Two weeks ago our home airfield´s hard runway was closed for a re-surfacing, so I thought it was a good idea to reposition out one of our club´s SR20s and have it fly elsewhere as much as possible. Between two trips to Austria and Hamburg we took the airplane for three days and flew it down to Barcelona and Cannes. I wanted to build up some IFR time and experience, but mainly it was a great trip with two other crazy pilots.
On Tuesday we left Egelsbach with a short ATC delay. Foreflight had only suggested a routing through Central France, but with the help of Autorouter and some trial-and-error I found a routing that would lead us past Lake Geneva and the Rhone valley. Not the boring scenery Peter has complained about.
The whole trip could have been done VFR, but with much more preparation. Also, it would probably not nearly have been as relaxed as at FL90.
Passing Weil am Rhein / Basel
First glimpse of the Alps and the Mont Blanc
Lausanne
Geneva
Pretty strong headwind here that would persist all the way to the Mediterranean. South of Basel we had received a new clearance and would only join our planned route again at Montélimar.
Le Lac du Bourget, very pretty.
Nuclear power station Cruas, 3,4GW capacity and about 23.000Gwh of power output. It´ll take about 3000 on-shore wind turbines to achieve this output. The French have some humour, they placed two tiny windmills next to those cooling towers.
Rhone valley
Approaching the coastline, the Salins d´Aigues-Mortes. There´s even a Musée Du Sel, which is reportedly worth a visit.
Refueling at Montpellier was easy, once they brought the correct truck. Payment by VISA with the very friendly truck drivers, but we couldn´t pay the landing fee due to a computer failure. Well, at least we tried.
The flight to Sabadell was again very nice and easy, although we did not get a noticeable shortcut due to an active danger zone off the coast. We cancelled IFR near Girona and dived down quickly to avoid clouds and stay VMC. There were quite a few very high mountain peaks between Girona and Sabadell we did not want to mess around with. Barcelona Approach provided flight following for a while until it was time to switch to Sabadell Tower.
There was a lot of traffic at LELL, and we could hardly get in our initial call. The landing on RWY13 was interesting with the downslope and a gusting 15kt crosswind.
We parked on the southwestern Apron and then took a 20min walk to the train station.
You know Barcelona, so not many pictures here, but life seemed to be back to more or less normal.
The next day we left Barcelona heading to Cannes. Payment at Sabadell was a bit complicated, but in the end it worked ok. Just go the the small shack on the left side and follow the instructions!
We chose to get the IFR pickup enroute instead of climbing in the hold overhead SLL, fuel was a bit tight and weather good enough. In fact, the flight plan called for a landing at about 14 gal remaining, with the alternate Aix-le-Milles about 35min away from Cannes. I was quite sure to get considerable shortcut, the routing was clearly crazy but wouldn´t validate with Eurocontrol otherwise. Our plan was to divert to LFMA early if things didn´t work to our expectations.
Avoiding the clouds for our pick-up.
The first shortcut was given by Barcelona, that saved about eight minutes.
Later Provence Approach gave us a DCT LUC which together with the tailwind saved another 15 minutes, giving us a very comfortable 19gal FOD.
While it was a smooth ride over the sea, we ran into laminar up- and downdrafts, TAS was between 118 and 150kts.
Marseille
Cote d`Azur near Fréjus….with what could be the best airport you could imagine. Unfortunately it´s closed. I spent two summers nearby when I was a kid, sweet memories.
The IFR approach was easy (LOC A 17 followed by a visual approach along waypoints), but you need a certificate (obtained online). We found that first waypoint to be very fitting!
Parked on the M-apron in Cannes, beware of the stones! ATC was nice enough to let us push the airplane out to start up on the taxiway the next day. Refueling was straightforward, self-service paid by VISA.
We stayed in the airport hotel (60€/night), within walking distance to a nearby beach. In the evening we took an UBER into the city, what a nice evening!
