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Lunch Dinard LFRD today 25/6/2013

Short notice allright!

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Here's a brief trip report...

Route out
EGKA NEVIL G27 JSY DCT MINQI LFRD
FL120

The return route was identical, which is unusual, but not unusual for France
LFRD MINQI DCT JSY G27 NEVIL EGKA

After a load of initial zigzagging, here is mid-Channel

It would be wiser to file a Z flight plan, and flying VFR all the way to NEVIL, because London Control usually send you all over the place following a Shoreham departure, even though it is obvious (from TCAS) there is no traffic anywhere remotely near.

Crossing the French coast - very hazy

Some bit of France

About to intercept the ILS, with some traffic showing on TCAS 2000ft below

I use the OBS mode of the GPS to set up the ILS inbound track, for reference and gross error checking. Here, the magenta line is the localiser.

We got a level-off at 5000ft (the ILS platform is 3000ft) and this was just inside some bumpy stuff

Here is the autopilot tracking the ILS, set up on both NAV1 (the EHSI) and NAV2 (the CDI)

(damn, must remember the rudder trim next time I publish photos!)

TCAS showing some traffic in the circuit and some more flying some procedure

Under the cloud now

and on short final

Parked next to some relatively classy company

Not often one sees a Cirrus with the chute still inside - sorry couldn't resist

The apron was packed

The Ryanair handling department

The local aircraft, presumably

The beach - the air was a bit cool

Some very good food, but bad food is hard to find in France, though there is plenty of it where Brits are to be found

A nice pathway along the cliffs, with some spooky mysterious tunnels leading up the hill

When this turned up, the whole place came alive, and security was taken very seriously, with my passport checked, everything through the x-ray etc

No queue at the pump, but I didn't need fuel

Departure...

We got a DCT NEVIL all the way back from Dinard, as soon as talking to Rennes

so Jersey was missed; here it is just visible in the haze from FL110

Actual track from Eurocontrol, on the way there

and on the way back

A very easy trip of under 1.5hrs each way. More time would have been handy...

There was no wind on the way there and about 7kt of headwind on the way back.

Taxis were not outrageous; €13 on the way out and €15 on the way back. This is nice to see.

I had an interesting and bizzare "IT" problem. I filed the return flight plan for 1500Z (from back home, as I usually do on short trips) but wanted to depart at 1400Z (because, stupidly, I "lost" the aircraft keys, and even though I was sure I left them in the door, I didn't want to worry about it for too long while walking around Dinard, with the other option being Ryanair and some truly awful travel to/from Stansted) but one cannot do that; one has to cancel the previous one first. Only a DELAY is possible to do without cancelling the flight plan.

Actually one can move a flight plan to an earlier time, without cancelling the existing one, but the entire earlier flight has to be non-overlapping with the existing one, fairly obviously, otherwise Eurocontrol will reject it (VFR flight plans are not checked; you can file more or less anything). You file the earlier one, and when it has been accepted and all is fine, you then cancel the original one.

Cancelling flight plans is normally to be avoided because the Eurocontrol routing which was accepted may not be available later... but in this simple case I took the risk.

So I started up the Ipad, tethered to my phone, and cancelled the 1500Z FP. This worked. But EuroFPL kept crashing when I tried to Save the 1400Z one. Never mind trying to file it - it would not even save it! It just hung there saying "Saving".

Suspecting that the 3G network (Vodafone UK roaming on some French network) was stealing some bytes, I opened up a VPN on the Ipad to a UK site (yes this is crazy) and sure enough that fixed it. I was able to file the 1400Z FP OK.

Which was just as well, since the Dinard tower told me they didn't have the 1500Z flight plan anyway! That's despite an ACK from Eurocontrol, from EuroFPL...

This yet again shows one needs to have two ways of doing anything, because the moment you find trouble is usually the worst moment for dealing with it.

In retrospect I should have just sat in the plane for the extra hour But this kind of trouble could blow up anytime; I had it on the apron at Corfu, due to some invalid character in the FP form. In the end I used AFPEX, which is possible on an Ipad but very painful (VPN, RDP to a windoze machine).

All pics done with the Nokia 808 phone.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Nice pictures, Peter !

I "lost" the aircraft keys, and even though I was sure I left them in the door, I didn't want to worry about it for too long while walking around Dinard

What do other people do with the aircraft keys? For a short stay, I just leave them inside the aircraft with the door unlocked. That's what I was told to do during PPL training. Stealing a plane is pointless anyway, because you have nowhere to go with it as it can easily be traced.

When I leave the aircraft behind for a night, I do lock the door ;-)

What do other people do with the aircraft keys?

Best to not discuss this openly but I discovered a simple solution which a lot of people do...

Stealing a plane is pointless anyway, because you have nowhere to go with it as it can easily be traced.

True, though if one can break in one can do a lot of theft/damage. A TB is especially hard to get into without causing € 5 figures' worth of damage.

When I fly with Justine I give her a second set of keys. But a pilot should not normally have two sets of keys himself because it makes it possible to e.g. leave one key in the ignition (i.e. ignition live) while one is outside unlocking the luggage compartment. Or one could depart with a key in the luggage door(s)...

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I always do lock the airplane when I'm away. Certainly it seems not practical to steal an airplane, but what about stealing a pair of Bose headsets? or an iPad, camera, life jackets... those kind of things

Going back to topic, good report and very nice town!

LECU - Madrid, Spain

Yes; I wasn't suggesting anybody leaves their plane unlocked

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

No sign of the bill as yet... Luckily I have the photo of the form I completed.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Just noticed your autopilot does not do a very good job in keeping the ball in the middle. ;-) :-D

Always looking for adventure
Shoreham

I think you need a yaw damper for that

But yes quite a lot of my pics show the ball embarrassingly to one side, though hopefully not in cruise.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I very rarely bother to lock my a/c or take my keys with me. The damage done by some scrote breaking into my Saratoga (which has fibreglass doors, thus easy to damage) will nearly always outweigh the value of the stuff inside, and all my stuff is marked with serial no.'s noted, so would be pretty difficult to fence.

A few years back, a bunch of aircraft at Wycombe all got broken into. Largely, the contents of the aircraft all remained within 20 metres - as the scrotes glanced at it all and then threw it on the ground as it had no obvious value. A few of the lifejackets got let off and were able to be repacked.

However, the only aircraft to be damaged were to ones which were locked - and the damage done was expensive and took time to fix. The aircraft that were covered up with cambrai covers were left alone.

I also hide a spare ignition key inside the aircraft, just in case of disasters. When I had spares cut, the locksmith told me that the blanks were common to very cheap filing cabinets.

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