Frans wrote:
Nonetheless, the radio work was pretty straightforward for European standards, compared to countries where ATC doesn’t have any details from VFR-flightplans. Bratislava Information was even very service-oriented with their question when to close my flightplan, shortly before I arrived at Jasná. I never experienced that somewhere else. Only the Tower of Žilina kept me a bit busy with the same information over and over again, from which I removed some of the (same) chatter in the video
You did very well indeed, I was very impressed by your preparation and awareness.
My comparison was with US VFR in which we would for a similar length trip get a takeoff clearance, head off in the general direction of where we’re going and not talk to anybody on the ground the whole way, very likely including at the destination. You can for example do that right across Los Angeles if you choose. If there were class Ds along the way, you would most likely fly over them without a word spoken, but at low level there would be a trivial exchange to get clearance. Nothing like the end-to-end ‘concierge ground control’ you received 
I’ll look forward to seeing more videos in the future 
Frans wrote:
Bratislava Information was even very service-oriented with their question when to close my flightplan, shortly before I arrived at Jasná. I never experienced that somewhere else.
its very common in Estonia,Latvia,Finland or Lithuania in case you are landing in uncontrolled airport..
@Silvaire: Sounds awesome. I definitely need to check out flying in the US someday. On this trip, it will even get worse with the “end-to-end concierge ground control”… Getting full IFR ATC while flying VFR. So stay tuned.
@ivark: Good to know! Many FIS-stations in countries I know won’t ask such questions, sometimes you cannot even close the flightplan in the air. In Germany, Langen Information won’t even send you off to your final destination, you have to sign off by yourself.
Today, it’s finally time for the third episode of our trip to Slovakia. I’ve also pre-prepared the other video footage of this trip, so upcoming videos should get done now within a decent time.
As written before, and shown in this video, Jasna (LZJS) is just an amazing little place. After visiting several other airfields across Europe this season, Jasna is still one of my favorites. It’s really good to see how motivated the owner is to make Jasna a special and well maintained place for General Aviation in Slovakia and abroad. Paying the landing fee (only 5 euros regardless MTOW) isn’t even mandatory, however, we should support them anyways.
During the evenings, we made a short flight to watch our daily sightseeing trips from above. In this video, we summed it up to just one flight. After our stay here for two nights, and some sightseeing in the low Tatras, we moved further to Poprad-Tatry (LZTT) for the High Tatras, where “Aeroklub Poprad” would host us. That didn’t go completely as planned, since we enjoyed our stay at Aquapark Tatralandia on our last day a bit longer as espected, which by the way is worth a visit including 27 tuberides, 9 hot spa’s, a huge outside garden and wellness area inside. After arriving back at the Jasna airfield, we packed our stuff together, checked the aircraft and then suddenly, I realized that it was much later as expected. I checked the AIP quickly and indeed, the airport of Poprad would close in 10 minutes. We could never make it there so quickly. Luckily, I found also a further AIP-entry, which mentions that flying outside opening hours could be possible, but only if a PPR request has been submitted 24 hours in advance. That wouldn’t help us as well, but nonetheless, I just wanted to give it a try. So I called the OPS-office as quickly as I could and got a friendly lady on the phone, which I explained our situation. “I will ask for you, call you back in 5-10 minutes.” During this time, we made up our second plan to stay another night at Jasna, but that wouldn’t allow us to enjoy Poprad for a bit more.
After 10 long minutes of waiting, I got a phonecall back. The lady said: “No problem, you can land here”. Well, that was great! In hindsight, this was only possible due to our stay at the local aeroclub, since handling didn’t had to be organized outside the opening hours. Lucky us! Lesson learned: Always keep the opening hours in mind.
The flight itself was quite uneventfull, we just enjoyed the views on the low, west and high Tatras. Bratislava Information was again pretty helpfull and gave us a special A/A-frequency for Poprad, which was not mentioned in Skydemon, nor on the Slovak ICAO-chart. With slightly a bad feeling, we just made our blindcalls and landed safely in Poprad. Someone was already waiting for us at the aeroclub hangar, which is separated by a gate from the apron. A guy called Tomáš gave us a warm welcome and escorted us to the airport security, where we got introduced to the guards, so we could enter the airport 24/7 by ourselves. We also had to fill in a special form for the landing confirmation. Afterwards, Tomáš showed us the clubfacility with their guestrooms, where we could stay for the night. He also organized us a cheap taxi to go for dinner. We went to the Restart Burger Restaurant in Veľká (suburb of Poprad), which was recommended by Tomáš and we were not disappointed. The burgers are indeed great!
