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Astypalea, Greece, September 2017

This trip was for a <a https:="" www.euroga.org="" forums="" trips-airports="" 7586-9-10-september-2017-fly-in-astypalea-lgpl-greece"="" style=“background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;”>EuroGA
fly-in. On EuroGA we normally have two big fly-ins a year, in May and September.
On these fly-ins we create a
<a https:="" telegram.org="" “=”" style=“background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;”>Telegram group
and use that to coordinate everyone who has turned up so one can do other meet-ups,
etc.

While the flying in this trip was standard European IFR in the Eurocontrol
system, and I have already written extensively about this in other trip writeups
<a http:="" www.peter2000.co.uk="" aviation"="">here, and I have been flying
to Greece since 2004, this trip was not trivial to plan. Greece has changed
significantly for 2017: a German company called Fraport has taken over nearly
all the money-making Greek airports, driving up the costs and introducing a
tight slot system. When the existing Greek airport handlers saw how visitors
were being ripped off by Fraport, they decided to help themselves to some of
it “while the going is good” and the end result is an order of magnitude
increase in the costs – to the €300 area. Even booking a slot is €50
and if you need to change your plan it is another €50. These slots are
not required for IFR arrivals or departures but the office at Samos told me
there is no difference and the slot constitutes the “airport PPR”.
It gets confusing because according to the NOTAMs airport slots were required
for all IFR/VFR GA flights excluding helicopters to Fraport airports, through
the handler
. And even non-Fraport airports jumped on the rip-them-off bandwagon.
The end result is that the only airport which is a Port of Entry, has Avgas,
and at around €60 (2017) isn’t a ripoff, is Sitia LGST on eastern Crete!
It remains a good base for flying around the smaller Greek airports (whose costs
are mostly still reasonable) but it has a difficult opening timetable which
on most days doesn’t overlap with most of the others… Reaching Sitia from
outside Greece (e.g. from Croatia) needs an aircraft with a reasonable range.
The other options are Iraklion LGIR (a slightly smaller ripoff at about €150,
or €100 if you arrive and depart VFR) and the big Athens airport LGAV (makes
sense only as a “technical stop” i.e.not leaving airside when it is
“only” about €200). The last two are not operated by Fraport.

Astypalea LGPL has no fuel (not even Jet-A1) and is not a Port of Entry (Greece
signed the Schengen treaty but disregards it) so a stop elsewhere in Greece
is required for both arrival and departure. The two most obvious were Samos
LGSM (a Fraport ripoff airport at about €250 but eventually came to €330)
and Athens LGAV. Sitia LGST was too far south to make it worthwhile but more
importantly the <a http:="" peter2000.co.uk="" aviation="" astypalea="" greek-timetable.txt"="">timetables were very limiting
as to which days of the week would work. In addition, Astypalea opening hours
being very early on some days mean that a nearby stop is required…

ASTYPALAIA AERODROME OPR HRS:
FROM 30/05/2017 TILL 28/10/2017
MON 0730-1000 1300-1600
TUE THU 0300-0600
WED 0730-1000
FRI SUN 1100-1400
SAT 0300-1000

This diagram summarises the present-day “Greek situation”. There
are two small details not shown: avgas exists at Athens LGAV (shown) and very
close to it at Megara LGMG (which is however not a Port of Entry which makes
it useless for most trips), and Syros LGSO <a https:="" www.euroga.org="" forums="" trips-airports="" 7989-syros-lgso-greece-avgas"="">now
has avgas (but again not a Port of Entry).

In view of the above, it was with some trepidation that the decision was made
to run the fly-in to Greece. However, a number of factors were in favour: we
had never been to Greece before, it was apparent we would not go there again
for a long time, it would be an opportunity to get together with a bunch of
Greek pilots who otherwise – for various reasons, starting with a lack of money
– would not come to our fly-ins further north, and finally of course Greece
is a wonderful country to visit!

