Another writeup, this time my wife joined me in a flight to Venice and almost back again in my Stemme S10VT. Almost? Yes, that’s foreshadowing, right away.
Part 1: Vienna first.
So, I think I begin in the beginning.
The summer was warm, the family holiday in the alps was over, the boys now reasonably safely stowed with the grandparents in Speyer and we were back in Berlin on Monday evening, truly alone together since more than a decade.
Family holiday near the Zugspitze, watching the GAFOR route LO10 from the hotel. The mountain to the left is the Wanning to the right is the Fernpass.
I’ve been watching the weather forecasts like a hawk since weeks, for the first time using our @roznet ‘s flyfunweather app which I’ve come to like quite a bit.
I’ve been away on a long flight already, but this was the first time my better half agreed to fly with me. Her plan was to go to Venice and I only halfheartedly resisted, asking her for a closer destination. But she’s tough as nails and I know how to avoid losing battles, so Venice it was. She knows all about VFR, the dependency on weather and get-there-itis, so we planned that she’d go back by train or CAT in case we’d get stuck to pick up the children the coming Monday from the train station. So, Tuesday Berlin – Vienna, Wednesday Vienna – Venice, Thursday on the ground and back on Friday with enough spare days in reserve.
Workload was shared, I was doing the flying and the flight planning, and my wife found us hotels (mostly booking.com and airbnb), food and things to do and/or spend money on. (I vigorously disagree any insinuation that flying is spending money, too, thank you very much). All bookings were made a day or two in advance.
Venice Lido replied after a second email in Italian (deepl.com is my friend), they even had hangar space available for 50€ a night.
To make the first leg not too long, we planned to go from my new homebase Strausberg EDAY to Vienna and spend a night there. Spitzerberg LOAS was highly recommended with a Hotel right at the airport. Their email was full, the website request probably went to the same address and nobody picked up the phone when I called. As it wasn’t easy to go downtown from there anyway, we went to Stockerau LOAU instead (thanks for the advice @ch.ess ), with Vösslau LOAV as alternate.
Due to the convective weather we set off as early as possible in a glaring haze, a recurring theme for the next days.
We did a slight detour to the east almost to Poland due to rain – the fancy folding prop is made of paper-mache and carbon fiber, not even a metal edge, and the electric variable speed mechanism is open to the elements. We went to FL85 once we were past the Berlin airspace to avoid the worst heat. Little did I know how brutally hot Venice was going to be, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m just happy I insisted on air conditioning for the hotels.
Pretty clouds near the isolated shower.
I worried a lot if they’d clear us through Praha airspace as I didn’t want to go low, but once in contact with Czech FIS, he asked me if I’d like to go direct LOKVU, on the Austrian border. Of course I agreed, but because I couldn’t really believe it, I asked him about the Danger Area D-7 in my path. “Yes, you can go through everything, please contact my colleague on 136,175“. Well, colleague then made me go around that danger area! I was a bit on edge afterwards, but the next radio call was to contact Austrian FIS. I loathe having to do flightplans, but this one appeared genuinely helpful.
Basically a straight line through Czechia. You can see the little detour around the red circle near Mnichovo Hradiste
Fortunately Tuln LOXT had their holidays for that very week and the airspace was NOTAM’ed off, which made the approach even easier. Unfortunately the sun had enough time to create thermals near the ground which my wife didn’t agree with and the impressive crosswind suddenly ceasing made my landing mediocre at best.
Tied down at LOAU
It took us about 2:45h, about 100kts average overall which is quite nice considering the headwind.
I planned to call an Uber to go downtown, but the courtesy car was available. Nothing fancy, a pre-scrapyard A-class Mercedes. It even had a valid ‘Pickerl’ for using the highway as we found out when we wanted to get one online. You just have to return it fully refueled. Very friendly people, I can highly recommend this place. Spoiler, again I’m lucky and only meet helpful and friendly people everywhere. Must be the beautiful plane, I guess.
Going downtown is about 40 minutes by car, we spent the night in a pretty decent hotel for about 120€ of which some 20€ for the breakfast were wasted. I’ve decided to leave as early as possible the next day, to avoid that unfortunate wifey disagreeing with the thermals incident the day before. Plus some 25€ for the nearby parking garage.
We spent the rest of the day aimlessly walking around the city in the blistering heat, having ok’ish coffee and good pastries and spent at least two hours indulging in my wife’s expensive hobby
Fortunately they had air conditioning and while I may sound disparaging, I’m actually a huge fan, so I kept bringing her dresses to try on. I’m still amazed we got it home without creases as there is very little stowage available especially as I took along my new Clouddancers canopy cover which I’m very fond of, but it has to be said it took up more room than our combined clothing. Priorities!
Here you can see me carrying my wife’s booty. The photo doesn’t do the heat any justice.
When the heat subsided, we went for dinner at a place a friendly glider pilot from Stockerau recommended to us. They had a table for us and good food, but you probably need a reservation if you’re not as early as we were, because it filled up fast. A short walk later, we were back in the hotel as we planned to get up at six and I had to do some flight planning for the next day including filing the flightplan.
To be continued….
Edit: @peter what am I doing wrong with the inserted links? Too many?
I see no problem. What happened? But maybe a timing issue. See posting tips and see the text about file upload.
Some links don’t hide behind the word I intended them to and neither does calling out @ch.ess. But it works good enough, I guess…
Looking forward to the next instalment. I like the bribery 
I think we had this before with @ch.ess because it’s an old username that didn’t get converted to underscore @ch_ess
nice write up (and thanks for the shout out)
You do these long cross country trip in a glider? I didn’t know you can travel with a glider, just thought they stay local. But tbh, I have zero experience in that.
