The somewhat optimistic plan was to depart Wednesday 9th April direct to Friedrichshafen, arriving at the slot time of 12:40L, do the show for two half days. Fly to Birrfeld LSZF in Switzerland Thursday afternoon, do 3 days mountain flying with an instructor, and return to UK on the Monday.
Departed Wed morning 08:20L having filed the flight plan on AFPEx. Two routes planned one direct and the other ducking and diving around various airspaces if the permissions to cross were not received. Planned using SIA 1m and the airspace book that comes with it, Jep 2013 chart, SD and checking certain restricted airspaces on EasyVFR.
Route SFD ALESO CMB MMB STR LUPEN LAPAG. 514nm
Again Ogimet missed a layer of cloud:
When clear of Class A in the English Channel I climbed to 9000ft and stayed there until approx. 50 miles north west of Strassburg, where the cloud was building and the gaps getting smaller. Any flight I consider to be high (for VFR) of over one hour, I start with the canula worn, and the MH 02D2 oxygen set to automatically start at FL50, this means I arrive feeling a lot better. I try to find an ATIS down route to check the weather, this is very easy with my PMA audio panel, it allows me to ‘monitor’ another channel, and if the primary channel becomes active, automatically mutes the monitored until the primary is clear again.
I couldn’t find a suitable ATIS so decided to descend. This changed the very relaxed Radar service from Strassburg to a quick succession of frequency changes to obtain crossing clearances, one must have been operating on a handheld as very difficult to hear, then back to Strassburg who cleared me over the 23 threshold. Continuing with Langen Info bumping over the high ground of the Black Forrest, only to find the weather completely clear over the lower ground, so I could have stayed on top!
Langen passed me to Friedrichshafen, where again I had the active from the monitored ATIS, and headed to the entry lane to fly to the reporting point Oscar. Calling Friedrichshafen about 25 miles out, immediately given ‘Identified – Turn right onto 150’ which headed me straight for the airport, they asked if I wanted hard or grass, replied grass, because I preferred to be on the show side, although my slot was for hard. At 5 miles, told to join right base for 24 and contact tower, who cleared me to land, it was so easy and hardly any other traffic. A quad bike marshal
lead me via a tarmac road to a parking place. Avgas had to be requested from the marshal and turned up within 10 minutes. A total of 89 litres was used for 3:36 hrs, start up to shut down – that’s the beauty of an RV.
The landing fee was e65 including overnight parking and entry to the show on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. On the way into the show I bumped into Peter and Justine in the Zeppelin museum restaurant and had a very pleasant lunch with them.
Rob Hickman the founder of Advanced Flight Systems, the manufacture of my EFIS’s was exhibiting, I had some questions. He asked if the plane was accessible and came out to the plane and spent 45 minutes sorting a couple of setup problems. The two EFIS are completely independent with their own magnetometers and air data, but share engine data, they cross check one another for accuracy. I was having trouble setting up two OAT’s to accurately show wind vectors on both screens. He sorted it, great service and the reason I wanted the grass on the North side nearest to the show.
My panel mounted Flymap that has run Jepp maps up to now, but as Jepp are stopping these I was interested in what Flymap are doing. I am hopeful the considerable effort they are putting into Intellimaps may be useable.
Thursday at Sebastian’s stand about eight of us congregated and chatted for an hour, very pleasant to meet a few forumites.
Thursday afternoon departed a very quiet EDNY for Birrfeld LSZF. The flight plan was filed through AFPEx, and the customs form on the Birrfeld web site, both done from the hotel before leaving for the show Thursday morning.
I will try and write a few words on the three days of mountain flying instruction later.
Departed for UK on the Monday, because of Schengen and EU, I needed to make a intermediate stop on the way back. Birrfeld praised Strassburg, where they often carry out training flights, particularly night flying, and how efficient the GA area is, so I thought I would give it a go. The aero club also handed me a weather warning of strong winds.
Flight plan from Birrfeld filed thru AFPEx and at the same time the flight plan from Strassburg to UK. I must have misunderstood the new OnLineGAR, in as much; I thought I had a couple of free credits to try it. Having filled in the forms, when I tried to send, it said no credits. So I tried to buy some, they use PayPal, as I infrequently use it I didn’t have the passwords, not wanting to bother with all this just before flying I used a part filled paper one I carry and the aero club faxed it. When I was preparing the plane for departure the club came out and said the fax had not gone. Back in the club house I again tried the OnLineGAR from my iPad, used a different email address bought some credits and filed the GAR and received an instant confirmation. The OnLineGAR is a very eloquent system and deserves success, and the small fee is worth it. I just didn’t need all this hassle delaying departure.
Where can you fly over a power station? Answer – In Calais on the ILS (if you have a IR) or here, where if in France you can’t but in Germany you can!
