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Suggestions for Eastern Europe (and flight plan filing)

Happy with Rotterdam, the flying club handling seems reasonably priced.

Noe – that’s not so bad in the grand scheme of things, I think I’m over the sticker shock now. I think it was just the emotional rollercoaster ride of “handling isn’t mandatory” followed by “but it will still be expensive”

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OK, so we’re off

I’m continually amazed at how much stuff you can actually stick in the back of the Cirrus. 5 suitcases no problem, somehow. They didn’t even fit in the boot of the car.

The weather was pretty mixed on departure and we departed just before a big rain squall came through EGCM / Leeds East. It looked like it would improve as we went south and it did – we went from IMC to glorious sunshine fairly quickly.

Nice tailwind. 163 knot groundspeed on 8.8gph isn’t too shabby.

Everything brightened up on our way south going over the wash to just touch the eastern edge of east anglia.

Coasting out at Great Yarmouth for 40 minutes over the sea.

There’s a big windfarm under construction halfway over. I didn’t realise this but the turbines are built on towers built up from the sea floor. I always assumed they floated! You can see some of the towers without turbines on in the photo above.

Safely on the ground at Rotterdam.

The flying club is superb and one of the members bought us both a beer because their card machine refused to take any of our cards. Cheers Patrick!

Now for the bad news: As we descended into Rotterdam, the engine started vibrating a little at around 50% power. Fine at 65%, bit nasty at 50% and mostly ok again at 30%.

Tomorrow we need to figure out what caused it (I’m thinking possibly vapour lock), then make a call on whether it’s safe to fly up to Groeningen to the Cirrus service centre, whether it’s actually just totally fine and is OK to continue our trip as planned or whether we need to stay here on the ground while we get the issue resolved.

Part and parcel of an adventure by small aircraft although the misses is starting to tell me about how she’s definitely going to be due some EU 261 compensation if it goes pear-shaped tomorrow.

Rotterdam itself is great. This is the Markthal, definitely worth a visit. Think Timeout Market in Lisbon but with more waffles.

To be continued…

Last Edited by LawrenceDudley at 22 Aug 21:09
United Kingdom

Thanks for the report. Rotterdam aeroclub is very nice! The bar only takes dutch credit cards for some reason. The landing fees can be paid with foreign cards.
The table structure seen in your photo is the wing spar of one the aeroclubs ex training planes (piper 28 I think). When I was there I briefly spoke to a mechanic of the neighboring maintenance company, seemed very professional and tidy, maybe they can help you with the engine vibration?

always learning
LO__, Austria

Last vote for Liege. Some nice Art Deco there:





And to eat the Le Paris-Brest is excellent!

EDDS , Germany

Problem sorted – we got off yesterday. Weird vibration specifically around 48% – 52% power.

It wasn’t violent “you’ve lost a cylinder” kind of vibration, more subtle than that. Had Terry from Aware Aviation pour over the engine data, it looks good. Conclusion is possibly a plugged injector or (and this is my idea and is a bit out there and probably wrong) a harmonic vibration caused by having 40kg of stuff in the back.

Either way, cowl off, nothing obvious, move some stuff from the back to the rear seats, then flew a couple of circuits at Rotterdam on my own and satisfied myself that we were good to go.

Something I didn’t realise is that you need to file a flight plan in the Netherlands just to fly circuits. Might be a Rotterdam-specific quirk but was still quite amusing. Filing a flight plan that goes nowhere using the tools I usually use isn’t actually as straightforward as it sounds.

Landing in Rotterdam:



Prices from Rotterdam (inclusive of VAT):

Landing fee €22.64
Handling fee €30
Parking (24 hours) €17.36

We ended up with 4 landing fees due to the aforementioned circuits but the club kindly waived any additional handling – safety before money was the response which I appreciated.

Uneventful flight to Hamburg afterwards, the departure from Rotterdam via romeo is really fun, takes you straight over the city:



Flying over the Netherlands is quite “boring” in a visual sense as everything is so flat. We’d planned to pass by Groningen in case we developed any signs of the vibration in-flight as they have a Cirrus centre there but everything performed perfectly so no need to divert.

The only squawk was the lightning detector going crazy for a few seconds. No idea, but it was CAVOK the whole way.



