Has anybody gone off on a European Vacation in light GA that was planned to cover the typical 50 flying hours between inspections? With stops, and assuming more normal health conditions, this would seem to be a nice way to spend three or four weeks (3-4 hour days with 1-2 day rest/weather stops every 2-3 days).
The typical 110KTAS aircraft presumably could cover the Mediterranean up via central Europe to quite north in Scandinavia and back (assuming a UK base).
With the ability to do the oil change and owner inspection, this could stretch to 100 hours.
40-50 hours is quite a distance.
4000 to 5000 NM in a 100 kt airplane, up to 7500 NM in a 150 kt cruiser…
Longest I’ve done was my Bulgaria Trip in 2011, which was 15 hours alltogether. I suppose in 2 weeks or so you could reach 40 or 50 hours, but that would be pure flying without much time to actually see where you’ve been…
But I suppose some trips I’ve read about, such as Scandinavia trips up to the North Cape, could well end up collecting 30 hrs plus.
I have done 32h in Archer and 25h in Mooney, you need a long tour to make that go beyond 50h (55h if you add 10% extension), I could change oil & do owner inspection but I can’t afford that much time away and flying that much in one month :)
It seems an issue for touring the world using an EASA-reg or G-reg? Unless you go in TBM you will need about 250h so 2*100h inspections in the right shops, how people do it?
Has anybody gone off on a European Vacation in light GA that was planned to cover the typical 50 flying hours between inspections.
Yes, several times, not only in Europe. It’s a great way to travel. As an advice, pack very light, as if you were backpacking. Lugging a large travel bag to and from the plane every two/three days gets real old real fast.
Well, Gibraltar to North Cape is around 2300nm. From any place in Europe going to either end first (e.g. Gibraltar), then flying to the other end (e.g. North Cape) and back could sum up to around 5000nm.
But why would anyone do this in three weeks? 50 hours in 21 days is close to 2.5 hours of flying per day. Taking into account flight preparation, in different countries, and to visit places, this tends to be a high work load.
In the alps, with a glider or touring motorglider, this is a lot of fun flying, say 10 hours a day. But without the visiting stuff and getting around.
What you could do is fly say 6 to 8 hours on one day, and stay 3 days in that location. Or for every week choose an “airbase” location and make day trips from there, so that you don’t have to change accomodation so often.
No idea about these trips in Europe.
Reminds me of an article in Info Pilote from 1998 or so (I was quite young and my dad had subscribed). 2 French VFR-private-ordinary-club pilots renting a 172P in Calgary and flying all around Alaska, west to Nome, up to Barrow (above the arctic circle) and back to Calgary.
Carrying food for survival and a rifle for bears.
They flew 84h30 (i still remember that number !) and did a 50h oil change in Alaska. They didn’t have any trouble.
And their total budget described in the report wasn’t completely mad either.
This story spiked my interest about how much GA makes possible.
You can go a long way in 50hrs, but the real challenge is what happens if you are in an EASA-reg and you reach 50hrs and you still have some way to go 
There are some horror stories, especially from years past.
In an N-reg it is no problem.
Peter wrote:
but the real challenge is what happens if you are in an EASA-reg and you reach 50hrs and you still have some way to go
Don’t know what you mean. You start Pilot-Owner maintenance, sign it off and up you go 
UdoR wrote:
Well, Gibraltar to North Cape is around 2300nm. From any place in Europe going to either end first (e.g. Gibraltar), then flying to the other end (e.g. North Cape) and back could sum up to around 5000nm.But why would anyone do this in three weeks? 50 hours in 21 days is close to 2.5 hours of flying per day.
True it’s a long legs but how about loop: Gibraltar, Greece, Norway, Scotland? maybe add Morocco & Canaries?
Just remembered that I did not go to Canaries as no hours left on engine and they had wildfires
UdoR wrote:
What you could do is fly say 6 to 8 hours on one day, and stay 3 days in that location
@UdoR that is what I had in mind :)
The challenge is figuring out the patchwork of ‘green’ countries, and with the new variant in the UK we may go red/amber again for other countries.
