Why the climb?
The hills on the extended centreline of 33 are nearly 4000ft I will post the GPS track when I get home. I have the video of LDSB-LICR-LICP on the laptop, with GPS data and audio, but have not had time to edit it.
Here are some pics from the first leg: Shoreham EGKA to Brac LDSB:
Planned route – 912nm
Wx looked good – tafs/metars, radar, IR, sferics all clean. Windy.com is the main site used for wx nowadays (ECMWF model) and that was clean too.
Early (out of hours) departure (0600 UTC) due to Brac’s closing time of 1400 UTC and an expected ~6hr flight
Landing fuel on board (LFOB) showing 22USG. We are expecting ~10kt of tailwind. This flight is not doable with any headwind, which means it is rarely doable back home (although I have done it a few times)
I did a VFR departure DCT BILGO which saves ~10 mins over doing the London Control way which sends you most of the way to TRACA. Climb 5000ft and straight to BILGO, and ask French ATC for an IFR clearance, which they will do well before one gets to the IFR waypoint
EGKA N0145F040 SFD/N0145F080 DCT BILGO/N0150F100 DCT REM/N0152F100 IFR B3 RLP G4 HOC L613 RIPUS/N0152F130 N850 DEGAD/N0148F140 N850 ODINA M727 SRN L615 DESIP/N0147F110 L615 ADOSA/N0152F110 L612 CHI L614 PUL N606 LOS W45 SPL SPL6N LDSB
France has little scenery – just thousands of fields. Finally the Alps appear
12 Sep – not much snow. FL150. I asked for FL160 (better shortcuts) but Swiss refused – inexplicably)
Stans/Buochs?
Ambri LSPM
Locarno LSZL
Across the Alps now so we see the beautiful Italian lakes
Working on shortcuts as always
Time for lunch The ADL app on the Ipad is showing nothing; I use it mostly for tafs/metars in nice wx
Venice in the distance
The classic Adriatic Sea scenery, near Zadar. Like the Alps, I never get tired of it
Brac and Hvar
The airfield on Hvar – a dirt strip, with a few planes sitting there
Final for Brac
Parked up, fuelled up, no hassle, everything works perfectly. One of the friendliest airports I know! What will happen when Croatia joins Schengen, nobody knows, but Brac does have some airline traffic so they should retain the police presence. Otherwise it will be unreachable from the UK (via a stop somewhere) due to the closing time… I hope Croatia does not do what so many have done. Losing customs+immigration at the Croatian island airports would be a real negative landmark for GA flying around Europe.
Route actually flown, showing the VFR section. Eurocontrol tracking doesn’t pick you up until you go IFR
but Flightaware (which nowadays is far better than FR24 in tracking) does
The terminal doesn’t get a lot of use; the cafe is usually closed
Some images of Brac. This is Bol which is right under the airport, and I stayed there
The famous “horn” beach
Lots of vineyards everywhere
Supetar – the “big town”
I walked the path from the airport into Bol. It is a 1700ft descent and took 3hrs. It starts near the start of runway 04 but its quite hard to find
It is marked but only once you found it
Brac airport, being at 1700+ ft, gets low cloud occassionally. This hill is where the runway starts
The famous “horn” beach. It is made of little pebbles, not sand. When it is warm it is covered in deckchairs with towels on them to reserve them
Boat trip to Hvar; haven’t been there for some years
A fancy boat. Hvar and much of Croatia was always full of Russians but not now
Stocking up on lavender oil
The base of a CB; fortunately seen from a boat
Next instalment will be Brac to Italy. Italy was quite a lot more complicated…
Video of the flight (already posted)
I stayed at Villa Daniela which was €60/night. It was fine.
Beautiful pictures!
Looks like another great trip! Brac is lovely
Just landed to Brac – I’m always amazed how scenic RW03 approach is.
Video LDSB – LICR – LICP and departure from LICP
This one has much of ATC interaction. The camera faceplate got covered in volcanic ash halfway along the n. coast of Sicily but one can still see through it.
