Maia LPVL (Portugal) to Vigo LEVX (Spain) VFR

Ok, this is not really a 1000nm journey, it’s not IFR and I haven’t been flying for that long. But here it is anyway. But first…

A little about me…
I got my ppl almost 2 years ago at Denham (south UK) and since then I’ve been flying mainly around the UK gaining some experience. I have never crossed a FIR boundary without an instructor, so this was a first for me. January this year I moved to a new job in Porto, north Portugal, and I’ve spent the first 3 months sorting things out which meant I didn’t do any flying.

The Club
It was around April that I finally had some time to join the Aero club do Porto. In a country where even getting a broadband subscription you need tons of documents, signatures and useless stamps, you expect that joining a flying club will be an absolute pain. But it was actually really easy. After paying the fee and sending them a copy of my licence and medical I was in! The club has a 172, a PA28, a 150 and a super cub. It’s run as non profit and on average they’re cheaper that the rental prices in the UK.

The Terminal and Apron at Maia:

The checkout
The checkout in the c172 with the instructor was quite interesting. The instructor was very experienced and I have to say one of the best I’ve every had. Unlike some other instructors, he had quite a no bulls**t attitude. Immediately he mentioned that for a checkout we don’t need to spent loads of hours flying uselessly around. He just wants to see that I can operate the plane safely and that I don’t bust any airspace. He reiterated many times that since we’re close to the Porto CTR it’s very important that I know where I am at all times. “Hey I’m used to flying around london”, I told him jokingly “noting this little town of yours can throw at me that I can’t handle!”. 30 mins later, flying in class C close to the Porto ATZ the radio stopped working.

Visual reporting point (CREST):

Going through my head: “Ok, don’t panic, what was the last clearance we got, proceed to CREST and report overhead. I am over CREST, now what?!”. My instructor was waiting checking how I would react to the situation. I kept on checking the frequency, turned the radio off and on again (I’m a software developer), checked the headset connections, nothing was working. My instructor then switched to the Ovar military tower frequency and he tried contacting them. This worked and the controller said he will contact Porto approach for us and let them know we’re with him now. Little did I know how much trouble that radio was going to give me in the future… In the end after a few landings I was checked out and I could rent the 172. Easy!

The cursed radio:

Flight plans
So over here if you’re going outside the circuit you submit a flight plan. That is not strictly correct… If you’re going into controlled airspace, you submit a flight plan. However since class C starts at 1000agl, anything outside the circuit requires a flight plan. I find this a little annoying because it’s an extra thing you have to think about. But really it’s not a big deal, I have skydemon, all I have to do is tap on the screen and the plan is sent.

“Porto Approach, CS-AUD on the ground at Maia, flight Maia to Maia request ATC clearance”
“CS-AUD, err… we don’t have your flight plan”

So it turned out that skydemon generated the routing with 4 gps coordinates. Something like “DCT 4123N00830W 4132N00848W DCT 4143N00850W/N0095A035 DCT 4149N00850W DCT 4135N00827W/N0093A020 DCT 4132N00837W 4123N00830W DCT”. I did think that was a bit weird when I was filing the flight plan, but I thought, hey, everyone can put the coordinates on google earth and figure out where they are right? Wrong.

With the help of an instructor that was around we called ARO (they’re responsible for distributing your flight plan I think) and he told me that my flight plan wasn’t delivered because of the weird gps coordinate routing on it. This was easily fixed as I simply supplied the names of the towns I was going to fly over and that was it. I now give a quick call to ARO every time to confirm that all is ok before starting the engine.

No recent paper chart here, so one has to make do:

First Portuguese Passengers and radio problems again.
Few days before flying to Vigo I took a couple of work mates for a local flight. I did the usual checks and tried calling Porto Approach. Nothing… After playing around with the radio I found out that the radio was not working if you use frequency on B but was working if you stuck to use A. No big deal I reasoned, I’ll just use A. Did my usual calls (Maia is kind of unicom, there is no tower/radio) and stopped on the hold for a landing aircraft. The aircraft went around for no apparent reason and at the time i thought “oh that’s weird, why did he go around, and why is he not announcing anything?”. I lined up, took off and changed to Porto approach.

Taking off from Maia:

On Porto Approach, “Ryanair 123 change to tower frequency …”

Port is made in north portugal and the Douro river was used to transport it down this river to Porto to be shipped:

About 30mins later, over Aveiro, Porto approach asked me to change to Lisbon info.
“Lisbon Information, CS-AUD”
crickets
A few trials later and I switched back to Porto. I asked if I could stay with them and it was no problem. At that point I started to think there was something screwed up with the radio.

Aveiro:

After landing, I tried doing a radio check on the local frequency but nobody was hearing me. I switched back to radio B, re-did a radio check and this time someone replied back to me on radio B. Weird that radio B suddenly started working now I thought.

Final on Maia:

Confused I got out of the plane and went to fill the papers. At that point one of the guys that runs the club which had a handheld radio came over and asked me why didn’t announce anything on the radio. He told me that there is some sort of rally going on and it’s really risky doing what I did. I explained that I did call on the radio but I wasn’t aware the radio wasn’t working at the time. He also said the plane went around because he believed I was going to enter the runway.