We cancelled a detour to Elba, since according to the AIP it would only open at 1130lcl the next day. Also crossing the open water with just life vests seemed not to be the smartest idea. So it was back to Egelsbach, via the scenic route across the Alps. I had to play with Foreflight and SkyDemon for a bit until I found a routing that would validate with a VFR portion in the high mountains and was flyable with a way out. The central parts of the mountains were forecast to be difficult until shortly before our arrival, but in the end everything worked out just perfectly.
San Remo
Lago Maggiore with Locarno, shortly after cancelling IFR
Gotthard Pass in the distance, the runway of Ambri is also partly visible in the central part of the picture.
The crossing at 10.000ft was easy, but the lower clouds had not yet fully dissipated.
Beautiful scenery
Coming out of the Alps and before our IFR pick-up with Zurich we were warned by FIS about airspace C at FL100. Shortly thereafter SkyDemon also came up with a warning, but interestingly the airspace boundary doesn´t appear in the map. You can see it in profile view, tapping on the area also gives the correct information, but the missing line could have been a big gotcha.
Picking up IFR again near Lake Constance, it was an uneventful flight back home.
Very nice. Especially the Locarno pic.
But gosh, these new SR20s seem to be slow. Only 147 KTAS cruise, with 215 hp… our old 200-hp G1 used to do 154…
Thank you!
As you might know we fly our Cirrus at a rather competitive price. That means we usually fly lean of peak at 65-70% power. The G6 will usually do around 150kts at 75% power settings and fuel flow at the cyan line. So it´s about 138 / 8,x gal/h vs. 150 / 11,x gal/h. As a private owner I would probably fly at the higher settings.
Nice trip report !
The IFR approach was easy (LOC A 17 followed by a visual approach along waypoints), but you need a certificate (obtained online). We found that first waypoint to be very fitting!
I did not notice it’s LEXUS 
I was expecting that online course to cover practical things (joking as 17 IAPs are funky): how one fly LOC17 with Dive&Drive or CDFA? should you add 50ft to MDH? can you go to MDH bellow 1kft agl without the required 5km visibility? on RNP17 is it annunciated with +V on SBAS box?
Nice writeup! In particular as we’re flying neighbours and I could use the very same route, although we typically start with RID as first waypoint ;-)
Caba wrote:
That means we usually fly lean of peak at 65-70% power
I like to hear that your club promotes flying LOP. Because typically you get billed per engine hour and no one cares what you’re doing in that hour. But in the end, flying LOP is better for the engine and for everybody, because it’s even cheaper in total. With nowadays possibilities you should be able to read out engine data and correlate if a renter uses to fly ROP, so that really everybody flies that way.
Caba wrote:
As a private owner I would probably fly at the higher settings.
Why?
It is 9% increase in TAS vs. about 35% increase in fuel flow, leading to a decrease in MPG by 24%. So in order to rip out – for example – 20 minutes out of a 4 hours flight you’d burn 42 Gals (ROP) instead of 34 (LOP), corresponding to a difference of about 70 Euros of AVGAS in Germany or France. And you said that you wanted to do some hour building? Flying LOP is the best thing you can do for that..
And it even gets some practical advantages, because you can reach destinations which you might not reach when flying ROP.
Quote And it even gets some practical advantages, because you can reach destinations which you might not reach when flying ROP.
Flying with my family this is usually not an issue, the airplane always has a longer range than my girls.
Regarding the LOP vs ROP flying you´re probably right saying you´ll save money flying LOP, although maybe a little less than you think, considering all operating costs, but more than I thought. So it depends, I guess. Always a good answer.
I don´t always go at max MPG in the car either, and sometimes it´s simply good to see higher TAS numbers. Especially with a strong headwind.
means we usually fly lean of peak at 65-70% power
Really? The fuel flows on the fotos are showing values from 13,7 gal/h and up to 18,5 gal/h
