I am just rendering the movies of the three flights involved. It was funny, though not surprising, to find that the camera was covered in ice for about 3 hours on the return flight LDSB-EGKA 
We were collecting ice for only a few mins. Less work for me though, adding some descriptive subtitles…
Part 1 of 3
This is the 7hr+ Shoreham to Brac video, diverted to Split:
And here is the little one – Split to Brac the following day
I did a quick and dirty version of it previously.
Peter great video. What were the surface winds at Split?
Coming down the east side of the mountains I would think you could have picked up ridge lift all the way down to Brac. Looking at the cloud formations it would indicate that.
Any soaring pilots have a comment in that regard?
I really cant believe you were able to land without the control tower telling you what to do. Isnt that unsafe?
Geez forgot the 
What were the surface winds at Split?
Can’t remember (don’t have my notepad handy) but not much. In fact the strong wind died down about halfway between Slovia and Split. But the headwind of about 30kt remained all the way.
Coming down the east side of the mountains I would think you could have picked up ridge lift all the way down to Brac
Maybe I should have done that. I flew on the west side.
I really cant believe you were able to land without the control tower telling you what to do.
I think Brac brings in ATC for the commercial flights, which are now gradually returning. They had one from Innsbruck when we were there.
I understand that the Commercial air Carriers need to be talked down to a landing that is why they need the towers open. Hope they have 2 guys in the tower in case one becomes incapacitated.
More than likely a manned tower is the EASA AOC requirement. Like in the UK it has to be a Licensed airfield. In the UK, you don’t need full ATC for an AOC operation so e.g. Goodwood used to base a King Air ambulance which was obviously an AOC op.
In the UK, an ATCO needs a Class 1 medical and must have an Assistant. ATC, with its ICAO-mandatory hours and breaks, works out very expensive, which is why Brac has dropped it.
IMHO, requiring ATC if you are flying something with 50-100 people in it is probably making the best of the bad job of PPL training in Europe, where people come out unable to go Shoreham to Le Touquet. Brac is pretty quiet in terms of traffic but the general rule probably makes sense.
You know from what I have seen here in Europe is that the reason they have to give air carriers a 30 mile swath of sky is because the controllers are pretty inexperienced. Notice how nice I am when I could have used a more belligerent term?
Aside from Ryan Air demanding that everyone within 100 NM be grounded while they use the airspace so that they would not spend an extra ounce (oh make that 10 ml ) fuel.
Case in point coming into Brac. You know how busy that place can be. I was 5NM from the end of an offset final when the tower came on to ask if I would not mind holding because there was another aircraft on final who was IFR. I had cancelled IFR and had done a VFR turn around the Island to do some sight seeing as some of my fellow passengers requested. So of course trying to be a team player and eager to help, I said no problem. Janos my copilot said it must be a Biz Jet or so he thought. So round and round we went. Hey where is this guy? To the tower, how far away is that aircraft on final? Tower asks and the plane replies 10 miles out. So still thinking Biz Jet around we went again finally we see the traffic. Hey thats one of those small GA single prop planes! So we do another loop and line up behind him. It turns out to be an Aero Commander 114.
Janos later had a chance to ask the pilot regarding details since he was a member of our group. It seems the tower asked us to hold before he was turned over to the tower frequency. So he never heard them asking us to hold. Even if we were flying a paraglider we would have had time to get in (land) before he came into the ATA.
Now I might just caulk this up to a newbie in the tower but this has happened to me a few times. Actually a just month before but admittedly that was my foul up for listening to Info telling me what to do.
I told myself after that last incident, ask where the traffic is before being a nice guy. Because it seems in this system nice guys get to pay more for no ones benefit.
The problem is that you can’t just ask IFR traffic to do a left orbit on the base leg. Something has to give, and that something has to be the VFR traffic. That is just the reality of life.
The Q is whether IFR traffic which is 10nm out is too far out to block an imminent VFR arrival. Probably it is, but Brac doesn’t have radar and quite possibly not even a radar feed from Split, and more than likely the ATCO is not the radar pay grade so is not allowed to use a screen for anything real – even if he has got one. Also without official radar they cannot know which blip is who (they could use FR24, like many UK airfields do unofficially) so that doesn’t help. So they have to work purely procedurally. And probably with some huge time slot for each arrival.
Also any less than 100% English proficiency will drive a bigger time slot.
Also many GA pilots lie about their position, intentionally to get in before someone else. That happens all the time where I am based. ATC know this (from VDF, etc) and have to work with it.
In the USA they all have radar, all general taxpayer funded.