In view of the Greek airport costs and timetables, my plan was to do 1 night
on Brac LDSB, 1 night on Samos LGSM, then fly to Astypalea LGPL. On the way
back, I would have some options, because the Samos-Astypalea leg is very short
(about 80nm) so I would have nearly full tanks. One would be back via Samos,
another back via Sitia or Iraklion, and others via Corfu or Athens. Other members
of the fly-in chose different routes, with some going via the tech-stop at Athens,
which was not hugely expensive but turned out to be a bad choice because they
got long delays.

I think that – except for a direct flight to Sitia and doing some small islands
from there – Greece is now very difficult for visits using GA. One could argue
that €300 is not so much compared to the cost of avgas burnt flying to
Greece but few people like to be ripped off quite so blatently.

Justine and I have visited many Greek islands. I still plan to visit Karpathos
LGKP, Kasos LGKS, and the tiny island of Kastelorizo LGKJ. It’s going to be
an interesting airport timetable challenge The others we have not yet
visited (e.g. Kos, Skyros…) are best done by EasyJet.

Greece continues to be challenging for VFR flight due to a lack of map data.
Old ONC charts marked-up with later data can be found <a https:="" www.euroga.org="" forums="" flying="" 2528-new-greek-vfr-maps"="">here
and tablet products such as EasyVFR and Skydemon cover Greece now. I use EasyVFR
but didn’t use it on this trip because all the legs were flown under IFR, which
is mostly in controlled airspace. In Greece, IFR must take place in
controlled airspace, and if the ATCO sends you OCAS he has to inform you that
ATC will not be provided, and they don’t want to do this.

A general information page for Greece, prepared and maintained by AOPA GR is
<a http:="" www.aopa.gr="" info"="">here.

 

<a https:="" en.wikipedia.org="" wiki="" astypalaia"="">Astypalea is a lovely
and very traditional Greek island. With a population of around 1300, not much
happens there

Here is a <a http:="" www.peter2000.co.uk="" aviation="" glossary.html"="">glossary
for non-aviation readers.

 

Airport PNR/PPR

All the Fraport airports are PPR, either by regulation or by the fact that
you have to obtain the slot. Astypalea was easy. There was a published ~€200
handling charge but this was avoided via a request, so the end charge was under
€30.

 

Accommodation

With GA travel, there is no short-notice cost penalty so you can stay at home
until the destination weather is good. The short-notice hotel issue can be tricky
but <a https:="" www.airbnb.ie="" “=”“>AirB&B and ”" www.booking.com="" “=”">Booking.com
can be very useful and are widely used by pilots.

Booking.com is mostly normal hotels although many apartments appear on it also,
hence it tends to be “hotel prices”. In fact I use Booking.com as
the standard way to look for hotels. It is generally better than AirB&B
for short-notice trips because you get a guaranteed booking right away whereas
with AirB&B you “request” the apartment, and many AirB&B hosts
play silly games and take up to 24hrs (the max allowed time) to respond, presumably
in the hope of getting a longer-duration booking. Many hosts simply don’t bother
to reply, and this gets much worse during the busy season. Fortunately you can
cancel your request if you don’t hear back within say a few hours. The other
problem with AirB&B is that you get every “broom cupboard” on
it, so one should not go too downmarket… in one €40/night apartment we
had sewage coming up through the floor! So, when looking for an apartment for
several people, I normally look at apartments priced around the cost of a single
hotel room – say €100/night. However, if you have a few days to play with,
AirB&B is usually much better value for money; in most cases one can get
a whole 2- or 3-bedroom apartment for the cost of the €100 hotel room.
One issue with Booking.com is that most of the establishments offer only 1 room
on it (to make it look like they are nearly fully booked, to scare people into
booking something fast) which can make it impossible to book for a group; this
is obviously solved by googling for the hotel and contacting it directly. Normally
the hotels prefer that anyway because Booking.com takes a cut of at least 15%.
But occassionally one finds a lower price on Booking.com, and bizzarely I have
never managed to get a lower price by booking directly!

For Greece, there is an argument that you should use the small family hotels
because they need to be supported and their prices are mostly low anyway. Our
experience of these is certainly very positive.

 

Pilot

FAA CPL/IR, EASA PPL/IR, ~2300hrs.

