Short VFR trip report - Frankfurt (EDFE) to Münster (EDLT)

From May 1st to May 3rd I had planned to do a nice short trip with a friend of mine. The weather forecasts soon indicated poor, coldish weather all over cerntral Europe, and rain in Southern Germany. So, we made the plan to fly from Frankfurt (Egelsbach airport) to Amsterdam (Hilversum airport) and spend a couple of nights there. This was until we found out the hotel prices in Amsterdam. They were starting at 500€ for a single room! (I later heard that this was probably due to some royal events taking place there). So we dropped Amsterdam. Also, the weather was so poor, we decided to cut this trip short and do just one overnight, so in the end, we agreed to check out the city of Münster, in North Rhine-Westphalia. That’s about 130 miles north of Frankfurt. A little over an hour in the AA5A.

Here’s what the prog chart for May 1st looked like, with poor weather in the south and decent weather in the north:

And here’s the radar image for the morning of departure:

In fact, even at Frankfurt the weather was rather poor. Few to scattered at 700, then a high overcast above. Still very legal VFR, but a bit of a challenge. Well, if you want to get from A to B, under VFR, with any reasonable “despatch rate”, then you need to make compromises with the weather. Otherwise, you will stay on the ground most of the time. Here’s an impression from Egelsbach:

Here’s our ride, N26292, a 1979 Grumman Cheetah, pretty well known in Germany as “Lisa”.

My and my mate, ready to go:

After an eastbound departure on runway 08, we turned on course, but initially had to stay low due to the Frankfurt class C starting at 1500 feet. This is how we crossed the final approaches to runways 25L, 25R and 25C for EDDF. After that, we climbed above those few to scattered clouds and ended up well between the two layers. For the first 15 minutes, visibility was still quite poor.

Anyway, the AP was on and there was no turbulence, so what’s not to like?

A little later, we got at least some views of the Sauerland, which we were flying over.

Möhnesee.

Abeam Dortmund, we decided to go back below the clouds, since the ATIS for Münster-Osnabrück was calling for broken clouds near our destination.

Ahlen (Westfalen)

Münster in the distance.

End of downwind for runway 28 at Münster-Telgte, which is a VFR-only field with 800 metres of tarmac.

A few impressions from Münster:

Next morning:

For the return flight, we decided to make an intermediate stop for lunch in the middle of the Sauerland, at an airfield called Meschede-Schüren (EDKM).
Before departure at Münster-Telgte:

A little south of Münster, we passed over this big coal-fired power station. Sorry, no other sights to be seen. :-)

Well, the Möhnesee once again.

Meschede-Schüren airfield.

View from the restaurant towards the runway, which was mostly busy with glider tows.

When we got ready to depart, a gentleman arrived with his nice C172H. Recently repainted. SID still to be done by the end of the year though (15k€ on a plane that’s worth 25k€).

A nice J-3 Cub.

A view of the airfield, taken just after departure. The Cub was backtracking on the runway.

On the flight back to Egelsbach, the lowest cloud layer was still pretty high up (front slowly approaching from the south), but I still chose to climb above it, for the comfort of my passenger. He doesn’t like turbulence at all. So even if it was just to get 10-15 minutes of calm air, it was probably worth it.

A little borderline as far as distance from cloud goes, I know…:-)

Approaching the Frankfurt area in the descent, some nice rape fields in the area of MTR (Metro) VOR.

Back on the ground at Egelsbach.

JU-52 (HB-HOY) doing pleasure flights all day long.

Last but not least, Lisa’s mascot, the cheetah, back at it’s normal place.