One runway is enough but I need 3000m 
Try LKMT next time, the runway might be nearly meeting your requirements….
Anybody interested in meeting up, possibly at LKLT, tomorrow ?
The flight was good. I will do a report later…
There were a lot of buildups and I had to go to FL130 (FL100 filed) and later to FL160 to stay above them
Some funny looking stuff
Strikes on the stormscope left and right of track
Descent into LKPR
Runway 24 as usual
I see this time you managed to photoshop the PAPIs before posting 
Here is the rest of it:
The outbound MSLP
and the trough, indicated a PROB30 TEMPO of buildups which the TAF confirmed
LKPR 250500Z 2506/2612 VRB02KT CAVOK TEMPO 2506/2516 26010KT 9999 SCT040 PROB30 TEMPO 2509/2516 -SHRA SCT033TCU
but, early in the morning which is when I would always do a flight in these conditions, nothing was actually happening
This is from the EuroFPL tracking facility
I didn’t get a screenshot with anything better than my phone…
Just before getting onto the ILS
There was a lot of PROB30 TEMPO TSRA stuff but nothing actually happened on Day 1
Charles Bridge, of course…
Plenty of beer for sale, and plenty was required
Prague is not as overpriced as it was say 5 years ago. Certainly perfactly good hotels can be had for €40/night, though you won’t get aircon for that.
The food is meat, meat or meat, with some pizza and pasta. Very difficult to find healthy food and especially fresh veg, although if you live there you will know where to get it.
One (young) taxi driver said that this is a big national problem and in Prague people with a bit of money and who don’t want to get bowel cancer too soon get their food from Marks & Spencer.
The famous cobbled streets
The well-known “postcard” view
Prague as I remember it as a kid from the 1960s, just a short walk away from the tourist parts
The HQ of the secret police (the “Ministry of the Interior”) – this shut only within the last year
My grandparent’s flat (ground floor) – now a cafe, but the upstairs people still live there… probably the same people, or their kids
The last place in Europe where you can still get this kind of stuff repaired
The runway at Letnany LKLT
It doesn’t look too bad but there are some dodgy looking grass to concrete transitions.
A parallel runway – for the heavier stuff I guess
There is some money around, for sure
plus a few of these
My friend’s TB20 – with a GTN750 in it
A Morava 200 twin
In the 1960s, one of these was reserved for the personal use of the director of the uranium mines, Karel Bocek. He used to fly it himself. He fancied my mum (evidently despite her not being a Party member) and I got a flight in it c. 1963. He himself – the most trusted of the trusted Party members – escaped to the West in the 1970s.
At about €20, Letnany is the only viable “cheap” option for Prague. It has Customs (PNR) and Avgas, but no instrument approaches, and is grass. Vodochody has just jacked up their costs to c. €200 (from €25 in 2013) but I wasn’t going to go there anyway even at €0 because they don’t open if the owner doesn’t want to get out of bed (prob99 the solution lies in knowing the right people). Kbely is for factory visitors only, though my previous comment no doubt also applies…
Ruzyne, at about €200, is a superbly organised facility which “just works” perfectly. A quarter of the cost is the 10% commission which they charge on avgas sales, which is a pity, but if you get fuel elsewhere, you don’t pay that. But then you pay a landing fee elsewhere, plus the fuel burnt in the approach, landing, and climb.
I am not normally into aviation museums but we walked to Kbely LKKB which is a short walk from Letnany, and there is a very good museum there, which is totally free
An interesting way of cooling a water cooled engine, from the 1930s. Whether it does any de-ice is a good question… probably not otherwise everybody would be doing it
You wouldn’t want one of these chasing you over open countryside
They had a precision approach radar on display – actually moving
At about €200, LKPR doesn’t attract much piston GA traffic – just me in the distance, in the whole 3 days as far as I could tell
The return weather was similar to the outbound weather
Metar
EGKK 270550Z 31008KT CAVOK 19/15 Q1017
LKPR 270600Z 35002KT CAVOK 19/17 Q1015 NOSIG
TAF
EGKK 270501Z 2706/2812 31005KT 9999 FEW040 TEMPO 2808/2812 8000 SHRA BECMG 2809/2812 04010KT
LKPR 270500Z 2706/2812 11007KT CAVOK TEMPO 2709/2721 15015KT 9000 SHRA SCT035TCU PROB40 TEMPO 2711/2719 24015G30KT 6000 TSRA SCT030CB TEMPO 2809/2812 15015KT 9000 SHRA SCT030CB
The cold front over the UK looked interesting
but it has almost no wind gradient across it so looks pretty weak, and it comes with a good escape strategy: a descent into low levels on the way to Shoreham, and the lowest cloudbase forecast at Gatwick was 4000ft, which seemed optimistic (actual turned out to be about 2500ft) but not OVC003 or similar which would be a diversion to an ILS airfield. Actually Shoreham was on 02 so the MDH would be about 450ft which is not bad either…
After departure, a few strikes on the stormscope but all behind me
At top of climb, FL140 to stay above the haze so I could avoid any nasties visually, Landing Fuel on Board soom stabilised at about 40 USG
A huge shortcut to LNO – 176nm. Anybody doing VFR planning in the airspace of Belgium should now feel a great urge to get an IR because nothing illustrates the complete farce of airspace design than this.
