was a knackered old machine
on which the mouse barely worked. These days, with this kind of equipment costing
little and a new mouse costing less than an Albanian beer, this is not acceptable
in a hotel charging Western-level prices. But it was better than nothing.

The night before departure I checked the weather on the hotel’s internet PC
and filed the flight plan via Homebriefing
as usual. The VOR was still not working and looking through the SIDs for Tirana,
none of them referenced the NDB. Sure enough, on the day they were doing a sort
of radar departure.

 

Tirana to Corfu

The filed route was (alternate: LDDU):

LATI TRN L604 ADDER YNN LGKR

Before departing on this trip I had some email exchanges with Tirana ATC who
informed me that the minimum DCT leg length in Albania is zero which means that
airway routes must be strictly followed to get CFMU to accept the flight plan.
However, he added that a direct route is usually given on the day. Anyway, I
would have been suprised to be routed via YNN as shown above.

There is no avgas at Tirana but we had filled up at Dubrovnik. Corfu has avgas
so fuel was not an issue. Lack of avgas at Tirana was notamed and known but
reading the Jeppview text pages (which state avgas is available) it isn’t clear
whether this is permanent or not.

Getting out through the airport was initially difficult since it has no evident
general aviation facilities. The first trick is to discover that one does not
need to queue behind the normal travellers for passport control; an official
will escort you past the queue. Security was tight. Our baggage was thoroughly
searched and everything including watches etc x-rayed; various items (e.g. small
tools) were commented on as being banned but the official conceded there isn’t
any point since this is a private aircraft. The next problem was finding the
office where the landing+parking fees would be paid; nobody knew where this
might be. We started by having a difficult conversation with a security guard
through a glass door which she would not open but soon found the right person
who was extremely helpful, escorting us through the various routes to the correct
office and everything was smooth from then on. The office was unable to accept
credit cards (apparently they can but it means walking to another building)
so I gave them my entire bundle of US dollars which I had brought with me “in
case”, plus my remaining 4000 Leks. I think that the next time we go there,
we will sort out the payment details by email or fax, in advance. There is a
Euro 10 charge per passenger, which is anybody without a pilot’s license.

Everybody was very helpful and very kind – mirroring my experience with the
Albanian Aviation Ministry whose official phoned me at home (in the UK) on my
mobile number with last-minute information on how to get the landing permission.
They were pretty amazed to see the aircraft; there was a large business jet
parked but I don’t think they had a light aircraft visit before. The driver
of the bus (who taught himself English and does various other duties) asked
if it can do aerobatics; I explained it does not have an inverted oil or fuel
system. He and the follow-me van driver were chatting to us, very curiously,
for quite a while. I have not seen this sort of polite and helpful attitude
anywhere else and it is great to know for when we come back next time.

However, the airport does need to reduce its charges by at least four times
(for this class/weight of aircraft) because at this rate nobody below a business
jet is going to go there. They should also have a signposted “General Aviation”
office. To be fair even Kerkira does not have that, and there are a lot more
forms to fill in in Greece, but people visiting Greece accept all the pointless
formalities as the price of doing anything in Greece. There is no reason for
Albania to adopt the same pointless job-creation schemes. They can start with
a clean sheet. Their AIP mentions the airspace is Class G up to 10,000ft, in
areas where it is uncontrolled, which opens up good potential for VFR flying.
An article in a Tirana newspaper reported that the Government has banned the
ownership of fast powerboats – presumably to keep a lid on smuggling of goods
and people – so perhaps GA activity is not welcome after all but aviation access
should not be a problem because the security of all the large airports is high.