 

Aircraft

The aircraft is this 2002 TB20GT; one of the last made before production ended.

It is equipped for BRNAV (RNAV 5) and can fly ILS and GPS/LNAV approaches using
the autopilot. This is sufficient for all practical European IFR flight. The
cockpit is largely as delivered in 2002, with a Sandel EHSI installed on the
LH side and with the RH side reworked with another Sandel EHSI and arranged
to form a usable “pilot panel” so the aircraft can be flown from the
RH side.

There is no LPV approach capability but LPV is not yet (to me) operationally
relevant in Europe especially if flying to/from the UK which normally needs
an airport with Customs/Immigration. France is ahead of most countries in removing
ILS approaches (from airports not served by airlines) and replacing them with
LPV. I have just heard that Greece is moving to LPV soon, with a raft of
LPV and LNAV/VNAV procedures to be announced soon.
Adding LPV capability
(which also gives you the very useful “+V” advisory glideslope on
most GPS approaches) could be done with a cheap-and-dirty solution of a used
GNS430W, but a decent installation would be a Garmin GTN650+GTN750 (or just
the 750
) or Avidyne 2×IFD540 (the foregoing
links are photoshopped mockups) and these jobs would cost about 30k but much
more importantly I don’t know of any installer who I would let loose on my aircraft
on which I value the virtually 100% uptime!

The aircraft has an operating ceiling of 20,000ft in ISA conditions. I have
taken it to 21,000ft but in the fairly common summer conditions of e.g. ISA+15
it will reach 18,000ft at MTOW.

Planned upgrades for 2018 are: full TKS anti-ice system (currently I have only
propeller protection) and the <a https:="" www.ing-golze.de="" products_adl150.jsp"="">ADL150
satellite weather receiver.

 

Routes

These were developed with the <a http:="" router.euroga.org"="">EuroGA Autorouter
which was also used to file the flight plans. This facility is currently free.
It does IFR flight plans only (I Y and Z but not V). A wiki on it is <a https:="" www.autorouter.eu="" wiki="" “=”“>here.
The only other options for autorouting are RocketRoute (which is expensive),
and a free PC tool ”" fpp.rocketroute.com="" “=”“>FlightPlanPro which
was developed by one of the RocketRoute people before RR came along and which
at time of writing is non-functional in much of Europe due to a lack of database
updates. For VFR flight plan filing I use ”" www.eurofpl.eu="" “=”">EuroFPL.
I also use EuroFPL for filing IFR flight plans for unusual situations e.g. where
a specific ETA must be filed (to fit inside a purchased airport slot) and the
Autorouter aircraft performance model does not allow that.

Some notes on IFR in Europe are here.

 

Shoreham – Brac (diverted to Dubrovnik)

This was the first leg of the trip.

Local UK weather was miserable. I got soaked in drizzle under a 300ft cloudbase
just removing and packing away the cockpit cover and doing the preflight…
fortunately the TB20 has a good heater. However the weather at altitude was
clear, as the IR image shows.

MSLP: 0600 1200
1800
IR Sferics
Radar Wind Forecast
TAFs/METARs.
Autorouter briefing pack

The following day’s weather, for the flight to Samos, was good 0000
1200.

The route was filed at various levels, from FL100 to FL120. The Alps normally
need FL140+ but on this flight they were crossed where they are not so high.
Most importantly this route is about the shortest IFR route which validates
via the Eurocontrol system.

EGKA SFD Y803 DVR L9 KONAN/N0152F100 L607 SUXIM DCT ABDAP DCT GISNO DCT ABUKA
DCT OKIBA DCT ABTAL L173 RIXED DCT AGB DCT OBIXO/N0150F120 DCT ERKIR DCT INGID
DCT SABAD/N0152F100 L862 SPL LDSB

Alternates: Pula LDPL Losinj LDLO Zadar LDZD Split LDSP

894nm as filed
825nm GC

The above really shows the wonderful capability of the TB20. In still air,
the above flight would leave you with 2 hours’ fuel!