The VFR chart, with the track on it
At FL160, plenty of buildups around
The Mountain High O2D2 demand regulator was doing a fine job at FL160 – heart rate 70, blood O2 96%. This kit really makes high altitude flight so effortless and it works right up to FL200 (I can’t get any higher with the TB20, especially in the summer)
Approaching the UK coast, some bigger stuff
I stayed at FL160 by agreement with London Control who wanted me down to FL100 before Dover. They were OK with it, as well as with some headings to avoid. Eventually, in the descent and above 0C, about FL080, there was some very heavy rain which froze on the wings which were still cold from FL160. That stuff didn’t last long…
This is the return flight track
The two flights were landed with 38.9 USG and 38.2 USG. That’s just under half a tank (usable full fuel 86.2 USG) so with favourable winds a TB20 could fly Shoreham to Prague and back to Shoreham without landing.
One notable feature of these two flights, both routed using the EuroGA autorouter, is that ATC gave me a number of waypoints which were not on the filed route. Notably GAPLA and DITAM, on the return flight, with the route being (mostly) BALTU L984 DONAD L602 SOPGA/N0152F100 T170 RAPET Z93 KODUK DCT GORKO L604 GASKA DCT ARNIX DCT TOBAK DCT MONAX DCT DEVRU DCT PODEN DCT SOGRI DCT DENOX L607 KONAN. It doesn’t matter and one asks ATC to spell the waypoint. But clearly ATC have different ideas of standard routes, to those validated by Eurocontrol.
In mainland Europe, one does fly generally the routes that were filed. ATC give you shortcuts, but basically you fly as filed. In busy airspaces this can change, and changes especially in the southern UK where the filed routes are rarely flown as filed but are instead done mostly with vectors.
These are the two flights, on a very old map of Europe which is the only one I have that’s big enough
It was a great trip and great to meet up with three friends again
The Morava looks like an Airacobra with a genetical mutation :-)
Nice writeup, thanks Peter!
One notable feature of these two flights, both routed using the EuroGA autorouter, is that ATC gave me a number of waypoints which were not on the filed route.
I’m also using the EuroGA autorouter, and this happens to me all the time when flying in Germany.
“PH-PCA are you ready to copy your routing?” and then I get a list of waypoints. The deviations between the filed and assigned route are usually very small.
It might have to do that the filed IFR waypoints are not enroute waypoints?
Last week I got an airway designator assigned, which was not on my filed route. That seems quite rare (haven’t had it before)…
This always used to happen to some degree.
Sometimes ATC give you an off-route waypoint to go to instead of giving you a vector. That has the subtle side effect that they are not responsible for your obstacle clearance (which, except in Spain , they would be if vectoring) but they won’t be using it for that reason.
It raises the issue of what to do in a lost-comms scenario, because the ICAO lost-comms procedure cannot be applied. You would just have to “do your own thing”.
But I think that often the enroute IFR controllers have a picture of your filed route in front of them which is simply different to what you filed. And I don’t think anybody outside ATC knows what that picture is or how it is generated. One comment I recall reading is that all the ATCO sees is a straight line through his sector, which would imply that the national ATC system runs a piece of software on the validated Eurocontrol route which determines the ATC sector boundaries and replaces the filed route segment between them with a straight line. Obviously that would make a mockery of the Eurocontrol system which pretends to be implementing airspace rules supplied by the member countries… there is however plenty of precedent for this with e.g. the UK system where many rules are not supplied to Eurocontrol so many flight plans validate but are actually useless.
I know there are ATCOs who read EuroGA and maybe one of them can comment?
It might have to do that the filed IFR waypoints are not enroute waypoints?
Anything that Eurocontrol validates must be a valid waypoint.
Last week I got an airway designator assigned, which was not on my filed route. That seems quite rare (haven’t had it before)…
That is very rare. I have had it 2-3 times. I recall one by London Control and one in Spain. It creates havoc because one rarely had the full airway chart easily accessible.
I used to fly with the whole route printed off into strip charts but about a year ago I decided that I never looked at them (plus they could not be printed on a cheap B&W laser so one got through a lot of inkjet ink, and I threw away my HP colour laser) so now I fly with just a whole-route printout (A4) and the ex-Flitestar plog which should hopefully have the entire waypoint list.
On top of that, EuroFPL emails me a waypoint list from Eurocontrol, shortly before the flight. This email however often doesn’t arrive. They are currently investigating it.
Sometimes ATC give you an off-route waypoint to go to instead of giving you a vector.
That is very frequent in Germany. In most cases you fly direct and if Eurocontrol does not allow you to file a direct route, you get off-route waypoints.
It might have to do that the filed IFR waypoints are not enroute waypoints?
Exactly. At the Eurocontrol level, there is no distinction between enroute and approach waypoints. The Langen FIR allows DCTs of 40NM below FL140 and we would often pick a waypoint that is only used for approaches. Last week, we’ve switched to a newer version of the router which is able to avoid such waypoints (it checks if a waypoint is only used as part of approaches or also on airways).
