This article describes an IFR (airways) trip from Shoreham (EGKA) to Kithira
(LGKC) in Greece, via Portoroz (LJPZ) in Slovenia, Kerkira (LGKR) in Greece,
and back via Kerkira (LGKR) and St Gallen (LSZR) in Switzerland. St Gallen is
also known as Altenrhein.
Kithira
was recommended as a very picturesque and laid-back island. It certainly lives
up to its reputation, and we think it is one of the most lovely islands we have
been to in Greece. Click on the map below to see the full size roadmap
To a pilot, Kithira is a bit of a planning challenge because the airport has
very limited opening hours and does not have any fuel (avgas or avtur). It also
does not have Customs although we discovered that it is possible to fly between
it and other Schengen airports; this is a new one for Greece which signed Schengen
but disregards it for anyone using a “vehicle”.
However, the Schengen option is of less value than might appear: while a TB20
can fly there easily enough from many places in Europe, one may not have
enough left in the tanks to return to somewhere useful. Italy is the only nearby
Schengen country but the nearby parts of it do not have any airports which can
be relied on to have avgas which they will sell to foreigners (short of a backhander
to an aeroclub member).
Update 5/2012: Italy, in a desperate but clumsy attempt to curb tax evasion,
has imposed massive taxes on private aircraft and boats. The aircraft tax starts
at around €3000 after 45 days’ stay on Italian soil. There are no exemptions
for aircraft grounded due to weather or e.g. pilot licensing/medical issues,
but there is an exemption for aircraft undergoing “maintenance” (which
is not defined but presumably means booked in with an Italian maintenance company
). Italy is therefore
now off-limits to all private aviation except those who feel pretty confident
they are not going to get AOG’d. Only a fool would fly there now, or even enter
its airspace, in case of an emergency diversion.
Most pilots will therefore route via Kerkira (Corfu) LGKR or Sitia LGST for
both avgas and Customs clearance. Kerkira is an H24 airport but suffers from
a pointless but strictly enforced 48hr PPR requirement which must be obtained
in writing. Sitia is a wonderfully laid back and welcoming airport but like
Kithira has very limited opening hours. For Greece, the only reliable guide
to airport opening hours are the airport Notams or a written confirmation direct
from the airport (there is no online AIP) and the notams
show that e.g. a flight from Kithira to Sitia is impossible in anything below
an F16 due to the small opening hours overlap. Flying Sitia to Kithira is however
OK. Hania (LGSA) which is just a short hop across the water from Kithira, has
Customs and avgas but requires between 5 days’ and 20 days’ PPR
for foreigners (the
actual figure varies according to who you ask).
If, when wishing to depart from Kithira, one encountered problems getting the
PPR from Kerkira, or one needed to depart Kithira with less than 48hrs’ notice,
the only same-day option out of Greece where avgas is available would be via
Athens LGAV (3hrs’ PPR via handling agent, and €150-200). If a 1-day delay
was acceptable, one could fly out to various places, stay 1 night, and then
fly to e.g. Sitia LGST, refuel, and depart out of Greece. These are the only
strictly legal options as far as Greek Customs go.
A flight out of Kithira, without a refuel, to a non-Schengen country i.e.
a Customs stop only has several options: LGKF (24hrs PPR), LGZA (12hrs PPR),
and others.
With an avtur-fuelled aircraft e.g. a TBM850,
one would have better options because there are quite a few airports in Greece
which have Customs (basically, all those which accept scheduled and charter
flights from abroad), avtur, but no avgas. A TBM also has a better range than
a TB20. Unfortunately, avtur options in piston aircraft are poor, with no reliable
and long-term-proven engine technology currently available, and one does want
something very reliable for trips like this.
All stops on this trip were chosen to be in places which we wanted to visit
anyway i.e. no stops purely for fuel. Being able to do that is one of the luxuries
of the TB20, with its ~1300nm range.
Procedurally, the flight was very similar to other airways flights I have done.
Other VFR and IFR trip reports can be found here.
Kithira is very close to Crete to which we have been before in 2004,
2007 and 2010.
Here is a glossary for non-aviation
readers.
Pilot
FAA CPL/IR
JAA PPL/IR
1500hrs (approx).
Aircraft
The aircraft is a 2002 Socata TB20GT which has a zero-fuel “book”
range of approximately 1100nm and an economical cruise speed of 155kt TAS at
10,000ft. Extra economical cruise power settings can extend the zero-fuel range
to 1300nm which, according to FAA rules, translates to approximately 1100nm
with IFR reserves. It has a ceiling of about 20,000ft and is equipped with oxygen.
It is not certified for flight into icing conditions but has a TKS de-iced propeller.
This is the actual aircraft
:
Navigation equipment includes a KLN94 IFR/BRNAV GPS and a KMD550 MFD and these
are used for primary navigation. IFR flight in Europe at any meaningfully high
altitude requires BRNAV certification which in the GA context is met only with
a BRNAV approved IFR GPS installation. The most common means of BRNAV compliance
is one of the Garmin 430/530 products but many other panel mounted GPSs have
been approved. BRNAV can also be met with the old KNS80 (with an antenna filter
to meet FM Immunity regs) but this product will not alone function in today’s
“everything is RNAV” environment where one is routinely sent to a
VOR which is a great distance away.
The aircraft has a KFC225 autopilot which can track VOR/GPS/LOC/ILS and fly
a preset altitude or a preset VS. There is an additional battery powered Garmin
496 GPS which also provides an audio terrain warning (TAWS) function with a
European terrain and obstacle database. The TAWS function projects the current
trajectory for 2 minutes and if there is a terrain conflict, one gets a “pull
up” type audio warning whose tone gradually becomes more urgent. A WX500
stormscope is also installed. One of the radios has 8.33kHz channel spacing
to legalise flight at 20,000ft although I have never been assigned such a frequency
A Sandel SN3500 EHSI was
recently installed which provides automatic waypoint sequencing to the autopilot
so a whole route can be flown without HSI course pointer adjustment.
Flight Planning
The routes (which included various options) were planned
using Flight Plan
Pro (FPP) which was used to generate a Eurocontrol-accepted airways route
which was then pasted into Jeppesen FliteStar from which I printed out enroute
chart sections, plogs, etc. The workflow I use is illustrated in this
article. The flight plans were filed using EuroFPL.
However, there are numerous other ways one can do this job, and there is enough
capability in FPP alone, or EuroFPL alone, to generate adequate data to do an
IFR flight with. Taking the simplest case, one can fly IFR in Europe’s enroute
airspace system with just a list of waypoints like this
which EuroFPL emails you some hours before the flight planned EOBT. If you pick
up this email on a phone, you can enter it into the IFR GPS and just fly it.
Electronic or printed enroute (airway) charts are very unlikely to be required.
However, my view is that this is somewhat risky, and I have been asked to fly
named airways on a few occassions.
There is also RocketRoute (which runs
FPP code) and, being a straight website, is the only current facility for generating
optimised airway routings for pilots with non-Windows / OSX platforms
(Iphone, Ipad, Android phones, etc). EuroFPL offers the Eurocontrol “route
suggest” feature which is continually improving but is still less optimised
than FPP’s routes, not least because the entire Eurocontrol-suggested route
is prepared for a single flight level.
With European IFR flight itself being a wholly point to point RNAV DCT-button-pushing
exercise, a flight done fully under IFR needs a lot less traditional
flight planning than under VFR which requires current VFR charts. However, IFR
flights which involve VFR sections, and this includes Z and Y flight plans,
do require VFR charts, awareness of controlled airspace, etc.
It always pays to do as much as possible back home, before departure, where
internet is free, printing is cheap and quick, and one would not depart in any
case if the weather is not suitable. For this trip, all routes
were preplanned and the ones actually intended to be flown, and all main and
alternate approach plates, were printed on a colour laser printer. The pile
of paper was about 20mm thick.
Some pilots have gone “paperless” in the cockpit and use e.g. an
Ipad as the display device for both enroute charts and approach plates. I have
worked in electronics and IT for many years and I know that this is going to
bite you one day – unless you have backups and then you end up with yet more
gear, with the associated chargers, etc.
Weather Planning
I try to use “technical” methods to make the go/no-go decision as
objective as possible. In the context of flying a non-deiced aircraft (I have
propeller-only TKS de-ice, which really does work very well but is no good for
spending hours in icing conditions) this means establishing whether the enroute
section of the flight can be done substantially in VMC, which given the subzero
temperatures at typical European airway levels most of the year means VMC on
top if there is any cloud about.
One therefore needs to establish where the cloud tops are likely to be. Cloud
tops are almost impossible to forecast with any useful accuracy, but things
have improved in recent years with satellite IR images which show actual cloud
top temperatures and thus altitudes. Some notes are here
and here.