Due to the unserviceable VOR, Tirana was operating some sort of radar departure.
There was some ambiguity concerning the departure instructions; probably the
fault of both myself and the tower controller. Initially I was offered runway
18 or 36 at my discretion. With the wind 360/10 I obviously chose 36. I read
back everything as I understood it but I don’t think the controller could understand
my readback. This sort of thing is pretty normal in the more southern parts
of Europe but it can be confusing, or worse. I got what I thought was a taxi
instruction to the runway 36 holding point (confirmed by the FOLLOW ME vehicle
driver gesturing to me) so off we went there. Then, when I asked for a departure
clearance, it turned out that the controller thought he never cleared me to
taxi anywhere; he also would have preferred me to taxi to runway 18. An airliner
was departing on 18, presumably happy with the tailwind because the runway is
long and if going south it saved them a turn after departure but I would have
found the turn handy to achieve the terrain clearance in the climb, for the
7000ft mountains which cover the horizon to the south and east

Some of the departing aircraft were also using wrong terminology, notably the
words “request takeoff”. However, ATC were completely helpful and
very courteous at all times. It’s possible they wanted me to depart from 18
because it provides better wake turbulence separation behind an airliner which
has just departed on 18. However, taxiing to the 18 holding point from the 36
holding point is a very long way at Tirana!

The relevant SID (DIMIS1A or DIMIS1B)
is odd because it does not specify a minimum climb rate to a level high enough
to clear the terrain; clearly ATC use a radar departure (even if a SID is overtly
flown) to make sure everybody is high enough before they get too far. My understanding
is that a SID should guarantee obstacle clearance for the whole route which
it depicts but perhaps this is incorrect after all since L604 has a 11,000ft
MEA all the way from TRN and since nothing short of an F16 can reach 11,000ft
at TRN following a LATI departure, so there must be another process used
to achieve obstacle clearance.

At one point they asked me my rate of climb. The initial clearance was FL120
(as filed) but looking at one mountain looming ahead this didn’t look enough
and also with a 40kt tailwind I expected some turbulence from air flowing over
the terrain so I asked for FL130. Looking at the only available “VFR”
terrain chart for Albania, a 1998 U.S. ONC G3 chart, there is nothing shown
above about 7000ft but the mountain (on track between TRN and PITAS) really
did look like 10,000ft. Either this was an illusion (of a kind I have not seen
before) or there is a massive error on the ONC chart. The following chart section
shows something close to the route actually flown:

It was as well this was a perfect weather day….

This time, the LS800 tablet computer worked OK at FL130, so it looks like the
altitude shutdown problem appears somewhere just above that.

We soon got a DCT PITAS and then a DCT Kerkira while still talking to Tirana.
The island of Corfu was visible from about 50nm away and soon we were above
the last of the Albanian mountains – here we were still at FL120

The following picture shows the Corfu town and the runway, from about 11,000ft

Kerkira ATC then gave me vectors and descents onto the VOR/DME approach for
runway 35 – exactly what was expected based on what I saw on previous visits
there. A number of 737s packed with holidaymakers were queuing for departure
so I took great care to do a perfect landing; easy given the calm wind and the
huge runway. One of them called another “Good afternoon Nigel”; suprising
as I thought “Nigels” were British Airways only.

We got avgas after landing and before the bus (which arrived immediately, as
they always do) got a chance to take us away from the aircraft. This is most
important; once the airport crew get you off airside they have little incentive
to find the fuel truck and you can wait for hours….

This flight could have been done VFR but, as with the flight to Tirana, I don’t
know the VFR procedures for Albania. Corfu is certainly OK with VFR; I have
done it several times from further back (Switzerland or Italy). The only VFR
chart is the U.S. ONC G3 sectional whose last edition is 1998. My previous VFR
flights to Greece involved hand-plotting controlled airspace and danger areas
onto the G3 chart, using Navbox and the Jepp Low Level IFR chart #13/14 as the
reference. This ridiculous process yields something like this
(a 1MB file showing a section of the marked-up chart). Flying IFR does away
with all that…

We did not know how long exactly we would be staying for so we didn’t pay the
airport charges at this stage. They eventually came to about Euro 90 which is
reasonable (landing and 5 nights’ parking).