Actual route flown (FR24)

 

The cloudbase on the morning of departure was about 300ft, with light drizzle
and generally really unpleasant – especially as one has to pack up the cockpit
cover and roll it up into a bag, without getting oneself totally soaked by it…

I am now testing the Garmin Aera 660 GPS which comes with the excellent Garmin
SafeTaxi charts. It is very easy to get lost at an airport and this should help.
This also does terrain warnings (which crucially come out on an audio output
connector) and will replace the Garmin 496
which I have had yoke mounted since 2005 and which is basically useless except
as a terrain warning device and, at a push, a “DCT box” for emergency
navigation

However, both the Aera 660 and the 496 are equally useless at depicting airspace.

With a top around 8000ft, the layer was not thin but was warm enough to not
present an icing risk

The initial level of FL100 was just right

The conditions cleared up later but as usual there was a lot of haze

There was a considerable tailwind on this flight, of 20-30kt. Also, as I was
passing Pula I exchanged some emails with Brac airport and realised I had screwed
up: I had not read the Brac notams properly and the following day their opening
hours were different – shifted towards the evening, with a later opening in
the morning, which meant I would miss the prebooked slot at Samos by several
hours. Since booking those slots was a painful exercise involving the banging
of the heads of 78.5% of Greek airport jobsworths against a brick wall, I decided
to continue the flight to Dubrovnik which has very wide opening hours every
day. The fuel totaliser forecast a LFOB (landing fuel on board) of 22 USG at
Dubrovnik which was fine with either Brac or Corfu as the alternate.

This meant I wasted the hotel booking on Brac but not all screwups are bad!
I had screwed up on the hotel booking too and booked both it and the hotel on
Samos (booking.com) for the following month! So I was able to cancel these without
a penalty

The really scenic part of a flight to the Adriatic starts when the Alps appear.
Now we are at FL140. The MEA here is FL120 but I climbed higher to reduce the
effects of any turbulence caused by the fairly strong wind flowing over the
terrain

This was September so all the snow here has been there since the previous winter
and much of it will be permanent. The temperature at FL140 was -6C so most of
the terrain below would have been around 0C

Zell am See, with the airport visible

The engine failure options appear bleak but in reality most of the Alps present
opportunities for gliding into one of the wide valleys. I also run a GPS which
has a proper topographic map (generated from Google Terrain, before Google stopped
people downloading gigabytes of the data in one go) so one would have good options
even if flying above a cloud layer

Passed the Alps now and here is the unmistakable view of the Adriatic with
its hundreds of small islands

Brac airport, where I was originally going to land. Brac is a great place to
hang out

Dubrovnik is now visible in the distance

The old city of Dubrovnik

On the ILS; straight-in for runway 13

Dubrovnik is an excellent, perfectly organised and highly GA-friendly airport.
Fuel and the handler arrived instantly and 15 mins later I was done. The total
cost was €50

There are many airline flights but the management still keeps it open to GA
which is highly commendable

Packed up and nearly done

I found an apartment on booking.com – Villa Rozic – for €60 on a scenic
hillside at a coastal village called Cavtat, near the airport. The village was
really nice and it was great to forget the wet UK weather.

 

Photo Gallery

This is the video of the entire flight, edited to show only the more interesting
bits:


<a https:="" vimeo.com="" 234182532"="">TB20 flight Shoreham EGKA to Dubrovnik LDDU from <a https:="" vimeo.com="" user8026275"="">Peter on <a https:="" vimeo.com"="">Vimeo.


 


Dubrovnik – Samos


This was the second leg of the trip.


MSLP: 0600 1200

IR Sferics
TAFs/METARs
Autorouter briefing pack


The route was filed at levels from FL110 to FL120.


