Belgium, England and France – DAY 1 (Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium)

Precisely a year ago, I did a very nice (low and slow) VFR trip through Belgium and France – with a short hop over to the UK. Trip report here.

Since I enjoyed that trip very much, I decided to do something similar again this year (visiting different airfields and places of course).

I normally do trips with friends or family, but once or twice a year, I do also enjoy solitary flights (no good doing “airfield-hopping” with non-pilot passengers…). This was one of these flights and it once again turned out very enjoyable.

Since I have little time at the moment, I will have to divide this one into segments – day by day. Here’s DAY 1.

Departure was again to be from Mannheim (EDFM, south of Frankfurt). This time, the aircraft of choice was my club’s 1999 C172R, D-EIFV. It is VFR-only, but has Mode-S and – most importantly – an autopilot (albeit heading only). Day 1 (Wednesday, 30th of April) was going to be a rather short flying day, since I could not leave in the morning due to other commitments. Also, it turned out that the weather wouldn’t allow a departure before noon anyways. The plan was to head to somewhere in Belgium that day.

Here’s the sat image:

As you can see, quite a bit of cloud in the west of Germany, Luxembourg and the southeast of Belgium. Clear in Brussels.

And here’s the WX radar image. This confirmed: very few showers on the way towards Belgium.

I had made up the general plan to stop for the night in Brussels, where I had never been before. Since I had more than plenty of time to get there, I looked for an intermediate stop somewhere in the south of Belgium, whose landscapes I like so much. Hence the plan to first land at Namur-Suarlee (EBNM) – a good one hour and twenty minutes at C172 speeds. Just like essentially all airfields in Belgium, Namur is “PPR”, but that’s really only a formality (sound familiar…?), so that was obtained by telephone in less than a minute.

Here’s my planned routing:

As you can see, I didn’t really plan “DCT”. That was because I tried to avoid some slightly higher terrain to the north of Trier. I wanted to maximize the “clearance” between the ground and the clouds.

The VFR flightplan was filed through Rocketroute. By noon, the weather enroute (especially in the very west of Germany) was still iffy according to various METARs, so I had to delay my departure by another hour or so. Lots of time to load and prepare the aircraft.

Here she is:

Side note: someone from my club must have seen (on our web-based reservations platform) that I was going on a somewhat longer trip because I found that the aircraft had been fuelled after the last flight of the day before with the note “full” in the aircraft’s tech-log). Well…, how did he know I didn’t need the payload and depart with partial fuel? I have no idea. (Note: with full tanks, this aircraft has a useful load of only 203kgs). And: upon visual inspection, I noticed that the tanks weren’t really 100% full. Since I had the time, I taxied to the pumps and this time I really topped her off. Guess how many litres I managed to add? 15! That’s more than 30 minutes of flying time…

Take-off from Mannheim with OK clouds (didn’t even need special VFR)…

…but so-so visibility towards the west:

As mentioned in the 172 thread, once in cruise at 2500 feet MSL, I settled into fuel-saving (28 lph) and tach-time saving mode.

Most of the time, the weather was quite OK, even though I was still forced to fly rather low.

Occasionally, it became a little darker, but no worries…photos always make the weather look much worse than it really is.

Still flying low…

…I crossed the River Mosel just south of Trier.

As soon as Luxembourg was reached, the weather improved. I was now talking to Luxembourg Approach.

This is Diekirch VOR (usually pronounced “Deekisch” by Belgian controllers ).

I then flew alongside River Wiltz, which was beautiful. I even saw people kajaking.

Belgium greeted me with sunshine, blooming rape fields…

…and quarries. I was now talking to Belga Information who confirmed “no active danger areas enroute to Namur”.

This is the city of Namur, on the River Meuse.

D-FV after landing on runway 24L at EBNM.

I had something to drink at the cafe, chatted with the man behind the desk and paid the landing fee. Here’s a view of the airfield after departure, headed for Grimbergen (EBGB), Brussels’ GA airfield.

Then however, it was time to pay attention to navigation, since I had to squeeze myself between the Chaleroi and Beauvechain CTRs.

And here is a very famous place in Europe…this is Waterloo.

Coming from the south, I then had to fly around most of the Zaventem CTR, since all arrivals to Grimbergen are strictly via LONDI.

To the right, I could just about see the skyline of Brussels.

Turning final for runway 01 at Grimbergen. The runway is grass with hard starter extensions on both ends.

Parked up in the early evening sunshine (…missed the yellow line, though ).

The control tower / admin building and the cafe.

I then took the bus (which stops directly at the airfield entrance) to Vilvoorde train station and then took the train to Brussels Centraal. After sorting out the hotel issue, I did some initial sightseeing and then had dinner. Brussels was packed with people enjoying themselves and the warm temperatures.

To be continued…