Yeah – maybe my longest ever flight. Merciless 40-45kt headwind, a lot of downdraughts (but more updraughts), merciless German ATC (“I have 20 jets to despatch in the next half an hour, YOU MUST FLY ZEE STANDARD ROUTE”, in response to a request for a shortcut) and buildups everywhere.
It started fairly normal, with the usual “heading for a blue hole” procedure
But it wasn’t possible to climb up to it steeply enough, so I had to do some 180s to get high enough. A bit of rain was handy to wash off the sh*t from the Calvi “airport”
but eventually I had to climb into some IMC, though made sure the OAT was below about -18C before that so no icing would occur
The FL190 bit took a while but there wasn’t a spot of ice – as should be the case.
Eventually came out of it
and quite suddenly
The IR image is here and you can see it was a well defined load of cloud around Slovenia, whose top was obviously about FL210 but the sun was shining through it quite well
The 89D is actually the distance from Zagreb… The 1300F is the best-power EGT, approximately (120F ROP).
Way away, and not on TCAS, I saw this, doing about 140kt as well
Also saw this, many miles away
Crowded skies, yeah right…
I descended to FL160 initially and then to FL120 for quite a while, to lose a bit of the headwind and to get some free fuel in the descent
At 14 USG the LFOB didn’t look good but actually I landed with 14.4 USG
Got the wx data from a “private site” over the satphone, to make sure that there would be no funny business in the UK (fog) otherwise no way would I be coming home with 14 USG
ATC kept sending me to standard routes, with waypoints not related to the Eurocontrol route, but there were always buildups on a hand heading so I could get a “heading to avoid” 
so I just carried on…
No shortcuts anywhere in “modern Europe” this time.
To squeeze out every last drop of fuel, the last 300nm or so were done as a -100fpm continuous descent at 2200rpm and well into LOP.
This is about FL090
I eventually got handed to Lille who eventually “lost me” to Shoreham 
The guy seemed to be into his wine…
The UK end was very hazy
To maximise usable fuel, I ran the LH tank down as far as I dared. The LOW FUEL light comes on supposedly at 8 USG (in that tank) so I timed from that, and switched to the other (which was half full) when the LH one had 2.5 USG left. On the subsequent pump fill I filled the two separately and actually there was 2.9 USG left in it, so this was an interesting experiment
Great to be back after what seems like months
and into a proper bed.
Tracking image from EuroFPL (didn’t use EuroGA router for last two flights due to an issue with not generating “I” routes – I hope this gets fixed because it works on my phone pretty well)
The black line is the actual flight. I have no idea what the white fluffy bits mean – they might be an IR image taken when you view the image, which obviously bears no relation to wx at the time of the flight.
It was brilliant to meet everybody who I did meet There are so many great people in this game…
Landings:
Albenga
Calvi
Corfu
Sitia
Samos
Kalymnos
Leros
Ikaria
Samos
Lesbos
Zagreb
Shoreham
The 50hr service is being done tomorrow morning
A lot of stuff happening on that last bit of the trip, I can see, so you must be happy to be back home…and mulling over some nice memories of a long and action-packed trip. Thanks again for very kindly hauling me along on the first leg to Calvi
Peter, we came out of Augsburg at 1300z and the weather got worse. I think you were fortunate to go early. We were on top of some very significant weather at FL280.
Well, Justine (who won’t fly with me anymore!) has just had an airline flight from Lesbos to Heathrow, in this
The difference is that in an airliner you can be terrified but you can’t do anything about it.
I nearly always fly early morning, and not just due to wx which is usually blindinly obviously much better early in the morning (nothing to do with being fortunate). Even after a long flight, one gets there for lunch and it works so much better, with plenty of time to sort out a hotel, etc. I think anybody who wants to fly “scheduled flights” in the afternoons needs a pressurised deiced plane with radar – or will have a much higher cancellation rate, or have lots of “adventures”, or needs to stick to low level stuff, not Eurocontrol IFR.
The current IR image doesn’t show anything near FL280 over Germany
I can’t get an earlier image. The UK Met Office IR image site used to keep them for some hours but has been “improved” and is almost useless as a result. It used to be here and is now here.
What I find quite interesting is that all flights on this very long and complicated trip went as planned. Nothing was cancelled or even moved, except today’s flight LDZA-EGKA which was originally filed for 0600Z and I moved it to 0700Z because there was no chance of me getting out of bed early enough
I hope this gets fixed
Yes it is fixed now. It would have been fixed more quickly if you reported it…
Judging by what was hitting the ground today, in Southern Germany, I envy you guys flying above it. I have never seen rain drops that big!!!
Here’s a little video from the LGMT-LDZA flight
Some of the stuff could be outclimbed in the TB20 but at a cost in fuel, and if above FL170 or so, one has to go to best-power which then burns about 10% more fuel.
It would have been fixed more quickly if you reported it…
I did as soon as I found it, but I found it only when I had to change Zadar to Zagreb while on the trip (to meet up with Emir). The other routes were all preplanned before the trip and apparently before this issue came up. The other problem I had, which I didn’t have time to resolve, was Eurocontrol’s change from TRIN to TB20. It would be nice to be able to edit stuff like that, because obviously all previously generated routes will never validate again and will thus never be usable unless one uses an external system (e.g. EuroFPL) for filing the flight plan. However I wonder what other pilots who use the system do… do they just file e.g. a VFR departure?
However I wonder what other pilots who use the system do… do they just file e.g. a VFR departure?
Why file a VFR departure? We offer it in case the pilots wants it for whatever reason. In your specific case, there was a problem with a new restriction called LD6000A which made the autorouter believe that only VFR operations are possible. It was limited to Zagreb and a short time window and fixed in 3 minutes (first by disabling that restriction, then a day later by fixing the code processing it).
The other problem I had, which I didn’t have time to resolve, was Eurocontrol’s change from TRIN to TB20. It would be nice to be able to edit stuff like that, because obviously all previously generated routes will never validate again
That issue is so rare (once in a lifetime I guess) that I don’t think we need to handle it. I plan to offer the option to correct older routes that no longer validate (for whatever reason, usually it is because some aviation data or restrictions have changed).
Just got these pics from the Greeks at Lesbos, just before my departure for Zagreb.
Adamantios (Mytilene Airclub chairman, firefighter pilot), Michael, Christos, myself, Mimis (atmilatos)
One thing I heard in Greece: the airport is not allowed to delay or amend your flight plan.
The ability to phone up the airport when your taxi is stuck in traffic and ask the tower to delay it may thus not work in Greece.
You do need to retain your internet-based flight plan manipulation facility (whatever it is – phone, laptop, etc). Or if you used a facility which has a helpdesk, you have to phone them.
This is becoming a non-issue, with pretty good phone-usable facilities, and the EuroGA router works great even on my comparatively crappy Nokia phone. But it does IFR or partly-IFR only; for wholly-VFR flights you have to make sure whatever other facility remains accessible (I used EuroFPL for that, whose user interface is a lot more difficult on a small device).