Since about 2009 I have been heavily relying on satellite IR images to get
a “cloud tops METAR” just before a flight and this simple technique
has been completely successful on every flight where I have used it. No flight
I have done has been what some pilots call “eventful”, and I have
never had to turn back. The cost of this strategy, with the TB20, and with long
legs of e.g. 700nm+, is that the despatch rate on a particular day is only about
80%. But this is a whole lot better than it would be under VFR… especially
legal VFR
Equipment
On any significant trip I carry a lightweight laptop (an old 12" Thinkpad
X60S-1704 with a 4 hour battery) which does everything needed for VFR and IFR
route planning, weather, notams, flight plans, and communication via fax and
email. Not having this capability makes long trips by light aircraft far too
much hassle. The laptop has several different ways to get internet access; in
descending order of preference: normal WIFI, a WIFI connection to an E585
GPRS/3G-WIFI modem, a bluetooth connection to my Nokia E51 GPRS/3G phone, a
USB cable connection to the same phone, a built-in GPRS/3G radio (with a UK
T-Mobile SIM), and a USB cable connection to a Thuraya 7100 satellite phone.
Fax (which remains essential for airport communications, where a phone call
is difficult due to language issues, and published email addresses often don’t
work) is done via email2fax and fax2email accounts; these are not free but are
very cheap. I used to use Winfax for sending faxes directly out of the laptop
but thankfully have not used it for a couple of years; it was never reliable
with GSM modems and, like everything which Symantec have ever touched, worked
only on Mondays… On long trips I also carry a Canon IP90 A4 printer
The printer can be battery powered but the battery pack makes it heavy, and
the mains power unit has to be carried anyway in case the battery goes flat.
The printer may seem “excessive” but is brilliant for printing out
enroute charts and approach plates when one has to substantially replan something.
The alternative is to print to a PDF, copy it to a USB stick, and look for an
internet cafe / printing bureau / hotel reception which can print off the PDF
…. hopefully in colour. Nobody makes a compact lightweight A5 printer. There
are some A6 “photo” printers but that is too small to read, for most
people over 45
A loss or failure of the laptop would be extremely inconvenient, so
on long trips I carry a spare laptop which has almost the same software configuration
as the main laptop. This backup laptop stays in the back of the aircraft for
the duration of the entire trip.
I always fly with a liferaft, an emergency bag containing a 406MHz
EPIRB, a handheld radio and a lot of other stuff, a second 406MHz+GPS EPIRB,
and together with the large 48 cu. ft. carbon/kevlar oxygen cylinder these take
up the RH back seat. I carry a spare oxygen cylinder of the same size (and a
spare 1st stage regulator) in case the main cylinder leaked out through a faulty
valve, or because I forgot to shut off the gas after landing. There is also
a large toolbox with enough tools to do the 50-hr service plus potential emergency
jobs like changing the vacuum pump. On longer trips such as this one I also
carry a complete set of spare servos for the notoriously
unreliable KFC225 autopilot, 1 refill for the 2-litre TKS propeller de-ice system,
and several 1-litre bottles of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) for use as fuel anti-icing
additive (there is no known case of a TB20 suffering fuel icing but this is
a very cheap precaution, although on this trip the temperatures were so high
– lowest seen was -6C at FL170 – that I did not use any IPA). Plus four 1qt
bottles of engine oil. Plus a lightweight reflective aircraft cover (from Bruce’s
Custom Covers) which keeps the cockpit cool when parked in hot climates and
is a huge help in keeping the interior in good condition. It is difficult to
imagine doing such a trip in one of the many 2-seater “homebuilt/sports”
types (although many people have done exactly that… travelling with a toothbrush
). This leaves the
LH back seat free and Justine sometimes likes to sit there; that seat is a lot
thicker and softer than the front ones. In that case I run down the LH fuel
tank substantially, to keep the aircraft balanced.
The route illustrations in this article are screenshots from Jeppesen FliteStar
IFR. The terrain profiles shown at the bottom are not usable for safety altitude
planning; in fact the Jeppesen data contains systematic
errors. The vertical profile of an IFR flight is at a minimum level which
is decided by what is acceptable to the Eurocontrol computer. The minimum levels
which can be filed tend to be around FL070 but acceptable routings usually need
higher levels. Sensible routings start to appear around FL100 and the best ones
(below FL200) are obtained at FL140-FL160. Oxygen
is therefore highly desirable for European IFR.
In some airspaces, one can file IFR below FL070 without the Eurocontrol computer
chucking it out, but that is another story… the result is likely to be a route
which lies below controlled airspace and the enroute IFR ATC system is likely
to wash its hands of your flight. Some notes are here.
On all long flights I run the European VFR charts as a GPS moving map under
Oziexplorer, mainly
for emergency use but also for identifying interesting objects on the ground
For crossing mountains above a solid cloud layer, there are better topographic
maps for emergency use e.g. this synthetic one derived from the Space Shuttle
(SRTM) radar imagery
Unfortunately, the terrain database used in the above example is not obtainable
in a straightforward manner. It was generated from Google Terrain using Mobile
Atlas Creator (MOBAC). This is an open source map tile download program which
can retrieve mapdata from a variety of online sources, and generate GPS databases
which can be used in a wide variety of GPSs. One of the supported output formats
is Oziexplorer (PNG+MAP files). Unfortunately MOBAC’s developers got sued (and
otherwise threatened) by the owners of most of the databases who did not want
their data to be retrieved in an “automated” manner, despite the data
being publicly accessible. The map business is full of this nonsense, especially
in Europe. The developers caved in and simply removed support for most of the
databases. All the Google sources are now lost, for example. However, at time
of writing (10/2011) a specific old version of the program (v1.8) still works
I have generated map
coverage for the Alps, and most of Europe east and south of there, all the way
down to Crete. The data does not show airports but they can be overlaid within
Oziexplorer using a separate process.
The Alps offer suprisingly favourable engine failure options if one is flying
say 8000ft+ above the terrain. I would say that 90% of the time there is an
easy, flat, and obvious landing site within glide range. The Pyrenees
are a very different story, however…
Oziexplorer was originally developed for offroad driving in the Australian
outback but it is really just a GPS moving map application which can run almost
any graphical image (that can be georeferenced) as a GPS moving map. The LS800
tablet computer used here is an outdated product but remains one of the few
tablets which is truly sunlight readable. It has been modified with a solid
state hard drive; the original one used to crash around FL130. It is also used
to display weather data using an internet connection with a satellite phone
although on this flight I didn’t bother because the weather was so obviously
very good. As it runs WinXP, one can do more or less anything with it.
Each weather check like the one above costs about $1, using a Thuraya 7100
PAYG phone, connecting on a 1722 dial-up call at 9600 baud. The system is a
long way from being 100% reliable (I don’t think Thuraya care much for the reliability
of their data service) but usually works fine in the context of a flight lasting
several hours. One can supposedly get destination weather from ATC but many
ATCOs are too busy, many in southern Europe cannot speak English well, and some
evidently don’t like doing it anyway. It also appears unprofessional when the
vast majority of the players in the IFR airspace (airlines) can get weather
via their own comms systems (ACARS). I did some tests on using satelline phones
for aviation weather – here.
The Ipad
In 2011, no flying article would be complete without the latest pilot fashion
statement: the Ipad
It would indeed be desirable to replace the old LS800 with an Ipad which is
lighter and has a much better battery life. An Ipad,
with a good quality matt antireflective filter stuck on it, makes a good display
device for PDF documents. Both the built-in PDF reader and the more feature-packed
(but not wholly bug-free) Goodreader program are fine for displaying externally
supplied PDFs.
If you have a friend who has access to Jeppview and who can get you selected
Jepp plates in PDF form, that is far more economical than the Jepp subscription
product for the Ipad which like every Jeppview-based product (PC, MFD, or Ipad)
is eye wateringly priced at somewhere over €2000 for Europe. It is also
currently extremely buggy and virtually useless. However, the Ipad can also
display the free AIP PDF plates which despite being mostly drafted for A4 are
perfectly readable on an Ipad.
However, my Ipad2/3G falls short of replacing the LS800: it cannot run any
GPS moving map application for which I can get the maps I want (Oziexplorer/IOS
is claimed to be in development); the sunlight readability is barely adequate
even with an antireflective filter; its internal GPS has proved to be exceptionally
unreliable during flight (possibly due to lack of a GSM signal to help it, because
it is excellent on the ground); it does not work with my bluetooth GPS which
runs from a dedicated rooftop antenna (Apple have stupidly made these products
incompatible with every standard NMEA GPS on the market, and there is no Ipad-compatible
bluetooth GPS which has an external antenna socket); it cannot interface to
any satellite phone.