LDDU MOKUN L187 LASTI/N0152F110 L187 RODON N732 GRIBA DCT ADDER/N0150F120
M603 KAS/N0152F110 W58 LSA/N0152F100 W58 ETRUD N130 MES H59 NISOS/N0151F090
H59 ORMOS LGSM


Alternates: Corfu LGKR Athens LGAV Sitia LGST Iraklion LGIR


550nm as filed
492nm GC



Actual route flown (FR24) – you can see tracking was lost over a bit of Albania
and N Greece



 


The morning at Dubrovnik was very nice. It is always good to see other GA aircraft
at these big airports; most big airports have driven them out with crazy fees



Departure was straight out to the north, with a turn to the right; this is
looking backwards



The rugged hills and mountains of Montenegro and later Albania



I could have climbed on top of all this but it looked fine to fly between the
layers, the temperature was positive so no risk of icing, and the layer above
was thin



The city of Tirana – the capital of Albania



Now entering Greece




Enroute the LFOB stabilised at 49USG which is plenty for reaching any of the
alternates




Over the Greek mountains, the buildups really started and I had to climb to
FL150 as fast as possible just to keep pace with the tops which were rising
before my eyes




Skyros airport



Right base for Samos





 


Upon landing at Samos, I got a good dose of the “new Greece under German
management”. This starts with mandatory red stickers, without which they
won’t give you any fuel. I removed them as soon as I was out of Greece



Then four men (the 4th one is out of the picture here) spent half an hour working
out how to do it in accordance with the regulations



The bus is obviously needed to justify the massive hike in the fees. To be
fair however, these are a standard fixture around Europe…



I stayed at a place called Zorba’s Hotel in the main town of Pythagóreion
whose booking.com photos look way better than the actual room but at
€45 it was just fine for the 1 night. As is often the case in hotels, WIFI
was not usable but nowadays this is irrelevant because 3G/4G data comes in big
bundles and these include roaming data too.


The town is lovely to walk around and to enjoy the great Greek food.





Nowadays we eat mostly a “plant based” diet (basically no meat or
dairy). This is purely for health reasons – we are not ideological vegans. However
this is virtually impossible to do while travelling – even in places where the
food is of good quality like Greece, with no sauces used to cover up poor ingredients
– so the best I can do is a large salad, not eat the cheese on it, and to get
some “substance” have the smallest possible fish




The following morning – the view while having breakfast (fresh orange juice
of course) in the harbour is unbeatable



This is the new Fraport-inspired money printing system:



A few years ago the bill would have been nearer to €40. Except for the
fuel (which you pay to the fuel man) they won’t accept payment until the day
of departure so you have to pay whatever they want because you have to time
to argue…


From Greece, I always bring back a bottle of two of Ouzo
This Ouzo is arguably the best one. The advantage of flying your own plane is
that you can bring back whatever you want.



Photo Gallery


This is the video of the entire flight, edited to show only the more interesting
bits:


<a https:="" vimeo.com="" 234220303"="">TB20 flight Dubrovnik LDDU to Samos LGSM from <a https:="" vimeo.com="" user8026275"="">Peter on <a https:="" vimeo.com"="">Vimeo.

 

Samos – Astypalea

This was the third leg of the trip.

MSLP: 0600 1200

IR Sferics
TAFs/METARs
Autorouter briefing pack

The route was filed at FL100. A very simple route:

LGSM LARKI LGPL

Alternates: Samos LGSM Sitia LGST Iraklion LGIR

71.7nm as filed
71.3nm GC

Actual route flown (FR24) – tracking is very incomplete

Actual route flown (Eurocontrol tracking)

 

Samos departure weather was great, though quite windy. In fact the departure
was one of the wildest I have ever had – as the video at the end of this section
shows This is typical for Samos and is caused by the mountain north
of the runway and the air flowing across it

The short flight was mostly over the sea but with some interesting islands

This is Leros, which we visited here

Finally… Astypalea…

This is Kos

I arrived at Astypalea some minutes before the official opening time so I asked
if I could fly around the island – ATC (Kos Approach) approved. This is the
only town – Hora

The airport from about 3000ft. There are around 2 flights per day, from Athens

However I later had to waste more time because the airport didn’t open for
about 10 minutes after the opening time. Finally, we are on the final approach

It is the usual sleepy small Greek island airport – similar to Milos and others.
Just as Greek airports should be

I was the first of the group to arrive. It was quite windy and getting the
cockpit cover on wasn’t easy…

I landed with 75 USG in the tanks which meant I would have loads of options
for getting back home.

