suggests the temperature at FL180 is ISA+10.
Which means you’re not going to get to FL180 
Today appears to be rather difficult. The occluded front is moving slowly.
There’s already quite some stuff over the Alps and GFS says it will be growing over the course of the day. GFS was wrong about the occluded front but its speed and direction are very hard to predict.
Having been bounced around yesterday to Frankfurt, Köln and back, it was very tricky flying weather. There is a lot of quite violent convective weather about.
Called off LDLO, raining at my strip and forecast not very friendly. All have good flights, see you next time.
Looks like Peter will have to land somewhere for refueling. He’s had at least 30kt head wind so far and is now over my house at FL170.
I can only imagine how one must feel after 7h in a TB20 at FL170 
I checked. 84kt groundspeed on FL180, that is surely more than 30kt
I think that’s because of a climb from FL170 to FL180. Now he is back at FL 170 doing 106kt GS on a southerly course.
Munich had a sigmet until 1130z calling for severe turbulence above FL150. Sure not a comfortable flight I guess.
He’s tough, I thought he would land at LOWI Innsbruck but he’s still at FL173. LOWI is what I would have chosen. After such a long flight, refueling and a haemorrhoid ointment are due.
I can see Peter landed at LDLO at 14:09 UTC after 6:54 in the air. Big congrats!!!
Incredible. 7h on the row in a TB!
I can’t imagine in what condition you guys were upon arrival!
Chapeau bas!
It was an almost totally turbulence-free flight.
As usual I worked hard to stay out of IMC especially when the temps were warm (say -5C).
The first bit of IMC (Belgium/Germany) was flown through as the tops were too high, but it was really just haze, with the sun visible through above the whole time. We climbed to FL170 which brought the OAT down to about -17C so no ice could form in such a cloud.
Later more convective stuff was found in S. Germany and over the Alps (of which we saw very little) and that we stayed above because the temps were a lot warmer; say -8C.
The final descent (100nm) into LDLO went through some cloud and sure enough some ice was picked up but it didn’t matter as we were descending anyway.
7hr s in a TB20 is no problem at all. It’s very comfortable.
It was just very tedious to have the headwind all the way, which is extremely unusual going east. In fact just about every aspect of the flight was very different from any forecast. Even the GFS data for the temperatures way miles off, with temps about 10C colder than forecast.
There was also a lot of downdraught much of the time which reduced the TAS by some 10kt; I have never seen sinking air that powerful over such a large area.
We landed with 16.7 USG which is enough for 2hrs at high altitude cruise.
The turnout (Friday) was amazingly good.