The screen filter I have used is this
one (local copy) which is not cheap but
is very good.
An Ipad would also wholly replace the printer mentioned above, which is a big
plus. One would print to a PDF and somehow transfer that to the Ipad. The operative
term is “somehow”. The Apple Politburo
has determined that no USB (controller) or SD interfaces will be provided, so
the only methods are email via WIFI or GPRS/3G, or via a USB cable using an
Itunes sync from a windows or Apple laptop. There are alternatives to Itunes
(example)
especially if the Ipad is jailbroken. There is no way to transfer data using
a flash memory device. Email is unlikely to be preferred if you are on a roaming
connection.
However, the biggest issue is that of a backup for any electronic device. I
would not rely on an Ipad as my only display device for flight-critical data.
Paper needs no backup.
An interesting alternative to the Ipad is the Samsung Galaxy 10" tablet,
which has comparable hardware specs, and runs Android so is a lot less functionally
restricted. Oziexplorer for Android is available now.
Flight Shoreham-Portoroz
For most of this trip, Shoreham to Kithira and most of the way back, the weather
was excellent. We were partly lucky of course but the timing was picked for
“maximum passenger comfort”
Normally, on longer trips like this one, we would set aside 2-3 days for the
departure, and if it looked impossible all the way through we would get an airline
flight (and probably go somewhere else). Once one is well away from the UK weather
system, e.g. south of the Alps, things tend to be a lot easier.
The 0600 and
1200 MSLPs
were clean, as were the satellite
IR, radar, sferics
and TAFs/METARs. For
good measure, the 0600
and 1200 SigWx were
also clean. The following
day’s weather was also good but one should always pick the first technically
flyable opportunity.
EGKA
WIZAD M140 DVR/N0150F110 L10 RINTI B3 RLP G4 HR/N0150F120 G4 HOC L613 DITON/N0150F140
N871 DEGES/N0150F170 N871 MADEB N606 ELMEM L607 ILB
LJPZ FL140 Alternates: LJLJ, LDPL
Distance 641nm (GC) 761nm (airways)
The flight plan was filed the evening before, using EuroFPL. With IFR flights
– particularly ones to the east – there is a risk of a departure slot being
issued by Eurocontrol. For GA flights in the FL100-190 band, these slots are
apparently meaningless artefacts of their software and in any case the resulting
delay tends to shrink near the time due to the slot time being modified, so
one must still be ready for a departure at the originally filed time (EOBT).
The paid EuroFPL subscription delivers slot notifications etc by email and SMS,
which is handy especially when departing from an unmanned airfield which Shoreham
is between 8am and 9am (this facility needs an annual permission, plus a previous
day’s PPR).
If doing this type of “unmanned airfield” departure, one normally
contacts London Information on 124.60 when airborne but on this occassion there
was someone in the tower and they phoned up London Control in the usual way
for the provisional IFR clearance. The phone number for London Control is not
published, which is a pity because London Information can take up to 30 minutes
to get the provisional clearance and one can be out of UK airspace by then,
especially if departing to the south, which at worst could force a turn-back
if the lack of a climb clearance into CAS makes it impossible to avoid hazardous
weather down the route. One trick to play in such a situation is to climb to
FL054 or FL074 (just below the base of CAS to the south of Shoreham) in a suitable
“hole” in the weather, before calling up anybody, but this altitude
may not be sufficient.
The provisional clearance from Shoreham Tower was “remain OCAS, squawk
0515, contact London Control on 133.175”.
There was a bank of fog in the vicinity of the airport
but otherwise the conditions were clear
London Control gave us a DCT to TRACA FL070 and that was it – straight into
CAS (Class A). Later, Lille issued a squawk change to 5624, which is not uncommon
even though most Eurocontrol IFR flights are done wholly on a single squawk.
Due to the clear weather and to conserve oxygen, I asked for a stop climb at
FL100. At this level, the oxygen usage is so low that the gauge on the 48 cu.
ft. cylinder barely moves over a 5hr flight with 2 people, but it keeps one
wide awake.
As all flights on this trip being well within the aircraft range, there was
no need to fly particularly slowly for the very best range. The whole trip was
flown at 2400RPM, full throttle of course, and leaned for peak EGT. At FL100,
this yields 20" MP, 10.4USG/hr, and about 150kt TAS at 0C. This is an endurance
of over 8hrs and a range of about 1200nm to zero fuel.
As the Alps appeared in the distance
we climbed to FL170. The MEA on the route was FL150 but FL170 offers better
options for an engine failure, as well as more protection from turbulence caused
by airflow over the mountains. The climb was not particularly quick, due to
the temperature being well above ISA, at -6C. The TAS was 140kt, with GS reaching
165kt due to tailwind.
The wind on the flight varied from 25kt tailwind to 10kt headwind. Early on
in the flight, the computed landing fuel on board (LFOB) figure stabilised around
32USG and stayed that way till the destination, within a gallon or two.
Over the Alps, the wind was generally under 10kt. A very rough rule is that
for every 10kt of wind flowing across mountain ridges, one should be at least
1000ft above the terrain in order to limit the up/downdraughts to 500fpm. In
this case, we were about 8000ft above most of the terrain, and there was no
turbulence.
On clear days, the terrain is always spectacular
and this is not even near the “real” Alps which are a lot further
to the west. I have done a number of crossings of the Alps above a solid overcast
and while I do not mind because I have the risk covered, it is not ideal. At
FL170, the terrain is mostly 8,000ft below… it appears much closer!
Immediately after the Alps comes Slovenia, and here is Portoroz
and here we are on final, having flown the VOR
15 approach procedure with a circle to land to 33 with a RH downwind leg.
Presumably they don’t go for the much more common right break to circle
to land because it would take one into Croatian airspace. Relations between
the two countries appear to be OK if somewhat “cool”. The following
approach looks steep, partly because I flew a tight right-base approach and
partly because one has to clear a hill just before the runway
The hard parking is reserved for large aircraft only (jets etc) and locally
based piston aircraft, so we pushed the aircraft back on grass which was in
excellent condition
The route actually flown, from the Eurocontrol tracking facility accessible
via EuroFPL, is here
I could not find any way to zoom it to see the track properly.
In line with all our previous experiences in Slovenia and Croatia, Portoroz
Airport is a model of efficiency, with friendly and helpful staff and no hassle.
A single policeman makes it an “international airport” with a Customs
presence. The opening hours are reasonable, too: 0630-1800 UTC at time of writing.
There is no sign of the UK yellow jacket brigade. [price info]
In line with the standard practice of always refilling immediately after arrival
(to avoid departure delays) we refuelled right away. In a warm place, this has
the drawback that one is likely to lose anything up to a gallon of fuel (approx
1% of the fuel tank content) to evaporation and fuel loss through the expansion
vents as the tanks warm up, but is still worth doing.
Portoroz
Portoroz is a very attractive town, with a mixture of Italy, Switzerland, and
Yugoslavia
We met up with two other pilot friends, had an excellent dinner
and spent the night at the Tomi Hotel,
and departed the following morning for Kerkira (Corfu).
Flight Portoroz-Kerkira
The weather was good. The 0600
and 1200 MSLPs, the satellite
IR, the 0600 SigWx, and the TAFs/METARs
were all clear.
LJPZ
ABLAT/N0150F130 P28 PUL/N0150F140 N606 ZDA L607 DBK R45 RODON N732 PITAS
LGKR FL140 Alternates: LGIO, LDDU
448nm (GC), 471nm (airways)
Kerkira LGKR has a 48hr PPR requirement which must be obtained in writing from
the Hellenic CAA (HCAA) office at the airport. Every Greek airport which
has an ICAO code is required have an HCAA office on site. On past visits,
there were various hassles e.g. it took multiple faxes to get a response, or
the local CAA (HCAA) staff claimed the PPR was actually 5 days. However, on
this trip I concurrently contacted both the HCAA office (email kakkkt (at) hcaa.gr),
and Olympic Handling (email cfu.staco (at) olympic-handling.aero) which is one
of the mandatory handling agents. SwissAir reportedly offers a discount
to holders of any AOPA card, but while I am a member of AOPA USA I did not have
a card with me. Also, Olympic Handling are always the first out when one lands,
leaving one with no opportunity to use other agents. You are able to refuse
their service, and they probably should not turn up to meet you if you have
booked in with a different handler, but I can’t see why one would worry about
it because we have found them excellent. Due to the need for weather related
flexibility I had earlier (when still back home) asked for a PPR for any of
several consecutive days. We got a rapid reply from Olympic, with the permission,
and for the series of dates. Some days later the HCAA office also replied but
refused to do more than one date (but they did say that an email the day before
would do i.e. not the full 48hrs). Obviously it would be a bad idea to look
a gift horse in the mouth and query the Olympic version against the HCAA version,
so we ran with the former, but I had a printout of the permission email on my
clipboard so I could read off the names on the bottom if ATC queried anything
during the approach. The ability to get the PPR from Olympic Handling rather
than the HCAA office is a big advantage but should not have been a suprise because
that is how airports everywhere work – the handling agent lubricates things,
in return for his fee, and often the handling agent is the only office at the
whole airport where anybody actually works.