The hotel bus

Justine joined me via a same-day airline trip from the UK, via Athens. She
used to do most of the long trips with me but stopped several years ago; not
due to any single event but due to a gradual buildup of anxiety about flying…
She still does shorter trips, say up to 2hrs.

We stayed at a hotel called Kallichoron, in Chora which is the only town on
the island. The view from the hotel:

The walk into town. September is “low season” so it wasn’t crowded

This was a really nice cafe/restaurant

Down town and the harbour, where all the action is

The one petrol station

Boutique shopping

As with all Greek islands there is a lot of boat charter going on

and some posh stuff too (probably chartered, too…)

There are two buses running on the island. One looked better than the other…
this was the worse one

I think some more of this €€€ stuff is needed but it isn’t coming

A real Harley-Davidson

The castle at night

The hotel specialises in healthy food so no British fry-ups here This
was the breakfast

We walked up to the castle. There are great views from the top. The most important
thing in the castle area (built in 1400) are the three old churches, one for
Virgin Mary (built 1760). The town was built around the castle, with very narrow
and complicated streets in order to protect them from pirates.

We rented one of these. A 4×4 is desirable because many of the roads are dirt
tracks

Astypalea has many lovely beaches; deserted at this time of the year

This would not sell at a British GA airfield

The sunsets were beautiful

The meat is definitely free-range

This pic is not photoshopped (I don’t think any of the ground based ones here
have been) but was taken with a polarising filter

More of our group arriving. Despite the distances involved, we had a good turnout
of around 14 people. Note the three Socata TB20s

I am not in the photo

Justine and I did some souvenir shopping on the last day

 

Photo Gallery – Astypalea and
the return trip to the UK

This is the video of the entire flight, edited to show only the more interesting
bits:


<a https:="" vimeo.com="" 234807662"="">TB20 flight Samos LGSM to Astypalea LGPL from <a https:="" vimeo.com="" user8026275"="">Peter on <a https:="" vimeo.com"="">Vimeo.


 


Astypalea – Shoreham, UK


Of course, on the day of departure, the weather was great



It was exceptionally hazy, with zero forward visibility at FL090 and it didn’t
improve until approaching the mainland. I didn’t want to climb much higher due
to the headwind, but climbed to FL120 later on over the Greek mainland.


Most of the return trip from Greece back to the UK was uneventful but was made
difficult by strong W or NW winds of up to 60kt. The TB20’s cruise speed of
140-155kt is obviously badly affected by such strong winds. Moreover, it is
my experience that the wind actually seen is usually stronger than this forecast…



Even over Greece there was a lot of convective weather over the mountains which
lie to the east of Corfu, caused by the air flowing up them from the Adriatic.
I flew back via stops at Corfu, the two great GA airports of Dubrovnik and Brac,
and Cannes in France to avoid the weather over the Alps. They were busy flights
and few photos were taken.


The Dubrovnik-Brac flight was done just before a huge thunderstorm moved in
to Brac



I got soaked in drizzle on departure at Brac too, the following morning



In the meantime Justine chose the sensible option



The final stop was made at Cannes LFMD to avoid bad weather over the Alps.
On a calm day one could fly Brac-Shoreham direct but it was not at all possible
this time.


Corsica in the haze



Here I am approaching Cannes at 1000ft – Nice Approach force you low down for
many miles and with the 40-50kt wind it was pretty rough



At Cannes, the usual thing happened (a French ATC strike) which wasted a couple
of hours. It would have been worse had I not used the trick of re-filing the
flight plan with a long VFR section spanning the ATC region which was on strike.
Some info is <a https:="" www.euroga.org="" forums="" flying="" 6483-how-to-beat-a-ctot-generated-by-atc-staff-shortage"="">here.
These strikes are rigged to cause maximum hassle and disruption because the
country in question files an airspace capacity restriction which forces Eurocontrol
to issue multi-hour delays (CTOTs) so you cannot even get off the ground. And
if you file a different route you might get a CTOT on that because everybody
else is doing the same… Also it is very difficult to do this when you are
on the move with just a smartphone; I had to get someone’s help. The ATC strike
screwed up everything else later on the journey and cost me a few hundred £
extra.


