3 planes turned up. ... It's been a great weekend. The St Nicolas hotel is excellent
Great, so let's consider this to be an exploratory flight for our upcoming summer fly in in La Rochelle then!
So glad you all had a good time - and the weather on Sunday was gorgeous. Don't forget, if there's another fly-in to La R. sometime you could always extend the trip an hour further south (those who want to) and visit St. Emilion as well. A two-centre double delights fly-in... :)
A brief report on the trip...
I cancelled the outbound IFR flight on Friday, though it remained doable VFR, and indeed one pilot did just that. This was similar wx on Thursday, during a brief bit when it cleared up a bit (I did my FAA BFR then)
Saturday looked a lot better.
There was a buildup over the N French coast and we climbed to FL160 to clear it. On a TB20 this takes about 30-40 mins depending how keen you are...
Soon the tops started to lower so we did some slow descents (-200fpm) and gained a lot of speed in the process
There was about 30kt of tailwind enroute but eventually we saw 196kt in the descent to the ILS
Here is the final on ILS 27. This was flown on autopilot; I fly some ILSs automatically (to some extent it depends on who is in the RHS) to make sure the gear works
This is Isle de Re
Everyone met up on Saturday night for some cheap food 
Actually the prices were eye-watering but hey you don't do this very often!
The typical image of La Rochelle
The view of the bridge to the island on 27 departure
We asked if we could fly around the island, and did so at 1000ft, all the way round, and got a load of pics. There is a prison there, where they lock up pilots who bust the nuclear power station TRAs...
A glider 500ft below us, with a Mode C transponder... wish this was a common sight in the UK but of course transponders in gliders are not technically feasible in the UK 
ATC saw him too and gave us extra separation
A bit of cloud to climb up through. We flew most of the way back at FL100 but climbed to FL120 for the last bit, and to get extra height over the Channel.
Conditions lower down were perfect for VFR.
We got some great shortcuts including one which chopped off a whole chunk of NW France.
For fun I got the wx with the Thurata 7100 satphone onto my new Lenovo win8 tablet, but there was nothing of concern
This reminded me of some (most actually) pilot forums...
(all pics done with a Nokia 808 phone - not bad!)
Some updates on La Rochelle...
No sign of the AIP statement about pushing manually on grass. Nobody was doing that - except us
The grass was opposite the aeroclub and seemed all "OK". We walked the patch before driving the plane under power over it and it was OK. The grass I recall at the other end of the airport was in a terrible state and full of rocks.
The transition grass/tarmac was OK too, where we did it.
At 1400kg, we paid €10.60 landing and €9.36 parking, with tax total €23.87. Funnily enough they looked up the US trustee name and address and made out the invoice to that
I asked for hard surface but it was too complicated for the ATCO to discuss and clearly needed a prior arrangement with somebody.
I did not refuel (landed back in the UK with 32.9 USG after the whole trip) so don't know the fuel price.
The city is lovely though very fashionable and pretty pricey, but that's true of all the "developed €uroland". There is plenty of great shopping (especially for, ahem, "partners" ) but 100% closed on Sundays.
Thank you to those who made it.
Thanks Peter, I wish I could have come, but aiming for next Sunday/Monday or the weekend after as a backup. The photos look great, and I laughed at the 'Le Troll' picture :-)
I'm planning on doing it as a day trip, and from where I am (EGLG) and at the speeds I fly (110kt), its about 3hr 15 mins +/- any headwind or tailwind. I did email the handling people just to see how much handling / parking on concrete was, but they never got back to me. I don't know if they consider a "PA28" unworthy of their 'handling' or its just poor email management on their side. Either way, I will be careful about those rocks.
Sorry not to have been there, Peter, but I had business in Geneva yesterday so flew down to Annemasse, and returned this afternoon. One of those irritating occasional clashes - will definitely try to come next time.
We can do another fly-in sometime.
A few more snippets to report about the airport:
On the way out (getting off airside) there are two interlocked gates which are opened by copying a displayed code (which changes daily) into a keypad. You can use the code to get back in (to airside). Reportedly the code also usually works for the next day, to get back in.
We had the code on the day of return but we never tested it, because when I went to pay (which GA does airside, to the man in the fuel hut) we found the whole lounge unmanned. Evidently there were no airline flights for a few hours. We got pointed to a doorbell which we rang and someone opened the door and we were taken through the Customs/exit route with all the x-ray machines etc and went straight out. Correctly, they don't seem to check GA people if there is no airline activity airside. Last time I was there were were made to queue up with the Ryanair queue, which took a while, with the xrays and everything, and it is for that eventuality that you really want that door code to work.