One always parks in the far corner of the large GA apron, next to the decrepit
old terminal. There was just one other GA aircraft parked there; an old PA28

Getting out through the airport was easy enough. Initially it appeared that
nobody knew what to do with a GA arrival from Albania! We went through passport
and Customs controls without difficulty. We booked a hotel for 1 night through
a booking agent in the airport (Lord Travel), got a taxi into the town and once
we checked that the hotel was OK we extended the booking for 4 more nights.
This is usually much cheaper than just walking into some hotel and asking for
their rates.

Corfu, or Kerkira as it is also called, is a beautiful city, combining Italian,
Greek and old European cultures with very pleasant weather – not too hot or
dry. It has many leafy parks and walks and nice beaches. The large volume of
package tourists get shipped off to resorts around the island but the town is
pretty full during the day and evening. Even so, by the time we were there (1st
September on) many had clearly left, with periods when a 737 departed every
few minutes. There is a huge number of cafes and restaurants, with those in
the city centre charging fully western prices

I am not sure the seawater is clean; I caught something nasty on the 2nd day
after a swim. There is an intermittent smell of sewage, not only around the
beach but also around the town. It’s not unusual to smell something when sitting
at an outdoors cafe.

With both Customs and avgas, Corfu serves as a common general aviation entry
point into Greece. I have heard from local pilots that although Greece is in
Schengen it disregards its treaty obligation for aircraft and thus forces all
entry and exit from the country to be via Customs airports – of which there
are few and even fewer that have avgas also.

Corfu had GPRS; just as well since there are said to be just three internet
cafes in the entire island and we found only one. Greeks, like most continental
Europeans, are heavy smokers and internet cafes tend to be well smoked-out;
not my favourite place to spend an hour but far far cheaper than the ripoff
GPRS pricing which reaches about Euro 30.00 per megabyte.

The town of Corfu does have a lot of tourists but it is clear that – at the
time of our stay – most of the people milling around were locals. Many are teenagers
who go out in the evenings in large numbers to meet up with their friends; it’s
very nice to see. There was not the slightest sign of any trouble. The place
is very busy and the traffic is as bad as anything seen in any Western city.
Most of the food is very good.

We visited the old fort

which is joined to the island by a bridge. It was a fascinating piece of history,
full of corridors, staircases, dungeons, escape routes, mysterious dead ends…
A lot of the buildings within were bombed out during WW2 and have been rebuilt
but the whole lot – apart from a small museum, a cafe and a tourist shop – appears
to have been abandoned and vandalised around 10 years ago and now the whole
lot is slowly falling apart. One grand old building which was some kind of library

is full of smashed computer equipment dating from early 1980s to about 1995.

One can walk up to the very top of the fort, to the vandalised lighthouse,
to get great views of the town

At this point (Monday) it became apparent that a large cold front over the
Alps was likely to affect the planned return to the UK. Justine needed to attend
a conference back in the UK the following Monday and could not take the risk
of not getting back; she is also not happy about flying in any turbulence. So
we agreed that she should book a cheap 737 flight from our next stop – Venice
– to the UK, on Easyjet. This is a common scenario on longer trips with passengers,
which is why I would never do a long trip with a passenger unless they accept
this possibility. It isn’t a problem in reality because most such return flights
are pretty cheap; especially on weekdays. It greatly reduces the pressure on
the pilot who is now able to take a more technical view of the weather conditions.

Corfu has an astonishingly rich history which includes having been invaded,
or attempted to be, by practically everybody who has ever managed to work out
how to sail a boat. We visited Mon Repos (a large residence where Prince Philip
was born in 1921) and several archeological sites

Of the Greek islands we have been to, Corfu is perhaps the one which one could
usefully live at, on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. It has great weather
most of the year, is compact and easily accesible on low cost airlines, and
everything is reasonably handy. I am not sure what it would be like to operate
a light aircraft from there; the 48-hour PPR mentioned in the notam (which is
clearly totally pointless) prevents going anywhere at a short notice. We did
see some traffic doing what looked like loose circuits so perhaps one can come
to an “understanding” with the airport.

I have written about Corfu on the previous trips to Crete and Santorini.

