Inishmore EIIM

This post is just to share some photos from a short flight yesterday. I don’t have enough material for a proper trip report, but wanted to share some photos.

I’d planned to have a nice day out on Inishmore yesterday. The surface pressure charts the night before made it look like it was going to be OK for VFR but not great weather. But when I woke up, it was 1200BKN at best anywhere in the country, and much worse in parts. The rainfall radar looked miserable, so I rolled over and went back to sleep! No flying today!

An hour later, and two stations had shown an improvement to about 1800ft SCT with a layer about 2100BKN above. I thought about it, and though “Nah…it’s only two stations and one time report! Look at that miserable weather everywhere else and the rainfall radar!”. So I rolled over again!

An hour later and everywhere was reporting bases of 2000-2500! Damn I should have gotten up earlier! So what was planned for a 10am departure became a 1pm departure. No harm. This was to be a relatively short flight to the largest of the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland. Flight time would be about an hour. I’ve been there many times before, so a short visit wasn’t going to mean that I would miss out on much. I just wanted to get some practice in after a winter of not too much flying, and get a short field landing in early in the season. (Runways are 500mtrs).

A nice JetFly Pliatus visiting the ramp at EIWT Weston, my home base.

Part of Galway Bay.

ATC warned me that there were some drones operating over Galway bay up to 1000ft on a search operation. It made me thing afterwards, that drones could be really suited to such work. Imagine a line of drones, 100 mtrs apart, each with visual and IR cameras. 100 such drones could cover a 10km wide line without missing anything. 100 drones much be much cheaper to operate thank a single conventional S&R heli. Once the stricken vessel was found then the S&R heli could be sent to the exact point needed. In other word, separate the search and the rescue part into two separate operations. Anyway, that’s just idle musings.

The Burren is an area just before coasting out to the islands. It’s characterised by its exposed rock surface. There had been some significant hail/sleet showers that morning, which was still evident on the rock when I got there.

More Burren

Inishmore, characterised by its small stone fields.

Inishmore

The Aran Islands consist of three principal islands, which can be seen in this photo. Inishmore, the largest and closest in this photo (looking west to east); Inishmaan the next one, and then Inisheer, the smallest. The Cliff of Moher and the mainland can be seen just beyond Inisheer in this photo.

Kilronan is the largest town on Inishmore. This is Kilronan harbour

Some walking trails on the island. I’ve cycled most of the island in the past. Must try some of these trails in the future. There was a half marathon taking place on the day of my visit.

Hummm….apparently tractors driven by firemen seems to present a significant hazard to traffic here!

Shore close to Kilronan

A Memorial

Some wildlife enjoying the sun

The beach at Kilronan

Last month, I invited the Beta Crew from PocketFMS to have a meet up here to exchange ideas. We stayed at one of the houses here.

What’s left of some recent flooding of the River Shannon, at Athlone.

The Midlands

There were plenty of CBs around, and I spent much of my time dodging them. But visibility was excellent, and they were well spaced, so it wasn’t difficult. Though a few tried to line up in a row, which meant that for awhile I was paralleling my planned track rather than following it.

I’ll try to remember to take some more photos next time! I wasn’t planning on doing a write up. But when I saw some of the photos that I did take, I wanted to share them.

Colm