Just received an Email from Moscow with the invoice for an IFR flight from Gdansk to Palanga in June 2016 in an AA5B. Kaliningrad FIR was crossed from KUNER to TIGNU and the total is 10,60 USD which is pretty acceptable if you ask me.
WhiskeyPapa wrote:
Overflying Kalingrad shouldn’t be a problem.
…except that they have hefty enroute charges, even for < 2t, or so I’ve heard.
In this case, why not just follow the coastline? Overflying Kaliningrad shouldn’t be a problem.
Buy yourselves a raft and survival suits that keep you dry. Not a big investment. Then tie a PLB to each of the survival suits or the life vests and now you have more options available to you when flying in the wintertime. At least, that is what I do. Just visited the Faroe Islands a few weeks ago in a single engine Cirrus and now ditching is still an issue but less of an issue as you are more/well prepared.
The P&O Irish Sea ferry that I blagged a bridge ride on a few years back (said I was a ‘pilot’!) had a radio tuned to 121.5 permanently.
I spend a bit of time on the Baltic-US trade when I was still living in NL and I think your chances are pretty slim if you’d have to ditch in April.
To be able to survive any substantial amount of time you would need to get into the raft dry, and that would only work on a very flat sea.
Your chances would be much better wearing an immersion suit as Martin says, in my opinion a properly fitted suit would give you a better chance than a little raft.
Training would be a good idea, it’s not (very) expensive and fun to do. I guess you could do the HUET part of the offshore basic safety course for around €400. That would teach you how to properly don an immersion suit & life jacket, how to escape from a upside-down sinking aircraft and how to get into a raft.
The time you’d have to wait for help to arrive depends a lot on who’s SAR area you’re in, unless you’re lucky enough to ditch close to a ship.
Just be aware that ships can’t receive aircraft radio (different frequency and modulation for the VHF), so unless you manage to ditch just in front and the OOW isn’t busy working on his HSE administration (or simply fast asleep due to fatigue) they may just continue on until they receive a call from the MRCC that received your distress signal.
Also with most big ships stopping and lowering a boat to pick you up is non-trivial, especially in cold climates when the outboard motor may be stored somewhere inside to keep it from freezing. It might well take 20-30 minutes from the first alarm before they’re able to pick you up (my guys do it in 10… but we are staying well away from the Baltic sea, in someplace warm and tropical).
If you have a choice of ships (likely in the channel), pick a passenger vessel as they have a fast rescue boat with a trained response team that should be able to launch within 5 minutes. They would also have a doctor and a bar on board either of which you may need after a ditching.
If you want to take this seriously, you have to consider proper training. It’s better to do all those beginner’s mistakes and learn your lessons in a pool. Like that you are not able to get into the raft of your choice or help others get in (you can definitely fall out). Or that you really should completely zip up your immersion suit. There was at least one pilot who successfully ditched few hundred meters in front of a ship, wore immersion suit and yet he died because he failed to seal it properly. He might have been just unconscious when the ship got there but it took them some time to fish him out (weight of the pilot plus water in the suit in not the best weather).
From my home, I watched an air force guy repeatedly get into, then fall out of, a one-man raft, in choppy sea. The helicopter wouldn’t pick him up until he could stay in it. After lifting him, it dropped the winchman. A few arm strokes took him to the raft. An easy movement, and he was in. The helicopter left, leaving him to drift ashore to the recovery guys.
It’s obviously easy – IF you’re practiced..
I did fly from Berlin to Riga and back two years ago. After consulting with local AIS we filed around the southern border of Kaliningrad. The extra distance travelled was not that bad. A friend did not care about Kaliningrad, the flight plan was accepted but in the air he was refused to fly there. So depending on where you want to go in German just fly around Kaliningrad and avoid charges and trouble.
We have the Winslow mentioned, imported it Via Mike Perry at Guernsey when we bought the Commander, its a proper job, IMHO these small ones are more like inflatable paddling pools and I wouldn’t want to be in any substantial sea state in one of those !
