A student pilot says "Hello EuroGA"

Have you been to Diepholz before? If not, please keep in mind that the runway is around twice wide and not much longer than the one in Leer. Usually people tend to flare way too high on those runways. I have made good experience with students / trainee pilots who approach those runways by using only half of the runway with the centerline imagined as runway edge. This usually gives a better sight picture to judge the flare. Since you fly a nosedragger the luv-side would be best choice.

Have Fun!

BECMG 2508/2510 21012KT TEMPO 2509/2518 4500 -RADZ BR BKN009 OVC020=

Yes; this is easily flyable for an experienced pilot, legally VFR, but it may not be a nice flight. TEMPO (without a PROB 30) is a shorthand for “likely to happen” And if the BKN009 becomes BKN006 then you are really having to go quite low, and with poor forward vis due to the rain…

It’s slightly amusing that here in the UK there would be no student solo below 10km vis and a 2500ft cloudbase That’s ridiculous of course and all you need is a hazy summer and… no flying for months. I knew a student who lost 6 months that way an had to re-do most of his PPL due to lost currency.

Technically, TEMPO means that:

The TEMPO group is used for any conditions in wind, visibility, weather, or sky condition which are expected to last for generally less than an hour at a time (occasional), and are expected to occur during less than half the time period.

If, in addition, they add a PROB30 or PROB40 to the TEMPO group that means it isn’t even sure that this will happen at all.

So we know that the forecaster expects the weather to degrade to the stated conditions anytime between 9Z and 18Z, but that it won’t last long. Which often means when flying longer distances that you’re dealing with showers or localized patches of bad weather that you can usually avoid.

Sorry, but NO!

TEMPO can easily be a front moving through – in fact, with low cloud and drizzle a warm front would be more typical than showers!

MedEwok wrote:

We’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.

That’s the point. You don’t cancel VFR on the day before:-)

Peter wrote:

It’s slightly amusing that here in the UK there would be no student solo below 10km vis and a 2500ft cloudbase

Well you have to have some limits that reflect the limited experience of a solo student pilot. Our OMM limits student pilot solos to 10km or more visibility, too. If they stay within the vicinity of the airfield, we need a ceiling of 1300 ft MSL (elev. 138ft) and for cross country we need 2000ft over the highest elevation along the desired route. But in north Germany that isn’t usually a too limiting factor. And personally I think these are quite reasonable values. With the very limited experience of student pilots even with a GPS, 5 km or lower can be quite challenging.

Peter wrote:

Yes; this is easily flyable for an experienced pilot, legally VFR, but it may not be a nice flight. TEMPO (without a PROB 30) is a shorthand for “likely to happen” And if the BKN009 becomes BKN006 then you are really having to go quite low, and with poor forward vis due to the rain…

Peter nails it.

Personally, I’ve had my “scariest” or most unpleasant flights in conditions light that in Northern Germany. If it’s something like BKN009, regardless of what TEMPOs and PROBs the forecasts have, I find the margin to dangerously low cloud pretty minimal. One time, I almost got caught out on my way to Hamburg and I needed to find “my way” through patches of slightly higher cloud because I definitely didn’t want to go any lower and meet an unexpected wind turbine. I eventually got into the EDDH CTR with an SVFR clearance and vectors “remain clear of cloud…!” by Hamburg Tower. Another time on an early morning flight to Sylt when things were supposed to clear up along the route, I turned around less than half way there and stayed for lunch in Münster EDDG to wait for things to REALLY clear up. Just be careful with the wind turbines and maybe don’t take passengers on such flights early on (or maybe even ever, depending on the pax).

This also reminds me of getting out of Carcassonne at our fly-in in 2016. After having been stranded there for two extra days (after all the IFR guys had long left), we had BKN009 conditions from France into Spain. Here, we flew out towards the Med. coast and once over water, I felt quite comfortable and admittedly the view towards the coast partially covered in cloud was magic.

Peter wrote:

It’s slightly amusing that here in the UK there would be no student solo below 10km vis and a 2500ft cloudbase That’s ridiculous of course and all you need is a hazy summer and… no flying for months.

I don’t think that’s ridiculous at all. For a VFR pilot, vis below 10km isn’t good. Sure an experienced pilot navigating with GPS can manage it fine, but they will be placing a lot of reliance on their GPS.

But a student is attempting to navigate with a map and stopwatch. So they need to be able to see landmarks and adjust their head by judging how far off their course they are. In 10km, every town 5km away looks the same, lakes can be hard to make out of the haze.

Most of us here are so used to navigating with GPS, that we’ve probably forgotten about how hard it can be with a map and stopwatch in poor visibility.

And you have to remember that students (and qualified pilots) do get lost in good visibility. Once you get lost in poor visibility, getting back on course is very difficult.