Cannes is not like it used to be and cost about €100 just for stopping
there and most of that is “handling” which is triggered by a request
for hard surface parking. Still, it is a very well organised airport where everything
happens swiftly – as you would expect for their clientele



Before you can fly to Cannes you have to go through a <a https:="" en.cannes.aeroport.fr="" aeroport-cannes-mandelieu="" ifr-pilot-briefing"="">mandatory
briefing. At the end of it you get a <a https:="" www.euroga.org="" forums="" trips-airports="" 5744-cannes-lfmd="" post="" 158631#158631"="">stupid
little certificate. Another thing – typical of Spain, France and Italy –
is that the self service (AIR BP) pump instructions are only in French, despite
Cannes being an international airport



I found someone to help me operate the pump…


Avgas at Cannes was €2.03/litre.


This is the departure from Cannes, after initially flying a very long low level
VFR departure route (which wasted another half an hour) via one of the VRPs
south of Cannes




The mountains north of Cannes. Here I got headwinds of 50-60kt, made worse
by the FL160 level which was demanded by ATC. The airflow produced dramatic
variations in the climb rate around FL160, from -500fpm to +1000fpm!



Over N France and above an overcast, but otherwise OK weather. Still fighting
a 20-30kt headwind though. I was flying at “best power” because I
had plenty of fuel for this leg but when it became apparent I would not make
Shoreham I reduced this to “best economy”




The coast of N France, around Le Havre



Nearly home…



Only two airports are open in the southern UK at this time in the evening:
Biggin Hill and Southend. Both have an ILS. Biggin Hill is open till 11pm (though
piston aircraft movements are banned after 6pm on weekends!) and is a €80
taxi back home so I normally use it for diversions. Southend charges £200
extra after 10pm but is open H24.


At the end of a hassle-packed day like this, the runway was a wonderful sight



I didn’t know this at the time but had I arrived 5 minutes later – after 9pm
– I would have been charged another £150!


On the ground at Biggin Hill and packing up, I got soaked in the same drizzle
as on leaving the UK


The aircraft was recovered from Biggin Hill to Shoreham several days later



via a short VFR flight at the usual 2300ft below the London TMA



23 hours of airborne time later, back at Shoreham



 


 


Airport costs (including VAT) for TB20, 1400kg MTOW


LDDU


Total including parking for 1 night: €53
Avgas: 14.15 HRK/litre (€1.87/litre)


LGSM


Total (see invoice higher up): €328.17
Avgas: €2.76/litre


LGPL


Total including parking for 4 nights: €20 (€200+ of handling was
waived)


 


Oxygen


An oxygen system is practically necessary for IFR in the Eurocontrol system.
Occassionally, the weather is nice and one can fly at FL090 or so but most people
would still get tired after several hours. Also many routings are not available
below oxygen levels, due to controlled airspace structures, and in some cases
terrain.


Very little oxygen was used here – probably 25% of the 48 cu. ft. cylinder,
for 1 person on all the flights. But without oxygen I would have not done the
trip because one cuts off half of the aircraft operating ceiling and in the
wrong conditions could spend most of the flight in icing conditions and turbulence.
In this case the weather looked good but one can never be entirely sure, especially
for the return flight some days later.


 


The Value of an IR


On this trip, the flights south of Dubrovnik could have been done legally under
VFR but not the others.


 


Photos Galleries


For the photo galleries I have for many years used the feature in Photoshop,
which works well enough. The galleries in this report were generated with <a https:="" www.juicebox.net="" “=”“>Juicebox
which has a free version with various limits (e.g. up to 50 photos) and a $45
version which does everything. It runs on Adobe Air and seems to have issues
with large galleries on a win7 64bit machine so I run it in a winXP compatibility
mode ”http://peter2000.co.uk/aviation/astypalea/../../misc/smilie.gif" width=“14” height="15"> It delivers good
results but has some annoying features e.g. stripping off EXIF data, which should
arguably be preserved, or at least be configurable. It also can’t process images
over 4096 pixels which the K1 does exceed so I have to downsize them a bit first.