On IFR flights I normally fly the full arrival/departure/approach routes for
practice; procedural or radar vectored. Portoroz is non-radar and is thus procedural.
The departure from Portoroz was on the ABLAT
1S SID and I got an initial climb to 6000ft, followed by a handover to Pula
Radar and a climb to FL130.
These are salt pans, viewed shortly after departure from Portoroz. Judging
from the lorry-sized piles of salt and the price of sea salt in the shops, this
is a lucrative business
By now we are very familiar with the Croatian coastline and its hundreds of
lovely islands; in this case poorly visible due to haze
On this trip I used a circular polarising filter on the Pentax K5 camera, and
when appropriately rotated this improves the haze. It also produces a dramatically
dark blue sky which is particularly evident when on the ground. The downside
is that a polarising filter loses a lot of light but modern DSLRs like the K5
have a much more sensitive sensor so one can get reasonable images down to ISO
3000 or even higher; especially for website use.
As on previous trips, we photographed every fish-shaped island encountered;
here are some new ones
Some of our previous highly recommended Croatian airports were passed; the
following pics were enhanced in Photoshop due to the haze below us at FL130:
Losinj LDLO
Split LDSP
Brac LDSB
Brac and Losinj are particular favourites, for both the friendly airports (with
Customs and avgas) and the islands themselves.
Not much was seen of Albania due to the haze. We did speak to Tirana Radar,
who were very clear as always. I cannot understand why so many ATC units, including
many in the UK, have crappy equipment (possibly just a crappy microphone) while
others are very clear. Radio was invented… when? Must have been a while ago
because the Titanic had it
Generally, ATC in northern Europe is better than in the south, but the controllers
in Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania are very good. Greece then goes
downhill…
On arrival at Kerkira (the island is variously called Corfu or Kerkira, but
the airport is called Kerkira) we were cleared to the VOR
W 35 approach which initially goes to the KRK VOR, once around the hold
(if approaching from the north) and then back to intercept the GAR VOR inbound
Olympic Handling were very efficient, very friendly, and we were refuelled
and sorted within 15 minutes – a dramatic improvement from our previous visits
to Corfu. Apparently Olympic have recently been privatised, and it really shows.
However, you do need to do flight plan filing via the internet (who doesn’t
in 2011?) otherwise you still have to do the old Kerkira business of taking
the stairs or the lift to the tower and presenting the written flight plan in
person, with escorts there and back because it is all airside.
There were rather more aircraft parked there than we had seen previously
but their GA apron (in front of the disused and crumbling old terminal building)
has a huge capacity which shows up the 48hr PPR as a pure job creation scheme
As always in flying, we filled up immediately after landing. Kerkira was the
only airport I’ve been to in 2011 where I was able to use my AIR BP fuel card,
which seems to be increasingly irrelevant in Europe where practically every
airport accepts Visa. I gather some non-international French airfields require
the TOTAL fuel card which needs a French bank account, but one cannot fly to
those airfields direct from the UK anyway, and many are French speaking only..
We stayed 1 night at the Arcadion Hotel
which was well located in the town centre (above MacDonalds) and was fine. Every
hotel and rental apartment we have seen in Greece has exceptionally hard beds
and this takes a lot of getting used to. Unless really tired, I find myself
waking up every hour or two.
Corfu town is a mixture of upmarket areas
and endless amounts of tourist shops selling every imaginable type of Chinese
made junk
Interestingly, there are many shops openly selling fake designer-name watches
(D&G, IWC, etc) which go around €20-100. They are usually only partly
functional, with the small dials etc just printed on.
A lot of the grand buildings are crumbling on the outside, but that seems to
be common across Greece. My guess is that – unlike in the UK – they don’t have
a “management company” or similar arrangement which forces every tenant
to pay €X/year towards exterior maintenance, and no other agreement can
be reached…
Corfu is well worth a visit. It has a strong European flavour; distinct from
the rest of Greece. It has a lot of “class” and does not suffer much
from the British “fish and chips” cheap tourism which has ruined so
many places. If you can, hire a car and have a drive around the island.
Above the town is the castle which is worth a visit even though there is not
a lot to see inside
We have been to Corfu a number of times because it has Customs and avgas and
presents the obvious (sometimes the only practical) entry point for most Greek
islands. Out of the UK, in any reasonably long range aircraft, the best first
destination is Croatia and from Croatia the main options in Greece are Corfu
LGKR, Sitia (Crete) LGST, or the main Athens airport LGAV (about 2x more expensive
than LGKR but not outrageous). I have other Corfu trip reports e.g. here.
The TB20 could make Shoreham-Corfu in a single
flight. The Eurocontrol route is about 1150nm which leaves about 200nm to
play with, which is OK as a legal IFR reserve but none of the reachable alternates
have avgas, so the flight could be a recipe for getting into a right mess. It
would of course be better to pick a day with a massive tailwind, which should
not be too hard… The only way I would ever consider doing a flight like that
would be to use the accurate fuel flow totaliser to take a view of the reserve
after ANC and if it is below the limit, throw in the towel and divert to one
of the Croatian airports. Dubrovnik would be the last chance…
Flight Kerkira-Kithira
The weather was again very good. The 0600
and 1200 MSLPs, the satellite
IR, the 0600 and 1200
SigWx, and the TAFs/METARs were all
clear.
LGKR
DCT MALED A14 EKTOS B1 IXIMA DCT
LGKC FL140 Alternates: LGKR, LGSA
248nm (GC), 278nm (airways)
I filed Hania LGSA as the 2nd alternate even though it is 5-20 days’ PPR. It
has both Customs and avgas. Either alternate would be a Mayday situation because
both are PPR…
Olympic Handling staff were again very efficient, getting us quickly through
security, and the journey to the aircraft was under 30 minutes – again a big
improvement on previous occassions.
Unfortunately, I made a couple of mistakes. The first was that my watch was
on UTC+2 (from Slovenia) whereas Greece is on UTC+3
in the summer. While this did not affect the planned timing because it was all
done in UTC, it resulted in us having apparently too much time at the airport,
and together with having to aim to land within the 3-hour opening time of Kithira
Airport, I decided to move the flight plan an hour earlier. This cannot be done
as such (only delaying a FP is directly supported in the “system”)
so one has to cancel the FP and file a new one. That was the second mistake;
a late FP filing is more likely to trigger a Eurocontrol slot. I thought this
would be safe because Greek airspace is so self evidently devoid of traffic,
and we checked the arrivals and departures board to make sure there was nothing
happening at the airport.
As luck would have it, we got a time slot with a 2hr delay, which made reaching
Kithira unlikely. I asked ATC, on the radio, if they can do anything, but they
just said I could try cancelling and re-filing the original (later) FP, adding
that only the handling agent could do anything with a FP. It was indeed suprising
that ATC are unable to even delay a FP. I said the destination airport will
close before I get there; they appeared helpless but came back a bit later with
the closing time for Kithira which showed it would be OK but in fact that time
was incorrect… maybe they got it from the ancient Greek AIP book which nobody
uses. I also enquired about a VFR departure, which (after a while) ATC said
would be OK, but by then I decided not to try that because we could get shafted
by not being allowed to climb above weather, etc. In the sweltering heat I tried
re-doing the FP
and managed to cancel the existing one, but when I tried filing the new one,
the EuroFPL website threw up an error condition, complaining about invalid data
in one of the FP fields. I went through each field in turn and found an invalid
character after the aircraft tail number (no idea how it got there; perhaps
a slip on the keyboard) but there was another one elsewhere which I never found.
So I used my backup FP filing method: AFPEx. That worked fine, but somehow the
slot remained, so given the +35C heat I asked ATC to call up Olympic Handling
and collect us and take us inside the airport building where we could wait for
the 2 hours. Olympic kindly let us sit in their airside office, which avoided
another round of passport checks, etc. And, as usual, the Eurocontrol slot shrank
somewhat, so we departed about 1hr late.