It's a really tiny passenger terminal.
I did email the handling people just to see how much handling / parking on concrete was, but they never got back to me
Probably better to phone handlers. They all speak English; if they didn't they would go bust immediately.
I was the pilot (N2136E) that did VFR on the Friday afternoon from EGCF - see first line of Peter's posting #84.
Unlike Peter we did buy fuel, 136lt @ €2.13 = €289.xx or something. I can't read these hand written numerical hieroglyphics used on the Continent and with all the intermediate entries on the invoice you have to be a charted accounted to follow it through!!
I will scan and try to 'up-load'.
We had 'one landing and two nights park' to pay. But on the Friday evenings arrival the 'system' was down. Guy says pay on Sunday PM departure. But the Sunday PM guy says you 'can't pay with cash or plastic' - invoice will be mailed to UK address. Perhaps the system was still down and I wasn't fully understanding him. Seems it could be two months before I see the invoice, but understood it will be in the region of €40.
The 'side gate' for PPL's was very good in theory, but a bit iffy in practice. You let yourself out by entering a number displayed electronically 'air-side'. You make a note of that number and enter it on the 'kerbside' keypad on return. However the number is not constant and was different on our Sunday return. The pilot who departed AM Sunday 'text' the new days number to us (and we 'text' it on to Peter for his later departure). We went to the aircraft to load bags and returned 'kerbside' for a coffee. On our second attempt at entering it all went wrong. It's a double airlock type gate and we failed to make the return through the 'air-side' gate. We had to return to the Terminal Building for human help (walkie talkie radios to air-side). Now they wanted to see my pilots license which of cause was in my bag in the aircraft by this time. All sorted in the end, but I've not much patience with that sort of thing and soon get ratty which doesn't help.
Thank you to Peter and the others for a great Bank Holiday weekend in La Rochelle.
My VFR trip to La Rochelle in the RV, was out on Saturday morning and back Sunday morning, routing SAM GARMI AKIKI REN NTS LUSON. The weather in France was a concern, so decided to go out from the UK early, before the towering cumulus built at La Rochelle, but they didn’t materialise. Crossed the channel at 9000ft and the cloud was rising just south of Dinard but Rennes were giving scattered and the ATIS from Nantes and La Rochelle which I could get 75 miles from each where ok, so I continued on top all the way at 9000ft, getting a ground speed of 175kt.
As others have said the La Rochelle gate system is a bit flaky, but always carry your pilots license and it’s not a problem, just takes 10 minutes to go thru security.
The bus stop can be seen from the grass parking area and is 50 metres on the right from the pilot’s gate. Bus #7 costs 1.30e to Place de Verdun which is at the top of the old town. It is a 10 minute walk through the very sophisticated cloistered streets to the St Nicholas hotel which is just south of the river.
The return trip didn’t start too well, it seems the alternator wanted to stay a bit longer and went on strike during climb out. I have an A5 set of crib cards in a binder for such contingencies, and quickly switched over to backup alternator, this is a small B&C driven from the vacuum pump and requires some load shedding. So I dropped the Laser (Unison) electronic ignition, strobes, second radio and dimmed EFIS and Flymap GPS (dimming saves 4 amps and is still readable). It would have been prudent to have returned but every thing looked good and the weather was CAVOK so continued without further incident cruising at FL105 until Southampton where I got a transit at 5000ft.
Removed the cowlings and every thing looks good, power to the F (field) and circuits all checked ok. This is a Plane Power belt driven 60amp alternator 2 years old. I have heard of several of these stopping at quite low hours, so am looking to replace it with a B&C.
Looking at the good things, it was the first reasonably long trip using the Mountain High 02D2 oxygen kit. Over the last 2 years I have been monitoring my SP02 and find it drops into the 80s very quickly above 5000ft. With the 02D2 you can set it to start at 5000ft and it self adjusts to your altitude. Very pleased with this piece of kit – thanks to Peter for the write ups.
I do like the PMA audio box, where I can monitor another frequency, if the main frequency has activity, the monitored one is muted, when activity finishes it switches back to the monitored one.
Roll on the next meeting.
LFBH fuel invoice.
Don't know how to do this 'here' thing you all seem to use to 'capture' a link.
[link fixed up - see Posting Tips]
