Channel Crossing (merged thread)

dublinpilot wrote:

Then the really hard part starts. I’m told that even with a good location, it can be extremely hard to find the survivors. One of the great advantages of a life raft is that it creates a big visible object. A head sticking out of the water (hopefully with a life jacket) is actually quite hard to see. They do use things like FLIR to help, but if could take some time to find you

I have now added flares to my survival bag – thanks for the reminder.

Flying a very light high wing, with a non-certified engine, and never having learned to swim, I have decided to never fly out of gliding distance from the coast. This excludes crossing the English Channel, to my regret.

• “always have a plan B” has been hammered in the deepest of my pilot’s mind – “the nearest small vessel” seems insufficient to me, as such
• the high wing will sink much faster than a low winger – its only disadvantage, as far as I have found or thought
• the doors of my plane are right under the wing, so getting a raft out cannot be easy in any case
• having learned to swim would perhaps not make much of a difference, but water is a totally alien environment to me, I am sure I would be very panicky
• the engine is a Rotax 912, as reliable as a non-certified engine could be, and with just a hundred hours run it is perhaps the best moment of its career. Still, I prefer to err on the safe side.

Above all, I utterly reject the common “the engine does not know it is over water” argument – because it is so very true! The engine can indeed quit at any moment, be it over water or over a big town or over mountains. ALWAYS have a plan B!

Then again, after some quick maths, it seems that from 8000’ one could glide for 11NM with a sink ratio as poor as 1:8 (assuming zero wind). What would be the chances of getting a block of airspace from Dover to Calais, class C or lower, up to FL080? Especially the UK seems to be open to lobbying, and parties like AOPA (UK) and LAA well used to that playing ground. Big question would be who is to control such an area? Perhaps it could be divided along FIR boundaries, with Lille the obvious controlling party on the French side.

Surely this ought to be an area rather than a corridor – too much traffic in too narrow an area would increase danger rather than reduce it.

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

What would be the chances of getting a block of airspace from Dover to Calais, class C or lower, up to FL080?

I don’t get it. Why would you want that?

Because it would allow me to climb to FL080, from where I could glide to land – as I cannot from the current maximum of FL065 – in the (indeed!) extremely rare case of the engine quitting at the exact precise moment of mid-channel – corrected for wind.

Rather than flares, buy a waterproof GPS-equipped PLB.

You won’t want to fire any flares until you are visual with the S&R aircraft or boat.

I already have the gps/plb. I have also bought orange smoke flares as well as the red firework things

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

Because it would allow me to climb to FL080, from where I could glide to land – as I cannot from the current maximum of FL065 – in the (indeed!) extremely rare case of the engine quitting at the exact precise moment of mid-channel – corrected for wind.

But why do you need the block? Why not just request FL080?

Because, as I understood, above FL065 is class A which requires IFR which neither poor little me nor poor little my plane are certified for.