Picture Gallery

 

Corfu to Padova (Venice)

The filed route was (alternate LIPQ), FL120:

LGKR KRK M600 YNN L611 RODON R45 MOKUN DBK L607 ZDA N606 PUL P11 ROTAR M167
CHI LIPU

Originally we were going to go to the main Venice airport, Tessera, but when
I faxed them for any pertinent information they returned a very brief and rather
arrogant rubber-stamp fax saying they are closed to GA… In reality it is unlikely
this is the authorised position since one could just file an IFR flight plan
and depart and they can’t then refuse a landing, but it’s best to not push one’s
luck in Italy where nothing happens the same way twice. It’s possible this was
due to the Venice Film Festival and their parking was full of film-star business
jets. As on the previous occassion in 2004, the other Venice airport, San Nicolo,
returned different information about Customs and avgas depending on which day
of the week one contacted them, so I gave up on that one as well. We could have
gone to Trieste (as we did in 2005) which is a really nice airport and city
and has Customs and avgas and is relatively close to Venice, but we decided
to go somewhere different.

Nothing is ever simple. For Padova, Navbox states that Avgas and Customs are
available. The Jeppview Text Pages (which cost a great deal of money) state

Padova
44’ LIPU +01:00* N45 23.8 E011 50.9
Apt Operator Operator (049) 8716355; Fax Operator (049)
8715681. Apt Administration (041) 5415160, 2606706; Fax (041)
2605711, 2605709. ARO (049) 8727111; Fax (049) 8727108.
04/22 3681’ ASPHALT. SIWL 33. LDA 04 3478’. LDA 22 2946’. TODA
04 3812’. TODA 22 3845’. RL.
Rwy 22 Right-Hand Circuit.
OCT-MAR 0800-1900LT. APR-SEP 0800-2000LT. Customs O/R.
F-3. Jet A-1. ABN O/R. Fire 3.

i.e. no Avgas. So I sent them a fax. A very helpful man phoned me back
almost immediately on my mobile, explaining that Customs are not required in
this case but the Police (whatever that means) is required and they have it.
No prior notice is required, apart from the normal flight plan. Plus they do
have Avgas. About a year later I discovered that F-3 (which does appear
above) is the Jeppesen abbreviation for Avgas!! Jeppesen use F-3 and
100LL interchangeably.

To get the above airways route through CFMU at a single level, it has to be
FL120 or higher. The plan is to ask for ATC clearance to fly lower, say FL100
or less, to conserve our oxygen; with just one whole cylinder left there isn’t
enough oxygen for this flight and the final return flight to the UK to both
be done at a high level, and the latter flight will have to be at FL140 in places,
due to terrain, and possibly a lot higher if the weather is not good. On the
other hand, I will be the only person in the aircraft on the final flight which
will help with oxygen usage – especially as I have the demand regulator.

For this flight, for a welcome change, the weather forecast was very good (TAFs/METARs
MSLP SigWx).
In fact looking at that SigWx form it’s amazing that anybody wants to live in
the UK. There wasn’t much point in looking at the tephigrams but they all looked
like this – a huge spread between temperature
and DP ensuring there won’t be any organised cloud layers. There could still
be thunderstorms if there is enough lift and in the absence of anything (like
troughs) on the MSLP chart one would rely on the TAFs enroute for warnings about
that.

Getting out through Corfu airport was the usual business of being escorted
around through two separate offices, each charging a bit of money. The first
one was cash only; the second accepted credit cards also. This is a completely
pointless and stupid system. The process starts at the tourist information desk
and one needs to allow an hour to get the paperwork sorted out. However, the
airport has an aeroclub and this may be worth investigating if one was going
to use the airport more regularly.

Departure was straightforward, with a runway 17 departure, a KRK1A SID to KRK
and then as filed, with a climb to FL120. I did request a lower level but this
was not granted until halfway through Montenegro airspace (Podgornica ATC) who
allowed a descent to 9000ft at which we remained for the entire flight, which
saved a great deal of oxygen. The route was as filed, with a series of DCT shortcuts
offered by ATC.