The flight to Strassburg was pretty uneventful, except cleared to land behind an airliner and watch for wake turbulence, I asked if I could do an orbit to leave some space and was cleared to do so immediately. While orbiting a snap of Strassburg:
Because of the delays with the GAR, arrived at Strassburg 12:15L, bad time in France. Because of the wind I wanted to ensure full tanks for the flight to UK. Tower reported a delay of at least an hour for avgas. I parked outside the GA building (nicely equipped, no food but coffee) and the ground staff managed to shorten my stay to 1:10 hr.
Route was the reverse of going out MMD CMB ALESO SFD. 430nm.
The weather at Strassburg was dull:
The plan was to climb to 7000 ft and take the hit of 30kts headwind, rather than bump along underneath. As usual Ogimet underplayed things and I needed to climb to FL095 to clear the cloud. At this height I was getting 45kts headwind, you can just see the wind arrow on the HSI below East:
I monitored the wind and fuel carefully. The wind decreased further north.
Total time engine start to engine stop was exactly 4:00 hrs with 98 ltrs used.
Great trip completed exactly as planned time wise. The one thing I would like to improve is photo’s. My old Nikon Coolpix S3000 isn’t very good, it takes a long time to save pictures and there is no RAW setting. Photo experts, what simple small camera would you suggest?
Edits to try and sort pics.
Great trip! It was good to see you too, Norman. The first of many people, and one of the very very few whose name I knew or could remember 
I don’t think your photography problems are the camera. It is mainly that you need to avoid reflections. That is quite hard. I wrote up some tips on it here (at the very end). People who do this for a living or just do it properly tend to go to a lot of trouble e.g. wearing dark clothes.
On the last pic, the distortion is caused by the camera being too close but you can photoshop that out I have an ancient copy of CS3 and this took about 30 secs (Filters / Distort / Lens Correction). Then a bit of unsharp mask, 10 secs, gives this.
The pic above the fluffy clouds would benefit from (a) a horizontal horizon and cropping out the bottom – here – and (b) not having that reflection. The reflection can be removed but that needs a lot more skill than I have. I keep a 2ft x 2ft piece of dark fluffy rag in the cockpit, and chuck it over anything that is reflecting badly in the window – including the instrument panel!
Great write up Norman, thanks for sharing!
Did Rob give any indication as to when he’s going to sort out the 4500 sw update?
Stick
Thanks for sharing!
May I ask which RV model you have? It’s seems like a great airplane, a friend of mine is building an RV7.
Peter – Thanks for photo tips, the annoying thing about my camera is that it takes a long time to save the photo, when single pilot, I need something easier.
Stick – I was very pleased with Rob’s enthusiasm about the merger with Dynon. It looks like Dynon wanted AFS to maintain a good lead on Garmin. They only had the new stuff at the show, the new mapping is so much better. I didn’t mention the 4500 as I have the 5600 – sorry. They are very busy integrating with the Dynon, Rob spoke to Ken overnight about upgrading me at the show, but they decided not to, so the next release can’t be far away.
Martin – RV9A. I wanted a touring aircraft that could handle strips. For those that don’t know, Van’s after selling sport aircraft for years, realised that a lot of people where buying them to go places. He said ‘I can build a much better aircraft for that’ and the RV9 came about with the new Roncz wing.
Nice write up Norman.
I have always wondered – the eastern France airspace (Alsace and Lorraine) looks very complicated with numerous restricted areas. Did you have to specifically as for crossing clearance for each one whilst VFR? Or did they clear you through the entire lot in one go?
Regards, -Jason
I too wonder how Norman managed to find a route through there. Obviously it’s possible (I did it in 2004) but it’s nontrivial. I ended up joining up charts all over the floor and crawling all over them. Even flying there IFR, which is what I normally do now, I get shortcuts which later get countermanded due to “active” military airspace and that is even on weekends and even at ~FL150.
Jason – at FL090 cleared from London Info > Lille Info > Paris Info > Strasbourg Info direct, until I descended, then Strasbourg handed me to, I think, Lorraine who passed me to Phalsbourg (sounded like a handheld) then back to Strasbourg. On the return route, all at FL095, Strasbourg routed me around an active area otherwise direct.
Nothing was active on the AZBA or in the Notams , both ways, I was surprised about the diversion on the way back.
If Strasbourg had not accepted me in the first place, I had a route planned via Troyes, just south of Epinal and back up to Colmar. This route still needed enough height to clear some low flying corridors. The fun of VFR, but my routes are always accepted on the flight plan. 
VFR flight plans (or VFR flight plan routes) are not “accepted” as such. It’s just that flighplans which grossly neglect the country’s filing guidelines are (sometimes) “rejected” by ARO personell (unless talking about the UK, where FPLs are filed “directly” by the AO). But an “accepted” VFR flight plan says exactly nothing about how far the filed route is compatible with the airspace structure.
Also, be careful with the interpretation of the French AZBA. It merely indicates which of the low level military routes are active, but then there is a lot of other special use airspace, which may – or may not – be activated by NOTAM.
Compare this with the Swiss “DABS”, which is a summary of all active special use airspace.
However, yes, as long as you are in positive contact with FIS/ATC, they will usually advise about any conflicting airspaces.
