A super quick trip Shoreham EGKA to Caen LFRK, 22 Aug 2021

This was to collect 60 litres of TKS fluid which was most kindly donated by a French pilot who no longer needs it.

I have been planning this flight for quite some months. First it wasn’t a good idea due to some UK ban on French, then due to some French ban on Brits, then (or concurrently) due to a mandatory quarantine back here, etc. Airside-only stops are supposed to be CV19-exempt but if anything goes wrong then you could be screwed. And getting screwed in a country where one can’t speak a word of the language is even less fun And now Caen, a far cry from the previous €4.80 and zero-PNR/PPR, is absolutely tight (and basically useless for a Schengen stop, for which it was very good):

I had loads of emails with the airport over the months about getting permission. The requirements changed over time, and finally because the above strict-PPR.

Finally the planets lined up and it was a GO. I got the PPR slot, printed it out and took it with me.

The UK end was easy enough – by default. The local police got fed up with me asking for their view on the legal position of various trips and stopped replying to my emails, long ago. So I did just the GAR, with AIRSIDE ONLY FUEL STOP, NOT ENTERING FRANCE in big letters. Must have worked because amazingly nobody turned up to meet me! Didn’t file the passenger locator form because I was not entering another country formally, and that just triggers the Indian script monkey call centre harassment, which can be dealt with only by purchasing a £47 Day 2 PCR test, which I did a couple of weeks ago, for LFAT, but it came from one of the criminal vendors (Randox) and their website didn’t work to get the code for the PLF

IFR flight plan was filed:

5000ft
EGKA DRAKE NEVIL LFRK

Obviously, London Control (i.e. the whole of the southern UK IFR system ) washes its hands of any traffic at 5000ft (Class G) so I changed straight from Shoreham to Paris Info. They had my FP but assumed me to be VFR (an unusual mistake). Having got the LFRK wx over Golze ADL (and earlier via the EuroGA Airports telegram bot) I could see there would be plenty of IMC, although with a decent cloudbase, so I asked for an IFR clearance just to make sure. The request was passed to Deauville and they gave it to me.

My PPR slot was 1115 UTC onwards but there was a lot of tailwind, earlier than expected EOBT, etc, and my actual ETA was going to be about 1045. So I slowed right down and stretched the calculated ETA to 1100. I was still risking the €30,000 fine and 3 years in prison! So I asked Paris to phone the airport and check it was ok, and of course I was recording all this and checked the recorder was showing the correct sound level and the incrementing time The reply was “there is no slot for VFR traffic” which was very strange (this was before I asked for the IFR clearance).

I asked for vectors to the ILS. One can get a curveball on the simplest flight and this time I was asked why I am not routing to PIKUP… Not on the FP, but I did. Then got vectors. I did read the notams on the morning but not well enough to spot this

C2071/21
ILS RWY 31, GP PART U/S.
FROM: 14 AUG 2021 11:18 TO: 22 AUG 2021 10:00

but the wx was easily fine (based ~2500ft) relative to the LOC-only minima. Reading it now, I arrived just 1hr after the notam period ends (1000) but the GS was still INOP.

Deauville asked me to fly at the minimum speed, due to a backtracking departing Airbus (perhaps almost the only flight that day; I am told Caen is really dead these days) so I slowed to 90kt.

On the localiser:

Parked on position #4, with enough room for an A380

Three policemen turned up for me. 1 could speak some English. Passport checked, vaccination certificate checked, 6 x hands disinfected Nobody knew about paying the landing fee and after they went there was nobody around airside, so I just flew back and have emailed the airport about how they want paying.

My colleague turned up but could not find anyone to help, so I asked for help for him when having my passport checked. Eventually they opened up the fence and three very pleasant firemen (a girl pilot would have smiled ) helped to move the stuff. It did fit into the plane… TKS fluid is damn heavy – a lot heavier than the same volume of water

Then another thing: a KI256 with a mind of its own on startup

It straightened up when I did a few taxi turns. But anyway partial panel (using the TC, or the 2nd AI, or one of the two SN3500 EHSIs) is no problem.

NEVIL4Y departure, 5000ft, and change to Deauville at 2000ft who gave a DCT NEVIL.

I got a handover from Deauville to “London 124.6” which is London Info (FIS) but they were busy with half the UK giving them their inside leg measurements as usual so I called up Shoreham when around DRAKE.

There was no easy way to establish the status of the Channel DAs (DA040 in particular) and the NATS website is broken, so I avoided it.

On the trip, the USB power supply failed so my tablet would have gone flat if the trip has been longer.

I thank my friend for the great gift

EDIT: despite the nasty-looking PPR stuff, landing fee has not gone up much: €11.23 I managed to pay it with a card.