The flight was in clear sunshine and completely smooth. We saw the whole coast
of former Yugoslavia, starting with the rugged terrain of Albania, then the
only slightly less rugged terrain of Montenegro

Over Albania we encountered that updraught again; it was around +500fpm. Here
it shows the IAS at about 140kt; at FL120 one would be doing about 120kt (c.
150kt TAS).

Then came Croatia with its huge number of lovely looking islands.

This doesn’t make a very good advertisement for an article explaining how much
easier flying is with an IR, but a VFR version of this trip can be seen here
and getting past Montenegro and (to a lesser degree) Albania was a stressful
exercise, with Montenegro amending the route at the last minute. There is a
complicated mass of NATO or similar airspace in that area; when under IFR this
becomes irrelevant.

The approach into Padova was via a CHI1 1R STAR from CHI, under Venice Radar
control, terminating in the Lctr DME 04 NDB approach. I flew this approach fully
for practice but the final 014 NDB track did not work out well; there was a
significant difference (about 10 degrees) between the ADF indication and the
correct track shown on the GPS overlay. Still, one gets used to 30 degree ADF
errors in other places…

Padova airport is really excellent, matched only by Cannes for its slickness
and efficiency. It is much smaller than Cannes. It is also getting an ILS
soon on 04. We landed and got an immediate taxi to the fuel point, then directions
to parking. With close to zero formalities we were through very fast indeed.
All GA airports should be like this. There was a number of modern aircraft (Cirrus,
etc) parked there, as well as a twin turboprop air ambulance. The airport charges
(landing and 3 nights’ parking) came to Euro 40 and fuel was Euro 1.98 per litre
including VAT.

Picture Gallery

The old Padova city is full of grand old buildings. We found an excellent newly
refurbished hotel, close to the main square but well tucked away, which was
Euro 90 per night and which had free internet access, via RJ45 cables rather
than wifi.

Padova is about 30 miles from Venice, which we visited the following day. We
took the train there; a very nice brand new train running on new track which
puts British Rail to shame. Getting the tickets is something else; the machines
happily gobble up any amount of money without giving change, and there is a
long queue at the ticket office. The station names along the route are not necessarily
visible, either…

Obviously one day is not long enough for Venice, but it was hard work. Getting
around Venice itself is rather like a visit to Disney in Florida: massive queues
to get inside any building, overpriced crap food, crap attitudes, and so packed
with tourists one often has to hold the camera high above one’s head to get
a picture

Clearly the time to go there is in the middle of the winter. It is claimed
the city is gradually sinking, and one reason must be the weight of the tourists

The erosion which a lot of people worry about can be seen in many places

That said, there are plenty of photo opportunities

Picture Gallery

 

Padova to Shoreham

The filed route was (alternate EGMC), FL140:

LIPU DCT VIC B4 DESIP N851 SOPER Z51 KELIP Z651 MANEG L613 HOC G4 RLP B3 BILGO
H20 XORBI G40 ABB T27 GURLU Y8 CAMRA DCT EGKA

This is a tricky route because it goes over the Alps, so clouds that are scattered
(or better) would be preferred over that part of the route at least. This will
vary according to one’s attitude to risk but I prefer to have an engine failure
escape route most of the time.

As a last-ditch option for this eventuality, I have a handheld GPS that runs
some old Jeppesen VFR charts, so one could glide into one of the many deep valleys
in the event of an engine failure above an overcast layer. However, the apparent
failure of the LS800 at about FL140 dropped a spanner into this; luckily I was
able to transfer the map files to run on an HP4700 PDA which I also had. They
run under Oziexplorer which exists
in both Windows and Pocket/PC versions.