There is nothing new to learn here, except to not try to be too clever! And
always have two ways of doing everything! The EuroFPL issue was never
resolved. I rather like AFPEx for its simplicity (some notes on online flight
plan filing are here)
but it has two major drawbacks: there is an effectively randomly timed ~ 3MB
update of the massive Java application (which could be an issue if you are on
a roaming data connection, or on any slow data connection e.g. GPRS), and it
doesn’t support notification of incoming AFTN events (e.g. slots) via SMS or
email. The last one means that the first you will hear of a slot is when you
try to depart and ATC tells you that you can’t go.
We departed on the MALED1F SID in ISA+20 conditions
but the runway is plenty big enough
The route (above) has an obvious kink after TRL which I was hoping to straighten
out once enroute. Fuel economy was important because Kithira has no fuel (of
any kind) and I wanted to have as much in the tanks as possible after landing
there, for the best departure options.
Another reason for landing with maximum fuel was that this trip was made during
the severe Greek debt crisis and it could not be ruled out that there might
be a financial system collapse resulting in an inability to purchase fuel, in
which case an “escape” flight completely out of Greece would be the
only way.
The flight was straightforward, with very little visibility due to the haze
whose top was found at FL130. We got the shortcut after TRL, on the condition
that we remain at/above FL110 until 20D after TRL, but only after Athens Control
transferred us to the Kalamata airbase for the final part of the flight (after
TRL). We lost radio comms with Kalamata shortly afterwards (a well known problem
in the area, due to terrain) but another aircraft relayed a message that we
should change to Kithira AFIS for further instructions.
This is the Sparti “airbase” which appears very quiet
In fact it is sporadically used by the Hellenic Air Force (HAF) during the
summer as a base for their crop spraying aircraft; a service by the state to
the farmers. For unknown reasons it is not accessible to GA, which is a great
pity since the historic town of Sparta
is nearby.
This is Elafonisos; a small island before Kithira to which one can get a boat
trip from Kithira
To save fuel I did not ask for the instrument approach and flew a visual approach
to runway 02. Here is the downwind leg, on which we descended from about FL100
to 3000ft
with a further descent onto final
Only about one other aircraft – a scheduled flight from Athens – was due to
land that day, so what looked like the entire airport staff turned up to greet
us, with a pair of 747-sized chocks
We were processed very quickly
For true aviation connoisseurs, this is the airport VOR, which was notamed
INOP but actually was working, though the DME wasn’t
Kithira Airport appears to be of new construction. It is another undiscovered
Greek gem like Sitia in Crete, and is is a unique case in Greece in that despite
not being a Port of Entry, it is OK for a flight to/from Schengen countries.
There is a shop, a cafe, and a car hire outfit (Panayotis)
which was remarkably cheap at €35/day for a little car.
Like Sitia LGST, Kithira does not have ATC. It is “Information” i.e.
AFIS.
If Kithira had avgas, it would be wonderful. They could do what Sitia does:
keep it in drums. They would get a lot of business.
The airport certainly has plenty of room
One of the many great things about Greece is that large parts of it have not
yet been affected by the strictly policed northern European way of life. If
you fly to Kithira – or perhaps most of the Greek islands – say once a month,
you can keep an old car parked at or near the airport. When you next visit,
it will still be there. Little things like that are real luxuries. If you tried
this where we live, the car would be towed away, or stolen, or vandalised, within
days.
We spent 5 days at the village of Kapsali in the south of the island, in the
Kapsali Sun apartments,
where we got a huge double apartment (big enough for 6 people) for €60/day,
and rented a car to drive around the island.
The island was mostly deserted, with hardly any road traffic. This was a real
eye-opener and was possibly partly due to it being off-season (17th September
onwards) but also it is hard to reach since almost the only flights are from
Athens, and while Greece has boats going everywhere, they are very slow due
to the distances.
Kithira is really beautiful, with lots of postcard photo opportunities:
Diakofti:
Suprisingly, the above pic has not been photoshopped. I merely used a circularly
polarised filter on the camera.
Mylopotamos waterfall:
Avlemonas:
Curiously, this bridge was built by the British
Nearly all long trips like this one are worked around the weather patterns,
so some flexibility on flight dates is necessary. While we were at Kithira,
there was a lot of very bad weather passing to the
north, and getting back to the UK would have often been hazardous to say the
least due to the usual weather patterns up there.
The 5 nights in Kithira worked out just right because it is not a huge island
and there were also a couple of days there when flying anywhere would have been
“character forming” to say the least
JUSTINE’S TOP SPOTS IN KITHIRA
Potamos: For a different kind of shopping experience from
your usual Tesco run try the Sunday morning market in Potamos. Here you can
buy vegetables, fruit, honey, cheese, flowers and every type of local produce,
or just kill time having coffee. When you’re all shopped out and in need of
a memorable feed try the wild mountain goat in oregano sauce at the restaurant
in the town square.
Chora: Essential visiting for fantastic views and traditional houses
with woodwork painted in ice cream colours. Even the car park has a fabulous
outlook down to the sea. Stavros on the way into town sells local goodies and
some dusty but interesting books. A decent supermarket in the middle of town,
a travel agent and not one but two (!) working ATMs make this a functional stop
as well.
Kapsali: A good place to stay if you want to be right on the beach,
with enough tavernas to keep you going for a week even late in the season, and
a small supermarket for self-caterers.
Diakofti: The presence of two wrecked boats doesn’t seem to stop
people coming here for the ferry but apart from this the place is truly the
back of beyond. If you really want to escape from it all come here for crystal
clear water and deserted beaches. The view from the road winding down the hillside
is amazing – on a clear day you’ll see all the way to the mainland mountains.
Avlemonas: I fell in love with this paradisally gorgeous fishing
village. Give yourself a real treat and try to spend a night or two here; you
may never go home again. The colours are out of this world, as is the almond
cake at the café on the way into town. The man in the minimarket sells
olive oil from his own trees, and you can buy local sea salt.
Flight Kithira-Kerkira
With 62 USG in the tanks, flying back via Kerkira LGKR was the only real option.
I filed Dubrovnik as the alternate. Fortunately, obtaining the PPR for Kerkira
from the Olympic Handling agent seems to be a very smooth process now, and I
did not bother contacting the LGKR HCAA office at all.
The weather was again good. The 0600
and 1200 MSLPs, the satellite
IR, the 1200 SigWx, and the TAFs/METARs
were all clear – except for a PROB30 TEMPO 2203/2212 5000 RA SCT012 BKN030 at
Kithira, but when we got there, none of that was actually present.
The route was an exact reverse of the outbound route, which is unusual in Europe
LGKC
DCT IXIMA B1 EKTOS A14 MALED DCT
LGKR FL140 Alternate: LDDU
248nm (GC), 278nm (airways)
Upon our arrival at the airport, we hit another big problem: a strike of Greek
air traffic controllers, connected with the Greek debt crisis:
A1659/11 – DUE TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL
PERSONNEL SERVING
AT ATHINAI/MACEDONIA ACC, ATHINAI/TMA, ATHINAI/ELEFTHERIOS
VENIZELOS ATZ/TWR, PARTICIPATING IN GENERAL WORK SUSPENSION OF THE
CONFEDERATION OF UNIONS SYNDICATES OF GREEK CIVIL SERVANTS
(ADEDY), FLIGHTS WILL BE AFFECTED.
THE FOLLOWING FLIGHTS WILL BE SERVED:
1.TRAFFIC DEPARTING/ARRIVING TO LGTS VIA LWSS/FIR, LBSR/FIR.
2.TRAFFIC DEPARTING/ARRIVING TO LGKR BIA LIBB/FIR, LAAA/FIR.
3.TRAFFIC DEPARTING/ARRIVING TO LGRP VIA LTBB/FIR.
4.ALL ACFT OVERFLYING ATHINAI FIR/HELLAS UIR.
5.VIP FLIGHTS (HEADS OF STATES-PRIME MINISTERS)
6.ALL STATE OPERATIONAL ACFT PARTICIPATING IN SCHEDULED EXERCISES.
7.FLIGHTS IN UNUSUAL OR EMERGENCY SITUATIONS.
8.HOSPITAL FLIGHTS.
9.HUMANITARIAN FLIGHTS
10.SEARCH AND RESCUE FLIGHTS. SEP 22 0930-1230, 22 SEP 09:30 2011 UNTIL 22
SEP 12:30 2011. CREATED: 21 SEP 10:20 2011
I had actually not seen the above notam because when flying IFR I don’t get
enroute notams; they have little value for enroute IFR where one is flying under
ATC control, in an RNAV environment where INOP navaids are irrelevant. I get
just airport notams… What I got was a Eurocontrol slot with a 2 hour delay.