The Stemme is a touring motorglider (TMG). In many respects it operates an a powered airplane. (But on a powered aircraft licence it is a separate class rating.)
roznet wrote:
I didn’t know you can travel with a glider, just thought they stay localSo glad you asked!
Edit: Also, there are “travel by glider” videos on youtube, where people roam around europe, just by gliding and some kind of two stroke contraption on a folding pylon, if at all. In good weather, 800+ km are archievable, especially in wave conditions – Klaus Ohlmann flew his S10 to Greece, from mainland France, (almost) only soaring, so yes, you can travel, but not in the normal way, it’s more akin to an expedition.
Sorry for the delay, I was quite busy. Yes, I love talking about my plane. It’s quite nice, you get chatted up everywhere – either people are incredulous or, if they’re glider pilots, they get a gleam in the eye.
I just realized that Skysight can display satellite images back in time:
This was the weather on the flight from EDAY to LOAU, due to the fringes of the thunderstorm moving from west to east, we had to fly a more easterly path than originally intended.
Part 2, Wednesday: Venice second
In the evening before, I filed the flight plan to Venice Lido LIPV, over Slovenia. The internet connection was bad and as it didn’t go through, I had to do it twice. A few moments later, I had two email confirmations about a filed flightplan and two active flightplans in Skydemon, so I cancelled one of them.
Planned and flown route to Venice. The Tulln LOXT airspace was still deactivated which made the midfield crossing unsurprisingly easy.
Due to weather, we intended to go as early as possible and since the hotel breakfast started at eight local, we instead opted to grab a coffee from the train station at half past six in the morning, along with a bite. Due to stowage constraints I couldn’t bring my trusty travel espresso machine, so I was mentally prepared. With that in mind, it was actually almost not truly disgusting.
As we were already running a bit late and we still had to refuel (the car and the plane) I delayed my flightplan before driving to Stockerau.
At the pump in Stockerau LOAU, they have Super 98 with ETBE instead of ethanol – just what I want. Can’t remember the price, I use so little fuel in the first place. After I’ve reset the K-factor, even the fuel totalizer is now content and shows 14l/h which is according to the handbook and experience.
I didn’t want to fill the plane up the day before with cold fuel and leave her sitting in the merciless sun, the rather flat wing with the aerodynamic twist makes for really awkward fuel management and that often leads to incontinence at the tank ventilation duct.
A fat finger problem made me delay the plan by only 15 minutes, which was too little, so when I tried again, it didn’t work and Vienna didn’t have the flightplan either. I guess something got messed up the night before.
Long story short, we made another one just 30 minutes into the future and finally, just after some shenanigans backtracking runway 25 – the turn radius is not small and I didn’t want to cut grass with the prop – we departed. Flying was straightforward, I let my wife fly as often as possible, to alleviate the issues we had the day before.
I love her, but flying straight and level doesn’t come natural. On the other hand, I have to admit that being a backseat pilot doesn’t help, either.
The mountains we passed in our shallow climb were barely 6000 feet , we continued to 6500 and stayed there.
As it was so easy in Czechia the day before, I asked FIS if he could coordinate crossing Graz LOWG which he gracefully did. It was a complete non-issue, smooth sailing straight through to RADLY.
Getting a taste for it, I tried the same entering Slovenia, trying to get a direct TUTIV on the coast. He went coordinating, but nothing ever came of it, “For now please follow the published VFR route!”. The only easement I got was being allowed to stay at the altitude passing through in Cerklje. Someone was doing circuits there, that was all that could be heard on the radio.
The sun trying it’s best to kill us, somewhere over Slovenia.
Next time I’ll probably try passing through Zeltweg LOXZ and Klagenfurt LOWK in a straight line.
On the coast, we were much too high, thus I turned off the engine to descend, which my wife liked much better than the constant vibration and noise from the engine. As we were already in contact with Padova FIS, we were allowed to continue in airspace D along the coast to VRP PHE2 Caorle where we dropped out of controlled airspace, into the FMC areas and later called Lido Information.
The coast, Bibione, right next to Caorle
I was too high and while extending the downwind, I lost sight of the runway. As the runway direction does not align with the islands main direction, the base leg became more of a curve.
Venice in the background, Lido in the foreground. My wife was busy taking pictures while I was fighting with the frequencies.
But at least the landing was perfect on a good (if a bit brown) grass runway 05, after a little less than three hours of flight time from Vienna.
If it already got hot on the descent, now it was truly hellish. Folding the wings, chatting, waiting for a helicopter and maneuvering her into the hangar took about an hour.
In hindsight, the hangar wasn’t really necessary, but flyfunweather identified the chance of hail and that’s my big fear when going abroad, so the 50€ a night were well spent for my peace of mind
The LIPV Art Deco building is spectacular – you feel like being somewhere where someone actually likes aviation.
Everything administrative went smoothly and again, everyone was super friendly and helpful.
While walking to the Vaporetto station, I almost had a heat stroke as the heat of the day really set in.
Vaporetto to Venice, in the background you can see the weather building.
We stayed in a little hotel my better half booked a day or two ahead – at about 100€ a night comparatively budged friendly and completely fine.
This is the weather at 15:20 local – I expected it to cloud over, but not this bad.
Due to stowage constraints I couldn’t bring my trusty travel espresso machine
Your engine is liquid-cooled? In the summer just swap antifreeze for instant coffee granules:
I love her, but flying straight and level doesn’t come natural. On the other hand, I have to admit that being a backseat pilot doesn’t help, either.
A lot better than most of the pilot population
Very nice photos of Venice, too. Thank you for sharing.
Great trip!
Looking forward to the next installment.