To avoid the Alps altogether, one could do a large detour to the west and then
north through France; a long flight if done in one leg. One could land in France,
with a slight risk of getting turned over by French Customs who like to pick
on US registered aircraft. I do carry the documents including a Certificate
of Free Circulation (in original) but in France one can never tell. We managed
to escape this unwelcome attention in 2005 (at Cannes) but an “inspection”
would take some hours at least and, because Shoreham closes early in the evening,
would wipe out the chance of completing the journey on the same day. Currently
I prefer to not land in France unless I intend to stay and thus have time to
spare. There is said to be an address for French Customs where one could send
one’s aircraft documents in advance (and prevent these suprise inspections)
but despite enquiries I have not found it and it may be an urban myth like so
many in aviation.

For the planned Saturday morning departure, the MSLP charts for 0600
and 1200 showed no
frontal activity (following a rather active
Friday whose MSLP
chart corresponds well with the sferics). However, there can still be thunderstorms
so the TAFs were examined which
showed suspect weather remaining around Zurich (LSZH) in the early part of the
morning. The tephigrams along the route 1
2 3
4 did not suggest any organised IMC layer
except the first one (Milan) showing something at a low level (3000-6000ft)
which would be well below the terrain of the Alps and I would hope to be at
FL140 by that point anyway. The 700mb wind
map
indicated that there might even be a tailwind much of the way…

I wish there was a flight planning website that accepts a route and generates
a briefing like the above, for various point along the route! It would save
a lot of time. Technically it’s easy enough to do; the problem is that 3D atmospheric
data is commercially sensitive. The MSLP charts come from the UK Met Office
whereas the tephigrams probably come from U.S. GFS data. I guess this is not
a bad thing as looking at more than one weather model is useful…

Things got a little difficult even before leaving the ground, when the main
IFR GPS, the KLN94, was found to be not working. It was receiving satellites
OK but was not producing a position fix. The LS800 tablet computer (fed from
a cheap Emtac bluetooth GPS receiver) and the HP4700 PDA (fed from an even cheaper
CF GPS from Ebay) both worked fine, but I knew the LS800 was likely to pack
up at altitude; it did just that at about FL140. Anyway, I did the instrument
departure using navaids and after that I was given vectors anyway. When ATC
started giving DCTs to intersections I told them I had VOR/DME navigation only,
no BRNAV, so they gave me VOR-VOR tracks which worked fine – until the next
VOR given was 150nm away and too far away for reception! I managed OK; if it
had been a real issue they would have been more than happy to give me vectors.
The KLN94 came back to life after about an hour and has been fine ever since.
This will need to be looked at; I noted down the satellite geometry etc but
it wasn’t the problem because the other two GPSs were reporting loads of satellites
with good geometries. The details are here.
I have written to Honeywell for their view.

The flight back home was over spectacular scenery. This is a piece of Lake
Garda

after which one gets some “real” mountains; these pictures were from
FL160

An hour later the Alps disappeared into the distance

and the rest of the flight was over what I call featureless Europe.

The flight was filed for FL140 all the way. However, the need to fly VOR tracks
increased the MEA to FL160 over the Alps, after which I descended to FL100 and
sat there all the way home. The wind ranged from zero (over the Alps) to a few
kt of tailwind.

Arrival at Shoreham was straightforward. London Control kept me at FL100; at
about 20nm I was getting a bit too close to easily descend so I reminded them;
they just gave me a casual “descend out of controlled airspace”.

This flight could have been done under VFR, with the proviso that the weather
over the Alps could easily involve cloudbases way down into the valleys, and
cloud tops extending into the Class C in Swiss airspace (into which I could
not get a VFR clearance in 2004). One option is to sit and wait for a cloudless
sky, another is to transit the Alps at a low level through the canyons (this
is called “mountain flying” and is a whole different game of which
I know nothing), and one can wait until airfields along the route are able to
confirm the cloud cover and then go. The last option is what I did in the Crete
trip in 2004, but we were stuck in Switzerland for a few days. IFR is much
easier. However, the risk of flying over mountains under cloud cover is the
same regardless of flight rules and a flight like this is likely to get held
up anyway.

