Last saturday I went on a great trip to Luxembourg (ELLX) with my previous PPL instructor and a second instructor who recently passed her Instrument Rating. Because I want to get my Instrument Rating as well we planned this flight so I can see what IFR flying is about and what to expect. Earlier I also went IFR with member lenthamen from Lelystad to Lille in France.
We met in the morning at the school and had to set out the route and flight plans. After that we fuelled up, packed everything and around 11:00 local time we were airborn. Pretty soon we contacted Schiphol Approach to pickup IFR and received the instruction to climb to Flight Level 70. Also we received the first direct. I noticed the same I had on the previous flight that the route you are planning is not always the route you are flying. You receive some directs / shortcuts as well. The landscape was nice with some hills and large cities. We had about 15 knots headwind.
City Liege with airport EBLG on the right
As soon as we were approaching Luxembourg we listened to the ATIS to hear which runway was in use. For landing we had runway 06 and we prepared for the ILS approach and landing. We were getting vectors and before we knew it we were long final for the huge runway (4000m). We contacted the tower and got the ‘cleared to land’.
Approach runway 06
Final runway 06
Approach and landing went really smooth, well done by the fresh licensed IR pilot! We vacated the runway and were instructed to platform number 2. A follow-me car and a marshaller was helping us with the directions. Lots of big boys (B747) and cargo at this airport, great to see. After a flight of about 2 hours we were parked and headed to the terminal. Handling will cost about 70 euro but the service is great with friendly people. They called a taxi and before we knew it we were heading downtown which normally takes you about 20 minutes and cost you around 30 euro. Our taxifriend on the way to town however planned another tour which did cost us 43 euro!
The weather was warm with about 33 degrees celsius and we had a nice lunch on an outside square with the local market. After lunch we planned our route back, filed our flight plan, had a walk around the town and after that we decided to head back to the aircraft.
We completed all the paper work and requested to taxi to the fuelstation at platform 5. This saves you a fueltruck and 17 euro. Avgas is available, cheap and you can pay with creditcard. 16:30 local time we were ready for departure runway 24.
Fuelstation P5
Departure ELLX runway 24
Also this time we received an almost direct route back to Hilversum and with a nice tailwind and groundspeeds up to 130kts it went very smooth. The dark blue line is the route we were flying, the other line the route we planned.
Almost a direct route back to Hilversum
Flight performance was a bit poor due to the warm wetter. At 8000ft still about 18 degrees celsius. After about 1 hour and 15 minutes we cancelled our IFR and we were flying VFR back to Hilversum.
City Eindhoven
All and all a great trip were we all learned a lot! I can’t wait to start my IR training hopefully around October this year. I have to build some more PIC hours before I can start with the practical training.