This threatened to delay the flight almost to the point where Kithira airport
would be closed before we got away. However, in common with most Eurocontrol
slots, this slot shrank 3 times, eventually resulting in a delay of just 10
minutes. Apparently, the ATCOs went back to work shortly before my 1230 UTC
filed EOBT.
Getting out through Kithira airport was very quick, with the Olympic Handling
staff escorting us out, via the HCAA office where someone signed off the GENDEC
form already prepared by Olympic (not sure why Greek airports need this but
it does certify that the passengers do not have tuberculosis), and out on the
apron. The charges were very reasonable – around €40 for landing and 5
nights’ parking. They appeared to not charge for handling as we did not have
any.
The departure clearance did not mention any SID; it was just “cleared
to destination, FL120, squawk 7036” so I simply departed DCT IXIMA, etc.
There is a bit of “terrain” there
though nothing like what one has at Corfu…
We departed Kithira with 62USG. Once stabilised enroute, the LFOB (landing
fuel on board) figure for Kerkira LGKR was 39USG. I loaded Dubrovnik LDDU (the
filed alternate) as the destination and got 20USG, which is a reasonable figure.
2hrs later, here we go again; another landing at LGKR. I have no idea how Justine
managed to get this photo…
The route actually flown is this; essentially identical to the filed route
As we were going to depart early the next morning, we paid all dues after landing,
together with the avgas. This saves a lot of time later, and is another improvement
at Kerkira where this was not possible in the past. It was interesting to discover
that Olympic Handling treat a visit under 24hrs as a “technical stop”
and charge €43 instead of the standard €80 which is the starting cost
of longer visits.
I found that the avgas bowser at LGKR under-delivered by about 3%, which is
a little naughty. I always fill right up so it doesn’t affect safety.
Another reasonably healthy evening out… It can be difficult to find reasonable
food on holidays, but Greece makes it a lot easier than northern Europe
Corfu is a nice place for an overnight stop. Even late in the tourist season,
almost everything is still open.
On the morning of departure, there was some interesting hardware
The jet seems to be a common fixture there but the Stearman was unusual.
We had to depart at a specific time because St Gallen closes for lunch, which
is really stupid for an airport that serves a lot of business jets. If you aim
to arrive shortly before lunch, all you need is a Eurocontrol slot and you are
stuffed, so the only “safe” option is to aim to arrive either well
before lunch (which in our case would have meant a very early departure from
Kerkira) or just after lunch. We went for the latter, which meant an 0600 UTC
departure. Another thing to check (with Olympic) was whether there would be
a lot of traffic at Kerkira around that time (ATC there tend to put light GA
on an indefinite wait until all the jets are out of the way) but 0600 UTC was
clear.
Flight Kerkira-St Gallen
The weather was again very good. The 0600
and 1200 MSLPs, the satellite
IR, the 0600 and 1200
SigWx, the sferics, and the TAFs/METARs
were all clear.
LGKR
NIKRO M127 OVVER L611 RODON R45 DBK L607 SPL L862 EPODO/N0150F150 L862 GIMIX
L608 KPT
LSZR FL140 Alternates: LSZH, EDNY
651 nm (GC), 724nm (airways)
An alternative route was prepared which is slightly shorter and passes nearer
the higher and more scenic parts of the Alps
but it was not flown because the east coast of Italy is far less scenic than
the coast of Croatia, and most of the flight would be over water and out of
glide range.
The first waypoint on the filed route was NIKRO and we got the NIKRO
2F SID. This has an elaborate track to reach 10000ft by NIKRO, which we
almost reached. For some reason, ATC asked for FL110 by NIKRO. The TB20 can
climb fast enough but in VMC conditions and particularly in the hot weather
I put more effort into engine management and keeping the hottest cylinder (#3)
below 400F, which involves climbing at 120kt+ instead of the 95kt Vy. Anyway,
the long-winded SID provides ample opportunities for sightseeing
We did wonder, upon leaving Greece, what it will be like next time we fly there.
It was in a severe financial crisis whose resolution will involve huge upheavals.
The barren hills of Albania appear very soon
Further up, in Croatia, the route passes near the big but little used Zadar
(LDZD) airport, seen here in thick haze
We visited Zadar last
year. The city is lovely and well worth a visit.
The Croatian islands are always a great sight
Due to the possibility of fog over a large area north of the Alps, I used the
Thuraya 7100 satellite phone, connected to the LS800 tablet computer via a USB-RS232
connection, to get weather for various destinations
The EGKK data above was not applicable to this leg, obviously, but it was worth
looking at for the following day’s long TAF.
We got some long DCT shortcuts, including a 160nm one to KPT. The Alps had
only a very slight amount of cloud
This is Innsbruck from about FL140
Here is a
video (50MB MP4) of a small piece of that flight. I won’t get any awards
for it but it is interesting
to note what video quality can be achieved using the MP4 format. The Canon Legria
G10 original (1920×1080×50i) was edited using Sony Vegas and then compressed
with Handbrake using the “Iphone 4” HD preset at about 2500kbits/sec.
It should play fine with VLC
Media player, or Apple Quicktime player, etc. and plays fine on an Ipad. Here
is a Vimeo version
of the video, which plays fine on most devices including an Ipad. Unfortunately
neither of these videos will play well on an older computer, or over a slow
wifi connection.
I normally print out all approach plates required for a trip, before leaving
home. For some reason I could not find the St Gallen ones, but had them on the
Ipad.
Radar vectors onto the ILS 10
approach are provided by Zurich. I had asked earlier if they would be procedural
or vectored, because the STAR(s) need to be studied in the former case. There
was a circling approach to runway 28 which has a left break because the
plate says circling is “not authorised south of the airport”. Actually
there is loads of room to the south, but presumably not for a large aircraft
and according to the approach design criteria. This is ILS 10, taken before
breaking off to circle, in heavy haze and enhanced as far as it could be
At this point we got a spurious but increasingly urgent GPWS warning from the
Garmin 496, which evidently has some defective data in its terrain database.
There are indeed mountains in that direction but they are much further away
than the 2 minutes’ extrapolation of the current track which is what the 496
is supposed to be doing.
This is a pic from right base to runway 28
and final
With reassuringly expensive hardware around
including this TBM with an “interesting” tail number
and it being Switzerland, the airport is unsuprisingly efficient and everything
happens instantly and with a smile. Well, except the crazy lunch break which
drops a spanner into flight planning… I asked for hard parking; it sounded
like this may have been an issue but we got it for the 1 night. Justine was
very happy to stretch her legs after the long flight from Corfu
The actual track flown, from the Eurocontrol tracking facility accessible via
EuroFPL, is here
There is an obvious problem with the first part of it, where Eurocontrol did
not pick it up until around Dubrovnik, so it just shows a straight line.
We stayed with a very kind pilot friend at Lichtenstein (40 mins’ drive away)
in an amazing house an an amazing location on the side of a mountain. He flies
a TB20 too, which is virtually identical to mine and one of the last few built,
from another airfield (with a 490m runway) which has no Customs but with Switzerland
being Schengen this is not a huge problem for pilots based there and flying
mostly in central Europe.
Flight St Gallen-Shoreham
The weather was again good, with a high pressure still holding over much of
Europe and keeping some frontal weather away from the south east of the UK.
The 0600 1200
1800 MSLPs,
the satellite IR,
the 0600 1200
1800 SigWx, the sferics,
and the TAFs/METARs
were all clear except for the 5000 BR BKN008 at St Gallen which is perfectly
fine IFR flying weather. The few lightning strikes seen at the UK end in the
sferics data are not alone significant; one can get isolated strikes like that
almost anywhere and they tend to be caused by little lumps of cumulus at high
altitudes; not an issue as there was the option of an early descent in UK airspace
(near DVR) followed by a low level flight under any weather which might be hazardous
at high altitudes. The winds for 0600
and 1200 looked fine too, though
this is obvious from the MSLP charts anyway, and with the flight being under
40% of the aircraft range, we had loads of spare fuel.
LSZR
DCT TRA L856 HOC G4 RLP B3 BILGO H20 XORBI H40 ABB T27 GURLU Y8 WAFFU DCT
EGKA FL140 Alternates: EGHH, EGMD, EGMC
435 nm (GC), 485nm (airways)
The flight plan was filed, via EuroFPL as usual, the previous evening. The
departure time of 0900 UTC was chosen to be 1hr before the airport closes for
lunch, which should take care of any Eurocontrol slot. Interestingly, the ACK
message arrived by email (and was visible on the EuroFPL website, post-filing)
but not by SMS, which suggests that the network which my phone was roaming on
at the time (from memory, Orange Switzerland) does not have an agreement with
the network into which EuroFPL are injecting their SMS messages. This issue
is rare in terrestrial GSM (it is very common with satellite phones whose SMS
interoperability with terrestrial networks is poor). It didn’t matter, but would
have prevented using SMS to delay the flight plan…
We paid for the landing, parking and fuel on the morning of departure. The
landing and parking came to about €85, and Avgas was €2.34/litre.
