This was an experience that would take some beating. Flying a light aircraft from the UK to the Costa Brava in Spain in challenging flying conditions and into the Pyrenees at night. It felt akin to being an airliner, with ATC slots, change of plans and a significant amount of thought and pre-planning.
Staying nearby we visited Barcelona for the day, this was a special trip and will go down as one of the best I’ve ever completed, with probably the longest flight time I’ll ever fly in this aircraft. The adventure didn’t end there, we almost diverted on our flight to the UK due to severe weather/thunderstorms forming right in front of our very eyes.
With the restrictions in the UK almost gone for over a year, and most of Europe now fully open my head turned towards a long-distance flight, with the original destination planned as San Sebastian or Bilbao.
Initially, my planning was for April, however, due to the weather and some restrictions in France and Spain, I elected to wait it out till May and enjoy better weather, and a return to Barcelona having not visited in many years.
This also meant I had a passenger for the trip and so we looked at the planning together with Ryan concentrating on the location of our stay for the weekend including any transfers that would be required, allowing me to put all my efforts into the flying and the determination to fly it wholly IFR. I’d never flown to Spain and was very keen to do this trip before making the big journey to Ibiza which incidentally was originally scheduled to take place this weekend. This trip had now been moved again till August, as the party season begins in the later part of May.
If you care to read the full blog and have the time; feel free on the mobile-friendly/tablet-friendly website;
Click Here > https://www.theflyingvlog.uk/flying-ifr-to-spain/
very nice writeup, I enjoyed reading it. :)
Nice trip 
BTW EuroGA ought to work ok on mobile devices. A huge amount of work went into that and 50% of the viewers are using mobile devices.
Thanks for reading Luke. Glad you enjoyed it.
lukepower wrote:
very nice writeup, I enjoyed reading it. :)
It was great fun. A lot of planning though.
Yes works fine on mobile devices. Tablets too I believe.
Peter wrote:
Nice tripBTW EuroGA ought to work ok on mobile devices. A huge amount of work went into that and 50% of the viewers are using mobile devices.
Thanks for your vlog and report, not skimming over all the technical roadblocks nor the costs involved.
The video format is surprising, I was expecting a very long and thorough vlog of each leg, with a few pics of Catalonia, instead of the reverse
Your commitment to expanding your wings is admirable, but I couldn’t by any means justify the time and expense it represents. Nor 99% of people I would say.
Thanks for watching and reading. It’s expensive for sure, but I try to make the most of it and the adventures won’t stop here. Lots of upcoming projects to make me a better pilot and I’ll hopefully showcase that too.
Glad you enjoyed the format; I’ll be doing that for most big pictures. But won’t always timelapse. I’ll mix it up, hopefully something different with the Prague & Erlangen trip. The vlog of each leg is releasing, with the first already online ;)
Jujupilote wrote:
Thanks for your vlog and report, not skimming over all the technical roadblocks nor the costs involved.The video format is surprising, I was expecting a very long and thorough vlog of each leg, with a few pics of Catalonia, instead of the reverse
Your commitment to expanding your wings is admirable, but I couldn’t by any means justify the time and expense it represents. Nor 99% of people I would say.
The outbound flight is available on YouTube.
Return sector. Almost diverted due to Thunderstorms, but with a bit of perseverance and get-there-itis and I managed to navigate to Stapleford safely.