Hamburg ATC were really relaxed and seamlessly slotted us in somehow despite them seeming to have a takeoff and landing every few minutes on crossing runways.

There’s a nice bar at the GA terminal and it’s a short walk to a bus that takes you to the main terminal every 20 minutes so you can get the S-bahn into town for €3 for two.

Because we had some question marks on the aircraft we didn’t book a hotel till we got to Hamburg. Booking.com tends to get more expensive as you get closer to your stay whereas Hotel Tonight is the opposite. Side Hotel still expensive but so worth it on the latter!

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You only need to file a flight plan for circuits in The Netherlands if you are doing so at a controlled airfield.

Last Edited by Peter_Mundy at 24 Aug 10:40
EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands

I found it pretty odd! What do you even put on it? They couldn’t accept one over the radio either.

United Kingdom

We departed Hamburg EDDH yesterday for Vodochody (Prague) LKVO.

The landing, takeoff and handling fees actually turned out to be relatively reasonable at €165 (we stayed for three nights in the end as Vodochody isn’t open at the weekend).

One thing to note (which, because I’m an idiot, I was semi-aware of but hadn’t totally mentally processed) is that BP only take BP Card and Cash for fuel, so we ended up doing a round trip to the terminal for cash. The bus is free but only runs every 20 minutes. Fortunately fast fingers at the ATM meant that we managed to get cash out before the bus departed again so it only delayed us by 30 minutes or so. Avgas was €2.53/litre.

The other thing to note would be that in Germany you have to file a flight plan at least an hour prior to departure, or at least you do when filing through Skydemon.

Big thank you to AirGroup Privatejets who sorted us out with some sparkling water for our trip south (for free!) despite us not being handled by them. Just nice people, we really appreciated that.

All in Hamburg definitely worth a visit, great city, a place with so many contrasts. You can spend €5,000 on a blazer (no, we didn’t, we don’t have that money because, err, we fly aeroplanes) and then within 20 minutes walk you can end up on Reeperbahn which seems to be Germany’s answer to Magaluf. Go once, don’t come back (to Reeperbahn – I’d do Hamburg again!).

Hamburg ATC did a pretty great job of slotting us in between departing traffic, although we did get a 737 shoved up our backside along with a request to turn left asap as we started our roll.

Departing from Hamburg:



We got a great view of the Alster lake and most of downtown Hamburg on the climbout.

The trip to Vodochody was pretty uneventful:

We had a few cumulous clouds building towards the end of the leg and in the interests of remaining legal on an IR(R) we skirted left of track a little to remain VFR as we approached Praha.

Here’s Linetta the Llama. We won her at the Hamburg Dom fair. She’s coming on the trip with us now.


Approaching Dresden. As much as I love the SR20, hot and high isn’t where she really shines. Climb rate from FL70 to FL80 was a painful 350ft/min with an OAT of 10°C at altitude. We did a trip through the passes in the alps (Sion Valley then into Italy) last year in the same aircraft and I’d possibly question the wisdom of doing it in hindsight with the lack of performance. Nice and fast once you get up there though!

Handover from Langen Information to Praha Information was easy and relaxed, Praha seemed pretty happy to just let us get on with it. Quick frequency hop to Vodochody Radar, then Tower and we were cleared to land.



Vodochody is really easy, super relaxed and very friendly. The runway surface is probably a 7/10, it could do with a bit of love from a steamroller but it’s not horrific. We didn’t request one but they ordered a nice big taxi for us to take us into Prague which picked us up straight from the aircraft. €30 was reasonable and totally in-line with what we’d have paid if we’d arranged it ourselves.

The taxi driver reckoned they’ll be operating loco flights out of Vodochody soon – wait and see.

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The other thing to note would be that in Germany you have to file a flight plan at least an hour prior to departure, or at least you do when filing through Skydemon.

Just FYI, not Germany, but generally in EUROPE.
Between 120hrs before and 1 hr before.

...
EDM_, Germany

Thanks ch.ess!

Always learning :-) just checked the Czech AIP and yes, you’re right, asks for 60 minutes.

Duly noted! In the UK you can file and go which I naively assumed was normal.

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