Shoreham EGKA to Lucca LIQL via Bergerac LFBE, IFR and VFR

This is a quick report on a trip from Shoreham EGKA to Lucca LIQL, via a stop at Bergerac LFBE to collect a friend for the Lucca part of the trip.

It was done 19-22 November 2014, during a very rare gap in the weather. That gap almost didn’t quite work out, but it was OK in the end… We did however get two outstanding flights: one VFR leg to Lucca along the coast, and one IFR leg over the Alps.

I departed for Bergerac the night before the flight to Lucca, to maximise the time we would have at Lucca. Shoreham doesn’t open till 0800Z…

The IFR flight plan was erroneously filed for (initially) FL040 and then FL070 and was thus OCAS as far as UK airspace went, so London Control threw it out. Normally I use the specified-FL option in the EuroGA router to avoid this issue and use say FL100 and then London Control take it as “clearly IFR”, but this time I forgot. So the Shoreham departure clearance was London Info 124.6 which is practically useless (you may as well just take off in the UK with a listening watch on say Farnborough and call up Brest Info when you can ) but it was moot because soon afterwards one is in France anyway and they are all joined-up.

Departure weather was good

Metar
EGKK 191320Z 09005KT 6000 FEW008 SCT014 11/10 Q1019
EGKA 191320Z 12012KT 9999 SCT018 12/09 Q1019
LFBE 191300Z AUTO VRB02KT 9999 NSC 15/10 Q1017
LFBD 191300Z AUTO 12004KT 090V160 9999 NSC 16/09 Q1016
TAF
EGKK 191102Z 1912/2018 10005KT 3500 BR FEW015 BECMG 1912/1914 6000 NSW BECMG 1916/1918 3000 BR TEMPO 2002/2010 BKN008 PROB30 TEMPO 2002/2008 0600 FG BKN001 BECMG 2008/2011 7000 NSW TEMPO 2010/2018 BKN012 PROB30 2011/2018 9999
EGKA 191132Z 1912/1920 12008KT 9999 SCT030 TEMPO 1917/1920 6000
LFBE 191100Z 1912/1921 09005KT CAVOK TEMPO 1918/1921 MIFG
LFBD 191100Z 1912/2018 13005KT CAVOK TEMPO 2000/2007 MIFG

The departure time was chosen to get some night time but to avoid being over the sea in total darkness, and to get some pretty good sunset pics:

Looking at my southbound track (in yellow)

this city is probably Caen

Flying above a thin layer, the lights of cities below light it up from underneath (spooky!)

It’s difficult to photograph the cockpit at night but here we see the lights on the ground also

This is a large city but actually the ground is covered with little lights (mostly without any patterns) even when the 1:500k chart shows absolutely nothing down there; not even a little village

Now approaching Bergerac, still at FL100

ILS 28 at Bergerac

This is the route (black is the actual one flown)

Next morning, getting ready for the flight to Lucca. This was to be done as a VFR flight, for the benefit of my friend who has a PPL and no instrument rating.

It was an interesting exercise on a number of fronts, starting with the nonexistent Italian VFR charts. They publish the current ones in their AIP but those are unusable for flying with, for several reasons starting with the airspace vertical extents being published in the corner of the chart. So I used the 2013 Jeppesen VFR charts (these are no longer published) and checked them along the planned route for any differences to the AIP charts. There were no lateral airspace changes but there were some vertical changes. It appeared that the whole Italian route could be flown OCAS at or below 2500ft…

For France, you have the choice of the SIA, IGN or Cartabossy charts, but there is also an online chart here which (like the Jepp charts) exists out in the wild in Oziexplorer format so you can run it as a GPS moving map.

There are also tablet map products e.g. JeppFD-VFR, PocketFMS, Skydemon… but I am not currently using any of these.

French airspace in this region is horrible (a tour de force in how much distinct airspace can be crammed into each square cm of a chart) and one strategy is to plot a straight line and try to get clearances as you go along. This has worked for me in the past to varying degrees but it was worth a try again.