After arriving back at the airport, the security guards recognized us and opened the doors to the airside of the aeroclub. I never saw armed security guards on European airports before (only police and customs), but here, every guard carried a gun. After a short walk, we reached the clubfacility, where we had the entire place for us alone at night. On the next day, we woke early up to register ourselves at the airport administration. Since the common car rental companies (Sixt, Eurocar) at the airport are way to expensive, I contacted a local rental company called “ToPPCAR Poprad”, which was located near the airport. The friendly owner picked me up at the terminal and brought me into his office, just 5 minutes away, where I got a quite new Kia Rio for 35 euros a day, after which we could do some sightseeing in the high Tatras.
To be continued!
Nice video
Thanks for sharing!
At a certain stage, I almost lost my belief, that I would ever finish this fourth episode of our trip to Slovakia. The footage was hard to edit, but I didn’t want to rush it, so it was put on hold, since I was traveling almost non-stop in the last months. Now, Covid-19 forced me to stay at home for a longer period and I finally encouraged myself to finish this episode, so I can continue with other amazing trip reports (e.g. Alps, Norway, Croatia).
The video should express the beauty of the High Tatras. For this reason, we decided to show not only the flight itself, but also the main touristic destinations within this unique mountain range, which is the smallest high mountain range in the world, defined by the length of its main ridge (not by the height of its peaks). Although these mountains are quite popular in Central-Europe, it is a completely unknown destination for many other Europeans. Most of us never heard about it, but it has some very pretty sightseeing spots, like Morskie Oko and Štrbské Pleso.
So enjoy this relaxed flight including some footage from the ground. It was quite hot in the cockpit though, so during the descent, it was not so relaxing for me anymore… Back at the airport, we escaped the heat in our airconditioned rental car and searched for the nearest ropeway. A nice chairlift in Štrbské Pleso took us up into the mountains, where we enjoyed the rest of the day.
To be concluded.
A very good video with the exception of the poorly understandable radio calls, many thanks! We have been there several times and can confirm your impressions.
It`s still a different world somehow. I would like to point out that the high parking fees on the apron of LZTT can be avoided by parking at the aeroclub as you did.
You can even park in the hangar for much less money. And a hangar is particularly important in the winter season, even preheating is easily possible.
Nice video – many thanks for producing it.
Great to see such young people doing great trips
Despite having been born “next door” I’ve never been to Slovakia. One trip via Kosice (Hania – Odessa – Kosice – Prague – Shoreham) was planned but cancelled due to airspace closure.
It looks like there is some skiing there too
Very nice video, keep them coming !
Are your non flying friends interested when they watch this ?
Thank you all for the feedback so far! It was indeed a bit different world.
@highflyer: Regarding the audio recordings: They were terrible during this trip to Slovakia. I’ve invested many hours in improving the quality, which worked out quite well, but it is still far from good, unfortunately. For this reason, I put the radio calls also into the subtitles. On our upcoming trip reports, the quality will improve step by step.
The aeroclub was indeed very helpful and they did a fantastic job on hosting us for a few days. We slept directly in their guestrooms, inside the airport facilities, and parked our Dimona also in the Hangar overnight. They even sold their Mogas to us.
@Peter: Too bad that your trip to Slovakia has been canceled. If you like countries with mountains, good food and a lot of castles and traditions, then Slovakia is definitely something for you. Many Czech visit their eastern neighbor during the winter and summer.
@Jujupilote: It depends. Some of the non-flying friends are completely fascinated from the beginning until the end, others find the cockpit stuff with ATC a bit boring if it takes too long. This video with some more variety did it great in both groups so far. But nonetheless, most people watching this content are pilots and/or aviation enthusiasts, and that of course, is also the main target group.