The first waypoint on the filed route was TRA and we got the TRA2V
SID. The KLN94 GPS does not have RNAV SIDs/STARs stored whole (how Honeywell
managed to get away with that on an “IFR” GPS…) but it does have
the individual waypoints for these RNAV procedures in its database i.e. SITOR,
ZR500, ZR501, ENIBI, TINOX, TRA and with the Sandel EHSI driving the autopilot,
the entire departure can be flown automatically.
St Gallen was overcast at 700ft with a 5000m visibility
Here is a fine demonstration of how accurate a “cheap” handheld GPS
can be in altitude, especially when receiving EGNOS
The actual error is several feet because the GPS is yoke mounted…
One can see there is not a huge amount of GA parking especially when something
bigger turns up
The departure (initial clearance 5000ft) took us into cloud very quickly but
we were on top very soon
As usual, most of the SID was skipped because we were handed over to Zurich
immediately after departure and they cleared us SITOR TINOX, with a climb to
FL120 where we stayed; I asked for a stop climb there, instead of the filed
FL140.
This pic shows the only other aircraft which we saw on this entire trip
The “crowded European skies” is a myth perpetuated by loads of job-creation
axe grinders… The reality is that, in the FL100-FL190 airspace used by most
light GA, there is almost nothing there, and the Eurocontrol routings keep GA
traffic away from the busy terminal areas (see the long detour around Paris
on the LSZR-EGKA flight, VATRI-XORBI, for example, which applies to all traffic
below FL200).
Due to the lack of weather, we descended from FL120 to FL100 in France. Justine
is not so keen to have the cannula stuck up her nose the whole time…
Flight over northern France offers little scenery
but one sees an occassional interesting airport; this one is presumably military;
possibly disused, somewhere in the area of RLP
Due to the proximity of the front near the SE UK, weather was obtained over
the satellite phone 1hr before arrival, and was fine
The alternates have poor utility for Shoreham. Bournemouth and Southend are
2 trains away and Lydd is a £200 taxi.
As usual, we got handed over from Paris Control to London Control around GUBAR.
Interestingly, London Control asked us to route “WAFFU ”http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/kithira/y8.jpg" target="_blank">Y8"
(i.e. WAFFU CAMRA GWC) which was a rare instance of ATC asking for a route by
airway name. Some pilots apparently fly with just a waypoint list, and one of
these – example – is emailed
by EuroFPL shortly before EOBT, and this will do 99% of the time, but airway
charts are clearly needed on occassions. I rarely fly with the off the shelf
printed ones; I print enroute chart sections from FliteStar IFR Europe – example
– and these I fly with in A4 printed form, double-sided to save paper.
There was a good layer of cloud to descend through over the Channel
but the destination was clear. It was hellishly busy in the circuit though…
The route actually flown is here
Spot the odd one out…
Consistently, on any GA airfield movement data, the US registered aircraft
are flying the longest routes. I don’t suppose anybody in EASA gives a damn,
however, with these corrupt dishonest job-creating gravy train riding axe grinders
in the expenses-fuelled “European Union” having just shafted most
of the European population of IFR capable private pilots, by passing a purely
politically motivated decree requiring them to obtain European
duplicates of their ICAO compliant licenses and ratings, by 2014. I am now
(9/2011) part way through doing the completely pointless European
IR, on top of my American CPL/IR. I have always had a UK PPL and medical.
General Notes, and Lessons Learnt
GA Access to Greece: Greece remains a relatively predictable
destination for GA, helped by airport personnel being friendly and communicating
well in English. Olympic Handling have had a complete re-vamp and are now very
efficient. If an airport tells you they have avgas, they have it and you can
buy it. On the minus side: no new avgas facilities have appeared, and airport
opening hours can be restrictive to the point where the ability to visit some
places is seriously affected. Kithira in particular would really benefit from
avgas because two “tech stops” at Kerkira are probably going to set
you back several hundred €… and they could easily do what Sitia does
i.e. one man and some drums.
Fly later in the year: Looking back on previous trips to Greece,
it appears clear that going in September is much better than in June, because
there is much less convective (stormy) weather. Of our long trips, this one
was unusual in that the whole trip was flown as planned, with some date flexibility
but with no changes to the routes or the airports visited. Also, all of the
pre-planned Eurocontrol routes worked
fine on the day, which is also somewhat unusual. As a result, the portable Canon
printer (mentioned earlier in this article) remained in the back of the aircraft
throughout, which was a relief because it is a bit of a hassle.
Cloud Tops: this trip has again proven the use of IR satellite imagery
as a preflight go/no-go decider. One could achieve safe IFR flight using this
data, with TAFs and METARs for the terminal areas to check against approach
minima in the usual way. MSLP charts still play a part in more general forward
planning because they can be obtained 5 days ahead and show obvious suspect
weather. SigWx charts have recently been dumbed-down by ICAO and no longer show
fronts, or any weather in areas where CBs are forecast, and are now almost useless
for this kind of non-deiced non-radar-equipped flying. I still look at SigWx
charts but rarely see anything on them which is not obvious from the MSLP charts.
Normally I use this
UKMO site for cloud tops, and it is updated every hour, but recently I have
come across this
Turkish site (thanks Kyp!) which delivers a temperature-calibrated cloud
tops image, but is updated every 3 hours. I have asked the UKMO if they could
provide their image with a temperature scale, which they obviously can, but
they responded with a useless reply along the lines of how would it be funded.
There is every indication that the EUMETSAT organisation tries to keep a lid
on the dissemination of this “top secret” data 
Mobile Internet: It has become apparent over our two trips to Greece
in 2011 (May and September) that WIFI has practically disappeared there as a
free resource. Many cafes still have it, and most hotels have it, but often
the password doesn’t work or the signal is too weak. Instead, commercial WIFI
access points are common, but usually charge ripoff prices. It is also obvious
that these WIFI companies have done a “sweep” of the neighbourhood
and have done what must have been a huge amount of door knocking to shut down
unsecured WIFI access points in homes and businesses. So, GPRS/3G is
now the most practical way to get internet access. 3G is a lot more prevalent
than in the UK where most of the countryside is slow-GPRS-only. However, if
you want to use your UK phone, or use your phone as a modem for a laptop, the
continuing issue is roaming data costs. For EU destinations, most UK networks
sell “EU data bundles” which can be very good value but the bundle
size allows only light usage e.g. T-Mobile’s 50MB/30-day deal for £10.
For heavier usage, e.g. for running Google Maps on some mobile device while
driving around some Greek island, you need a lot more than 50MB and then a locally
purchased data SIM card is the way. Nowadays almost every European country offers
such cheap local (non roaming) data deals. There are several of these in Greece;
I bought a Cosmote “Internet On The Go Me Karta” which for €15
gives you 2GB over 7 days and this totally solves any connectivity issues. Short
of big movie downloads, you will never get through 2GB during a holiday. The
Cosmote connection was not wholly reliable (it seemed to disconnect every few
minutes, possibly to frustrate certain types of heavy usage) but it worked well
enough, and the rest of the time I used the 50MB/£10 T-Mobile EU data
bundle on my phone, to check emails, get TAFs/METARs, etc. Obviously this Greek
SIM is no good in your main phone because the phone number changes so you can
no longer be contacted on it (and it may not even support voice calls) so I
put the Greek SIM into an E585
which provides a private WIFI access point, which is directly usable by multiple
mobile devices with WIFI. Purchasing the Cosmote SIM involves a visit to a phone
shop with a passport and an hour’s messing about (a recent measure in Greece,
perhaps intended to keep a lid on businesses operating totally below the tax
radar) where you purchase the SIM and purchase a top-up scratch card, and then
visiting a Cosmote website (which is accessible only from a device using
that SIM) where the SIM is activated and the scratch card code is entered, but
once this is done the SIM should “remain alive” for 12 months (the
data bundle itself may be good for only 10 days) with topups purchased as required
during each visit to Greece. They don’t make it easy…
PPR: This remains a persistent issue on trips around Europe, and is
not improving. “PPR/PNR for Customs” is more common still. A local-language
speaker can bluff his way into most places, but a foreigner may be denied a
landing clearance by some idiot jobsworth, perhaps especially if flying a US
registered aircraft. The result is that you need to contact the airport before
you fly there even if the airport Notams are clean. In an urgent situation
telephoning the airport is the only way and while this is fine in N Europe and
some other places, I know of cases (Greece) where a telephoned permission turned
out to be worthless and the aircraft was forced to turn back. A reasonably good
source of airport emails and fax numbers is this
airport directory, another one is ACUKWIK,
another one is the Navbox
flight planning program. One would expect the AFPEx
tool (available only to pilots with a UK address) to work well, using its AFTN
free text message function, but I have found that most messages do not elicit
a reply. Olympic Handling contact details are here.