The initial level was 2500ft, gradually climbing to FL065 to remain above the cloud. The route was Bergerac – Rodez – Cannes and then following the coast of France and Italy all the way to Lucca, which is just inland of Pisa

This is Rodez – a big airport in the middle of seemingly nowhere

Then some cloud started to appear…

which eventually became solid. VFR above a solid layer is 100% legal on an EASA PPL, but obviously you need to use radio navigation (GPS, in practice)

The Alps appeared in the distance

The only thing on that inland section of the route which French ATC asked us to avoid was R138

Nice is well known for pushing coastal VFR traffic below 1000ft (over the sea) but this time we were asked to descend to 500ft, on a heading of 180 which is visible in the track plot above, which needed a rapid descent of -1000fpm

Eventually they realised we would not get down fast enough (much more than -1000fpm plays havoc with peoples’ ears) so handed us to Nice Approach, who still wanted the 500ft. But there was a helicopter around at 500ft which we could not see (it showed up on my TCAS a few miles away but one is not really supposed to tell ATC that) so they asked up to climb back up to 1000ft, where we stayed for most of the coastal flight. This is Cannes airport

These two islands are situated in the bay of Cannes (Golfe de la Napoule) and sometimes used as VFR reporting points. The bigger one in the background is Ile Ste. Maguerite and the one in the foreground is Ile St.Honorat with a monastary “Abbaye de Lérins” – well known for their restaurant and wines. Unfortunately no runway

Nice airport

This is the peninsula of Cap Ferrat between Nice and Monaco with some wonderful villas and five star hotels on it. You pass west of it when doing an approach to Nice RWY22.

Monaco with Palace

Port of Menton?

This railway line runs all along the Italian coast. This is Ventimiglia?

Now we are in Italy and Albenga airport is just behind those hills

This must be an interesting road to drive along… It is Capo Noli and is one of the most unusual and better known climbing spots in the area of Finale Ligure

Here the interesting road disappears into tunnel

Genoa airport

Portofino, just around the corner of the tip

The two prohibited areas just before Viareggio required a big dogleg. However there was no evidence that ATC can see low level traffic along the Italian coast on radar!

This is Viareggio, just before Pisa. and it is where we turn off inland, towards Lucca

One way to get to Lucca is to follow the big road and here we see the runway just to the left of the road

They have a nice runway, nice taxiways and a large amount of parking. We got fuel very quickly. Everyone was really super friendly and helpful. The taxi driver suggested the Hotel Alexander which is within the old city walls and it turned out to be one of the best hotels I have ever stayed in, and at €65/night with a very nice breakfast and a working wifi was just outstanding…

The temperature was about +20C which was super for the time of the year. There wasn’t much daylight left… This is a bit of Lucca in the evening

Italian hot chocolate is very nice, though they apparently mix in some flour to thicken it

Unfortunately the weather forecast was not accurate and the following day was mostly low cloud and drizzle – so not many photos

The city wall, on the way back the next morning

The flight back to Bergerac was filed IFR. Lucca is a VFR-only airport so it was a “Z” flight plan, with a changeover from VFR to IFR a few miles up the road, from Pisa Approach. There was a lot of low cloud around but it was fine for a VFR departure, and it was thin enough to not be a problem given the +12C surface temperature and a likely 0C level around 6000ft

Italian ATC issued some confusing instructions, being apparently unaware of the prohibited zones till very late…

Finally, we are on top around 6000ft

And here are the Alps

Then we got some smooth cloud below, which cleared up a bit later

A visual approach (which is a procedure under IFR) to Bergerac

This is the route to Bergerac (black is the one actually flown)

Past Rodez, I asked their ATC if they could telephone Bergerac and check that avgas will be available without delay, but they replied they have no way to do that! So I asked Bordeaux Approach a bit later and they seemingly sorted it because we got a very fast refuel, my friend was dropped off and I was on my way to Shoreham, all within 35 minutes

I was keen to get back to Shoreham before darkness because flying a nonprecision approach to probable minima and at night is only piling up the risk. However, all the alternates had ILS so that would not be an issue – except all of them were totally inconvenient.

I already knew the weather back home was highly suspect, with a lot of low cloud, so I got the latest data over the old Thuraya 7100 satellite phone, and saw that practically all acceptable alternates were above minima, even if not by much. Crucially, Shoreham would be probably doable on 02, due to the light wind.

The weather was actually pretty good nearly all the way to Shoreham, with a layer with a base of about FL100 and definite icing conditions inside it (I tried it) so I flew at FL090 all the way. There was a 25kt tailwind on the last leg which was really welcome.

This is the GPS/LNAV 02 approach set up on the KLN94. This is late-1990s equipment but it is 100% fine for virtually all operationally relevant IFR around Europe

I was the only arrival at Shoreham the entire day! The cloud to the north was very low and an approach on 20 would have been well below minima

This is the route actually flown to Shoreham (black is the actual one)