The remaining pics from this trip:
Departing from Brac. They lent me a trolley, which was nice I was stuck there for 2 extra days due to TS around the bottom of Italy, but used the time for some trips and writing a load of software…
Got good shortcuts across the Italian restricted/prohibited areas – being a weekend presumably
This part of Italy is mostly barren
Gets more interesting when approaching the west coast of the mainland, near Sicily. An interesting beach
Flying the GPS approach to LICR
The KLN94 + KMD550 does it perfectly
It is an offset approach
Flightaware route
Departing to Boccadifalco LICP. The procedures at LICR were quite “Greek/African” – you pay bits of money at 3 different offices and you get driven the 50m from one to the next. But very cheap. It was also an immigration stop but the police said they didn’t want to see me. Very friendly; no problem. LICR actually prompted me to post this
Flying along the north coast of Sicily, low level, is quite scenic. There was some ambiguity regarding the prohibited areas but basically below 1500ft one would clear everything. Foreflight was showing nothing. 90% of it was out of radio contact (Roma Info)
At some point, unknown to me, the external video camera collected a deposit on the faceplate which gradually reduced the contrast to a poor level. You can see it in the video I posted above. Probably volcanic ash?
At this point I decided overflying the city (as suggested on the LICP website) is not a great idea, and going over the ~4000ft mountains was better
The final ridge
And on final 33, at 4500ft
Fuel done. The man was very friendly but one really needs to speak Italian to communicate
An interesting (and ancient) place
Met up with Justine (who flew to Palermo by Easyjet) and getting some food. All the food was of pretty good quality, although if one lives on the pizza and pasta one will get huge in no time
The best bit for us were the Botanic Gardens
There is a lot of architecture, from various eras
The front of our hotel; this is what you get in Palermo for £100/night It was a nice room but really tiny
The No Mafia museum was really interesting. Volunteer effort; you leave a donation. This pic caught my eye; two mafia hitmen, one who looks like Henry Kissinger and the other exactly like my father (who loved Italy all his life, and Italian women ) right down to the same hat
LICP is somewhere down there, and the final 33 was over those hills
Departing early, with nobody around. Weather was closing in again so the 8hr leg back home would be done in one day, with a fuel and passport stop at Montpellier LFMT
You must call up Palermo Approach immediately airborne. They gave me vectors, initially at 3000ft. The departure is actually quite tricky and the instructions are a recipe for a mid-air collision near LICP. Fortunately Palermo ATC is really relaxed and nice
Eventually a DCT to the bottom of Sardinia
Coast of Sardinia
The islands between Sardinia and Corsica
Near LFMT
Route flown
Parked and trying to get avgas (lots of hassle) and passport check (lots more hassle). Report here. I won’t be going to LFMT again; it was totally disorganised. LFMU worked much better in the past.
Flight LFMT-EGKA. Finally going home! France is mostly just fields and fields
Like the old joke about Brezhnev on the train home and somebody stealing his watch, you can tell when you are back home in England
Final 20 EGKA. Absolutely wonderful to be back home! Rarely have I been so happy to be back.
Route flown
It was not an easy trip. A planned hiking met-up around Brac was cancelled but I went anyway (because Justine was happy to fly to Palermo, and it would be somewhere I have not done before) and did a lot of work on my laptop, and had some good trips. The weather situation was difficult, adding days (and worry) to the trip – incidentally wx also prevented me flying to the Sicily fly-in (from Dubrovnik) a year ago. Italy was also not easy. Palermo is dirty, noisy, smelly, a challenge to get healthy food, crappy overpriced hotels, friendly people but a lot of arrogant “customer service”, and 3 days is plenty unless you are looking for specific stuff. Next time in Sicily, we will do an airline holiday (Sicily is too much hassle by GA), rent a car, and stay in the countryside. Value in GA flying is elsewhere. Finally, the hassle at LFMT was pretty poor for an airport which has in the past got good reports.
The aircraft performed perfectly.
Brac airport report
Calabria airport report
Boccadifalco airport report
Montpellier airport report
I always read Peter’s reports, but never say thank you
So, thank you for the writeup and photos and taking us along with you
You are welcome, and thank you