 


Gadgets


No trip report can be complete without this bit


The flying videos were taken with an externally mounted Sony FDR-X3000
camera, at 1080P (full HD) 50 frames/sec and with a video bandwidth (mp4) of
about 28 megabits/sec. The result is a high quality video but due to the size
(about 10GB per hour) it cannot be hosted on any reasonably priced commercial
video hosting site. I also cannot host them on the server used for peter2000.co.uk
because of the limited storage allowance. So I use Vimeo and pay them $60/year
to give me a 5GB/week upload budget (which is wasted most of the year) but they
still downsample the video to around 5 megabits/sec. The result is pretty good
but if you want to see the original file there is a Download option on Vimeo.
You will need a fast PC to play it however… In case you ask “why not
4K”… well, 4K generates about 100 megabits/sec, is more difficult to
edit, stabilised 4K cameras are only just appearing, there is no way to host
it online without reducing the quality to something like 1080P, and only a top-end
PC with a top-end graphics subsystem can play 4K at 100mbits/sec.


The photos were shot with a mixture of Samsung
S7
phone, a full-frame Pentax
K1
DSLR which is really outstanding especially with the 24-70 f2.8 lens.


The Pentax photos were taken from the camera in DNG raw (the camera takes jpegs
to one SD card and raw to a second SD card) and processed in Lightroom
to crop and remove some haze. The other program I use instead of Lightroom is
ACDSEE PRO which is easier to use in the way it can be used on any randomly
chosen picture folder (whereas the Lightroom workflow is a lot more formal)
but most professionals use Lightroom and once you are working on a project comprising
of say 100 photos it just works better. All these programs try to impose various
weird workflows which are counter-intuitive unless you work in just the way
they want you to… I went on a 2-day Lightroom course and didn’t get very much
from it.


In theory one could do everything needed on a trip with just the Samsung S7
phone. It can be used to get weather, file flight plans, and do all the normal
comms with other people. It can even take fairly “ok” photos. I have
the Samsung
Galaxy T700 8.4" tablet
which works really well. It is functionally
practically identical to an Ipad (which I have too, kicking around the house)
but is much better for a “power user” because it isn’t as restricted
as an Ipad. For example it can be expanded with a micro-SD card; say another
64GB. Apple have never allowed any such storage expansion. The tablet also tethers
perfectly to the S7 phone for internet connectivity. There is a version of this
tablet (the T705, which is the one I have) which takes a SIM card and with a
contract SIM (I have a Vodafone contract on both the S7 and a cheaper version
of it on the T705). This tablet also acts as a “backup phone” because
it is a fully functional phone. I have VOIP installed on both the S7 and the
T705, via the Localphone VOIP service which works most of the time and this
delivers extremely cheap outgoing calls. On the phone I use the CSIPsimple VOIP
app and on the T705 there is a built-in VOIP function which seems to work.


However, I have found that the main thing which a tablet does better the S7
phone is in offering a bigger keyboard. In the end, one cannot beat a proper
laptop for sheer productivity, and I use a Lenovo X230-I7 which is does basically
everything anyone could ever need and with the I7 processor is very fast – fast
enough for movie editing/rendering and faster than most of today’s ~3GHz desktop
computers. The X230 is now obsolete and has been replaced by the X240-I7, and
various versions of these excellent, very fast and well built laptops come up
on Ebay in as-new condition, for peanuts. The best laptop today for both power
and travelling is probably the Dell
XPS13
which I have used too.


In the aircraft I run a Lenovo T2 10" tablet with Windows 8 and this runs
everything needed. It could be replaced with an Android tablet but it is very
fast in rendering PDFs (terminal charts, etc) and runs Oziexplorer which I use
for VFR charts and the topo maps shown earlier in this article. It is also really
solidly made. The current version of it is here.


 



Flight times (airborne times)


EGKA-LDDU 6:00
LDDU-LGSM 3:20
LGSM-LGPL 0:50


 


I would like to thank all those who made the fly-in.


This page last edited 26th November 2017