IFR route development: FlightPlanPro worked out every route on this
trip, though the current version does occasionally crash. It is great to report
that for the past 2 years I have been able to file and fly IFR without all the
Eurocontrol routing garbage which we had to deal with. However, it is apparent
that two route development methods are required, just in case, and for
me these are 1) FPP and 2) EuroFPL’s Route Suggest feature.
Airport Costs: None of the airports visited were outrageously
pricey, along the lines of the £500 charged at the likes of Gatwick, Luton,
Frankfurt, Munich, etc. All were easily affordable in the context of a long
trip, on which the fuel and hotel costs dominate. However, all of them were
too expensive to operate as a base for healthy light GA activity; if the landing
fee is say €50, a flying school/club cannot operate there unless the airport
gives it a big discount.
One-night stops: We did a few of these, and they result in a tiring
trip. 2-night stops (or longer) are much better. Last year’s trip to Sitia
was far less tiring on the way down there, though the return route was complicated
by a stop to meet up with some other pilots.
Photos: The pictures in this writeup were taken with a Pentax
K5 and a Canon S90/S95. The images within the text were cropped and adjusted
in Photoshop to remove, as far as possible, the blue haze which features in
most high altitude photos, but the images in the galleries are mostly original
due to the amount of time it takes to do the Photoshop stuff. The polarising
filter helped a lot. To get acceptable pictures from an aircraft, the windows
need to be clean and scratch-free and care needs to be taken to minimise reflections
from bright objects inside the cockpit; these may need to be temporarily moved
or re-orientated. For example I usually have to turn my kneeboard upside down.
I have some photo tips here.
Why fly IFR, and so high, when the weather is good?
A number of people ask this question. Why not fly VFR?
IFR is safe because keeps all the options open. Under IFR, if you need a climb
(due to terrain-induced turbulence or to stay above cloud buildups), ATC grants
usually this immediately, especially if you ask for it “to avoid”
i.e. in the obvious context of avoiding hazardous weather. Normally one would
ask for a left/right turn “to avoid” but this is not always going
to do the job of avoiding prolonged flight in IMC and potential icing conditions.
I rarely do flight in IMC when IFR/enroute because, at typical Eurocontrol levels,
the temperature is usually below 0C. It is one thing to climb or descend through
IMC (subject to various limits, especially if climbing through it) but if one
is going to sit in it for hours, at say -5C, airframe icing is almost inevitable.
Under IFR, ATC works for you / with you because you already have a clearance
to be there, and it is generally easy to play the long game of flying VMC on
top.
If you are flying VFR, usually (due to airspace management policies) you are
flying at a low level; typically in the 1000ft-10000ft range. Then, if you need
to climb to penetrate weather and to hopefully remain above it, you will find
ourself having to climb into controlled airspace (if you are not in it already)
and have to ask for an “IFR clearance”. The time it takes to get this
varies hugely. It can be “instant” if flying from the UK to say Le
Touquet, and you find the weather is such that the ILS is required, and Lille
Radar deal with it right away, in a typically French-ATC pragmatic and easy
going manner. However, I know a pilot who killed himself and his family in France,
near Lyon, while waiting for an IFR clearance. To be fair he left it far too
late and made plenty of mistakes anyway, but it proves you can’t always get
it when you really need it. Picking up an IFR clearance can also be dodgy if
departing from VFR-only airfields as illustrated by the Messalonghi-Corfu debacle
on this trip where it apparently
never happened before I landed at Corfu, and there is no alternative in that
case (unless it can be done over the telephone before departure) but this sort
of thing can be very dangerous. At the far end, you have the southern UK where
an IFR clearance is almost impossible to get, due to most controlled airspace
being Class A and the watertight separation between the “IFR enroute”
controllers (e.g. London Control) and the ad hoc ATC provisions below them (e.g.
London Info, Farnborough Radar, etc). Having spoken to some ATCOs (non-UK ones;
this subject appears to be a sore point in the UK) the reason why getting an
IFR clearance can be difficult appears to be due to the fact that ATC cannot
just simply have traffic popping in and out of their airspace; they have to
create a flight plan for it, which is passed to subsequent units. It doesn’t
have to be a complete end-to-end flight plan, but it needs to be a reasonable
fragment of one. And while most of this stuff is nowadays electronic, not every
country has bought the extra software needed to do it efficiently, so they just
refuse entry. And light GA does not pay route charges… Filing and flying IFR
the whole way avoids this hassle because the IFR clearance is a done deal.
Another reason for IFR is that some countries insist on specific VFR routes
in their airspace. In northern Europe, the USA, and a few other places one can
fly around freely if remaining outside controlled airspace, but this is not
the case in most of the world. On this
VFR trip I had a VFR flight plan cancelled by Montenegro, because they did
not like the route. This can catch you by suprise; a UK pilot simply does not
expect to have a flight plan chucked out. IFR avoids all this hassle. Also,
various countries, Greece included, require VFR flight to be done on published
airway routes, so the flexibility of VFR is lost anyway.
End-to-end IFR also avoids the need to carry VFR charts. This was particularly
relevant on this trip, because no VFR charts exist south of Croatia. All one
has are the Jeppesen low level airway charts, which do contain controlled airspace
information, but as per the paragraph above this is not necessarily sufficient
for filing a valid VFR flight plan. There are now some VFR charts for Greece,
compiled by helicopter pilots as an informal
project.
Flight Times (airborne):
EGKA-LJPZ 5:00
LJPZ-LGKR 3:30
LGKR-LGKC 2:00
LGKC-LGKR 2:15
LGKR-LSZR 5:35
LSZR-EGKA 4:35
On all long trips I have the LS800 tablet computer running a VFR or other topographical
chart under Oziexplorer. The GPS track from this gets logged. Here
is the track actually flown on the entire trip. The text version of the track
is here. Due to a bug in the
old SIRF-2 bluetooth GPS used to drive the LS800, the altitude has a constant
~ 150ft positive bias i.e. to get the correct altitude you have to subtract
150ft.
The altitude plot of the entire trip is here.
You can see two things there: a slight upward slope means you are flying (at
a constant altimeter setting and indication) towards a higher pressure, and
the fact that the highest level flown was FL170 shows how a temperature above
ISA causes the aircraft to fly at a higher real altitude. On occassions, I saw
a GPS altitude 700ft above the indicated altitude even though the QNH was set
correctly from a ground station. The atmosphere expands according to the variation
in the absolute temperature (in degrees K) so e.g. ISA+29 would represent
a 10% expansion – assuming of course that the temperature delta was maintained
all the way up from the surface.
The aircraft performed perfectly. Some notes on Socata TB20 ownership and operation
are here. As on
every IFR flight I have done, the late-1990s avionics were 100% capable of everything
required. It would be such a shame to have to rip them out to comply with PRNAV
which is another European jobsworth boat which left the harbour about 15 years
ago… I also do not want a “glass cockpit” because if something goes
wrong in e.g. Greece, one would be stuffed. As I write this, a colleague is
installing his 3rd Aspen EFD-1000 replacement in about 2 years…
This is the stuff which we carried in the back of the aircraft on this holiday
and that is additional to stuff which lives in the aircraft permanently: a
life raft, life jackets, an emergency bag with an ELT and a handheld radio and
GPS, a toolbox sufficient to do a 50hr service, etc.
Total oil used was about 3 litres. Total fuel burnt… don’t ask
but the general fuel flow rate was slightly under 10 USG/hr. Avgas prices in
southern Europe are now universally high and mostly a lot higher than in the
UK.
All flights on this trip but the last could have been done under VFR on the
day, albeit with a possibility of the usual airspace access issues which would
mean the routes and altitudes would have been very different. Had VFR flights
been attempted at the levels we flew at, they might have been forced down (by
ATC) into lower levels at which there was cloud; this is the standard problem
with VFR in Europe, where many ATC units run their own private policies which
are in breach of ICAO airspace classification (VFR should be permitted in all
airspace except Class A, though an ATC clearance is required in Classes
B through D). The last flight was definitely IFR-only, due to the conditions
at St Gallen.
I would like to give my thanks to Kyprianos Biris for his original suggestion
to visit Kithira.
Pilot: FAA CPL/IR, approx 1400 hours at the time.
This page last edited 1st June 2012
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