 

Observations and Lessons Learnt

IFR flying is great! Not one single thought about controlled airspace, restricted
areas, prohibited areas, military zones, danger areas, and no panic trying to
find some VRP comprising of a chimney with a roundabout next to it. All the
exams, the mad intensive exhausting training, checkrides with crazy examiners
who try to distract you, days and weeks of paperwork getting the US Visa and
security clearances, endless hassle putting the aircraft on the N
register
…. it’s all been worth doing. Not sure I would do it all
again though. One could devise a much better modern process for training
a pilot to reach the required standard. The present process owes as much to
tradition and job creation as it does to ensuring the pilot meets the required
standard.

The LS800 tablet computer packing up at around 14,000ft is a serious problem.
It could be extra serious if someone was relying on it to display approach plates.
The KLN94 failure also shows the need for a backup GPS which displays intersections
properly. I am going to look at getting a FLASH hard drive for it, or perhaps
get a dedicated aviation GPS that handles airway intersections well and has
a good DCT function.

One of the best things I did was to keep all the flight planning paperwork
in one zip-up folder and bring all of it with us to every place we stayed.
That makes is easy to fully prepare for the next flight before leaving the hotel.
No point in trying to be clever and only bring the bit you think you will need
for the next flight. A small thing but it made a big difference. One has to
study the SIDs, STARs and approach plates before getting airborne and it’s better
to have a look at them the evening before, in case any unclear features come
to light.

The cloud cover over the Alps on the return trip was well in excess of the
forecast – it usually is. I need to learn more about the cloud formation process
over mountains. This appears to have little relationship to fronts which can
be completely absent, and there may not even be any wind to speak of. Traditional
“mountain flying” texts do not cover this since these people fly inside
the canyons. I am going on a specialist aviation weather course in September
so will raise this.

The oxygen usage needs to be looked at, since two people are going to use up
a whole cylinder on one 5hr flight at FL160. A bigger cylinder (or a 2nd cylinder)
is a must. I will also get a second Nelson demand regulator. Higher pressure
cylinders (especially Kevlar ones) are difficult because one cannot refill them
from the standard BOC 3000 PSI cylinders; a boost pump is required. These flights
would be marginally feasible with 3 people and would become very weather-sensitive
with 4 people.

Think twice about flying VFR, or cancelling IFR, unless fully prepared for
what ATC will get you to do; locating VRPs being one “fun” task. You
need the VFR charts with you!

An aircraft with a real operating ceiling of much below 18,000ft is clearly
of limited use for IFR around Europe.

A funny observation is that my total instrument time on this entire trip comes
to under 30 mins. This is what IFR is about: flying in nice weather, out of
clouds as much as possible and quite the opposite of what most non-IR pilots
would expect.

There was far less flight planning done during this trip, compared with
my previous VFR ones. In fact only the VFR leg from Ljubljana to Dubrovnik had
to be replanned in the hotel, and flying that under VFR was in retrospect a
mistake anyway. All IFR routes were pre-planned back home; this works with IFR
because there is very little chance of not being able to fly a route (once it
has been checked on the CFMU website) unless an airway is closed on the day,
etc. With the exception of getting replies from airports about special requirements
(which I know many pilots don’t bother with, but I think it’s wise) which can
take some days to come back, this whole trip could have been pre-planned
in 1 short day
.

My attempts to get tax free avgas by flashing my AIR BP card appear to have
not been successful. That technique works only in Spain. However, it’s clear
that everywhere I have been (except the UK) you can get tax free avgas (approximately
half price) if you have an AOC. I expect this is not lost on the larger
flight training operations around Europe; it’s worth their while getting an
AOC (any old AOC, regardless of what activity it covers) for this reason alone.

The aircraft performed flawlessly.

 

Update 23/6/2009:
The contact for an overflight/landing permission for Albania is

Mr. Vrioni
MINISTRY OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
TRANSPORT and TELECOMUNICATIONS
DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF CIVIL AVIATION
CLEARANCE DEPARTMENT
Muhamet Gjollesha Street
P.O. Box 205
Tirana, Albania
Tel +355 42226232
Fax +355 42226232

 

Last edited 23 June 2009

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