A long weekend in Brac

In light of the upcoming EuroGA flyin at Brac (LDSB) in September 2016, these are a few impressions from our trip there in August. My wife and I spent 3 days around our wedding anniversay in Sutivan, a small coastal village directly opposite of Split.

The flight was conducted with the plane I own together with a friend, a Socata ST10 from 1971. We are the second owners from new, the plane has approximately 2.300 hours total time and a midtime engine and is in generally very good condition. We use the plane for VFR and light IFR operations – „light“ meaning that we avoid more serious weather as the plane has no de-ice systems and only a basic autopilot.

Our weekend trip to Brac startet on Saturday morning at our homebase LOAN. I had prepared the plane the evening before and filed a Z flight plan via Autorouter (thanks @achimha ). Routing was UMBIL GRZ DOL GISER SPL. Takeoff was in glorious weather…

…and we remained in VMC nearly all the time. This is Graz from FL080.

We passed over a vast layer of clouds that covered most of Slovenia and northern Croatia.

We followed the Croation coastal mountains for the second half of the trip. They even have a skiing area down there.

After the handover to Split Approach, I requested a contionous descent but was kept above 7000 feet fairly long. We passed over Split, had a great view of the airport to the north …

… and had a birdstrike (my first!) directly overhead the city! It was a rather small bird and luckily didn’t hit the cockpit or the leading edge of the wing, but rather the upper side of the right wing in a fairly flat trajectory. Still a mess.

Split told us to report LDSB in sight, which we did when approaching the coast of the island. We then flew a wide pattern with views of a wildfire on downwind …

… and a spectacular base leg. BTW, the town right below the airfield is Bol, together with Supetar one of the most well-known tourist locations on Brac.

LDSB is well known for it’s clifftop location, which makes judging the height on base/final a bit more difficult than usual. Note that some of the approach/pattern pictures were taken during a low pass on departure, because many of the first ones were not that good.

The tower is manned on weekends (and possibly when charter traffic arrives?) and acted professionally. But really outstanding was the service on ground! After being guided by the marshaller to the parking position …

… two guys pushed our plane back in position and tied down the wings immediately – all that while we were still inside the cockpit. When we opened the door, an attractive young lady (is one allowed such observations during wedding anniversary trips ?) was already there and asked us if we needed help with our luggage or a taxi. We said „no“, because we had arranged a transfer through our hotel, but she accompanied us out in the arrival hall and made sure that we were really met by the driver. All that without paying handling fees. BTW, she also offered to take a picture of us …

A while back, I pointed out on the forum that there is a new 5 star hotel in Sutivan run by an Austrian businesswoman. I am happy to report that it not only met, but exceeded our expectations. It’s called „Hotel Lemongarden“ and is situated in a few old houses in the harbour of Sutivan. They have been painstakingly restored, rooms are spacious, service is excellent and perhaps best of all is the lush garden with the swimming pool among the palmtress. They also grow the vegetables for their restaurant in this garden. A few impressions…

The restaurant and bar are right next to the harbour of Sutivan.

Lots of fish on the menu. No wonder the hotel owner’s cat likes it !

What is really great about Sutivan is how small it is! Lemongarden is practically the only „real“ hotel there, than you have a few bed and breakfasts and some holiday appartments, two or three bars in the harbour – and that’s it! I detest mass tourism and therefore had been a bit apprehensive about Brac, but I shouldn’t have worried. Sutivan is really as unspoilt as the Croatian CNN commercials („the Mediterranean as it once was“) promise.

However, if you just want to stay overnight on a flying trip Sutivan may not be the best choice. It is a long drive from the airport (ca. 40 minutes, 50 Euros) and the hotel (although worth the money) is really expensive.

Okay, fast forward to our flight back home. After a few more hours on the beach and a (free) late checkout at the hotel we departed at 1600 loc. We refueled and paid the fees. The tower was not manned on this Monday afternoon and we were unable to reach Split from the ground, so we departed with blind transmissions on the tower frequency and contacted Split Approach after takeoff. Looking back towards Sutivan.

Split in the distance.

We had decided on a low level VFR flight along the coastline to enjoy the scenery. This was great, but the headwinds were even stronger than expected. Some pictures from along the route.

Zadar in the distance.

Looking back towards Losinj.

From Losinj via RI NDB to the coastline, the headwinds reached their maximum strength. We were now at 4500 feet and had a GS of 95 knots as opposed to a TAS of approximately 135 knots. Garmin Pilot calculated an arrival at 2022 loc, while LOAN was closing at 2030. However, the headwinds decreased a little again. After 3 hours 10 minutes in the air (as opposed to 2 hours 20 minutes on the more direct and less headwind-affected way down) we touched down short before ECET in LOAN.

To summarise it – a great weekend trip to a great destination. The EuroGA team has really chosen a scenic and GA-friendly destination for their flyout. Judging by my experiences, LDSB and LJPZ (Portoroz) are the most professional and welcoming airports in all of „central“ Europe. While I won’t be able to join you due to other commitments, I’m sure you will have a great time!