I went home thinking I was going to be thrown out of the club. Late the next day I received an email from the club subject “Urgent”… and I thought oh no, here we go. Instead it was a note saying that other pilots had similar problems with the radio after my flight and I should consider cancelling my flight to Vigo until the radio is fixed. Having someone else confirm that the radio was playing was a great relief as I wasn’t sure they were believing me that the radio was playing.

I went to the airfield the next day knowing that likely I would not go anywhere. With the help of a colleague of mine (also a computer nerd) we started investigating the problem on the radio. Using various ATIS airports/airfield frequencies we figured that radio A was only working on certain frequencies but not others. Radio B would sometimes work on all frequencies, sometimes on none at all. After some more fiddling and lots of radio checks, we discovered that B would work on all frequencies if A was dialed onto a frequency that A works. Follow the logic? This was a great discovery and I felt confident to do the short flight to Vigo. It was a good choice cause the radio B worked flawlessly for the entire flight (and return).

CS-AUD inside:

Vigo and Back
Vigo is pretty close. In a car it would take you a good 2 hours if you’re lucky with the traffic. However it’s only about 35mins with the 172. The AIP says that it has a PPR of 2.5 hours and also that handling is mandatory for all aircraft. On the same page a few lines down it said handling is not compulsory for under 2T. Confused I sent an email in English requesting PPR and handling details. Incredibly 5 mins later I got an email saying
“All ok. You don’t need Handling agent.” The email was even sent during siesta time!

Route to Vigo:

The flight to Vigo on that sunday was completely uneventful (after we worked out the radio). The vis is never perfect here as there is always a lot of humidity but that morning flying over the hills the scenery was really pretty.

River near Braga:

The ocean and hills. It’s only about 10nm far but I’ve never had a perfect clear day over here.

Braga airfield. See if you can spot a 182 that Porto approach told me had just took off from the airfield. I couldn’t.

Power lines going over the hills (the two barren tracks in the middle of the picture).

Not a lot of places to land incase of an engine failure:

Rio Lima (I think)

Climbing over the hills. I was climbing to 3700, hills are about 2500.

Wind farms everywhere!

The river Mino is the border. Left if Portugal, right is Spain

This is Vigo from far

At this point I was approaching Vigo’s VRP (about 7nm south east of the runway) and Santiago Approach said something “CS-AUD, No reported traffic, do you accept going final now?” I did, was transferred to VIGO tower and landed. Tower asked to exit the runway and follow the car. Fancy stuff this follow me car. I never had to do this before. When we got to the apron the driver got out of the car and started making marshalling signals. I followed the instructions making sure he understood that I studied these signals only for the air law exam and completely forgot them. I do remember how to signal to connect the ground power however. Funny how you remember only the important stuff.

We went through the terminal and a helpful ops guy came over to greet us. We filled some landing papers and were given a copy of the departing flightplan that I had filed the day before. We were told that we needed this to get through security. The fees were as follows:

Landing: €11,
5 hrs parking: €15 (I suspect this is a minimum, i.e. it would cost the same for 24hrs)
Air traffic service: €6
Meteorological services: €0.19 (Yes 19c but I have no idea what this is)
VAT: €6

I general I think the prices were very good for the facilities the airport offers. We ended up paying more in the taxi rides (which was also unnecessary as there is a cheap bus).

Vigo is a pretty town with a nice marina and green open spaces. The bay area has a lot of seafood farms. The handy thing about portuguese passengers is that most of them speak Spanish, French and English so chances are anywhere you land in Europe they can communicate. And so they asked the taxi driver to recommend a good fish restaurant.

A statue:

City center:

The docks:

Swimming in a park:

The view from the pier:

The marina:

The aftermath of our seafood feast:

A Church:

Late afternoon, we caught a taxi back to the airport. We presented the print out of the flight plan went through security pretty quickly. Security did a quick phone call to confirm the date on the flight plan and that was it. There was a group of people waiting at a gate to board their airline. It was interesting the looks they gave us when they saw us walking freely on the other side of the glass door alone going on our way. The 172 was parked far enough so they couldn’t spot us getting in.

For the flight back, since we had a bit of tail wind, we took the long way along the coast to see a something different than in the morning. Flying over water, not far from the coast was also smoother important after you’ve eaten a lot of seafood.

The terminal:

I mistook this for our 172, but it dawned on me when the key didn’t match

CS-AUD parked on the Apron:

Another shot of the Terminal while taxing:

The takeoff:

Over the bay area, with fish farms:

Interesting beach

Vigo from above

Another beach and more fish farms:

These island (Illas Cies) have a restricted area over them. They look very pretty.

This is Illa de Toralla (according to google maps)

The open ocean, only about 2700nm to the US:

Spanish/Portuguese coastline:

Hole in the ground. Looks like an old quarry:

Nothing irks a Portuguese more than being confused with a Spaniard. Here is proof that the two are separate countries. Spain in the left, Portugal on the right, only a tiny bridge connecting the two. The symbolism here cannot be stronger.

More of Portuguese pretty coast line:

River, village and a pretty bridge:

Downwind at Maia

And that’s it. No GAR form or customs. A simple flight plan and an email is all it took. So… next flying in… Portugal? Did I mention landings and parking is free on most airfields?