Spain, Menorca LEMH/LESL, 7/8 October 2017

The UK is in the EU also unless somebody wants to make a “screw those who voted for Brexit” point (probably not an uncommon attitude in mainland Europe; you need only to read EuroGA ) or heard of Brexit in the news and doesn’t know what it is about.

Or it may be just somebody being “random” but most likely the two ladies at MTA thought Croatia was Schengen.

OK… time to wrap this one up with a few pics

Nice wx on departure from Shoreham, with a 40kt tailwind nearly all the way to Menorca, resulting in a ground speed reaching 190kt

DCT LMG 251nm – a long shorcut

Curious waves in the clouds, with no terrain underneath. However the tailwind was about 40kt

The east end of the Pyrenees coming up, with heavy up and down draughts exceeding our ability to hold altitude at max power at FL120; I lost 200ft at one point to avoid stall, but Spanish ATC never said anything

Menorca, with some buildups south of the airport and right over the ILS

On the ILS; slowed right down on the expectation of some rough stuff and almost missed the bottom of the cloud

GPS set up in OBS mode, for reference

After a DME arc, there’s a couple of stepdowns before the glideslope starts, for no obvious reason

Popped out from under the cloud

Follow-me car

Plenty of space here

Handler and fuel turned up almost immediately

The city of Mahon has a lot of traditional Spanish architecture

Non-stodgy food is easy to find

We had a good look at the main fortress

Emir kindly drove us all around the island – made a huge difference to how much we saw

Poor man’s version of Stonehenge

A very pretty village

The famous sunset cave

The main meet-up was here

It must have been a great time for prehistoric kids

A good juxtaposition of religion and technology

These all seem to be for sale

A town at the west end of Menorca

Back at the airport – not much traffic

but plenty over here; the handler took us to the front of the ~300-long passport queue

I filed VFR for the departure, to avoid a silly Eurocontrol-validation dogleg halfway to Italy, so we were kept to the VFR corridor and below 1000ft. ATC were really helpful and nice

but soon got a climb to 2000ft and a turn to the north. These are mysterious antennae…

Leaving Menorca

I picked up the IFR clearance around SARGO and way before the filed change at BGR; ATC were relaxed provided we didn’t go above FL100

Back at the east end of the Pyrenees; this time I climbed to FL120 at this point but there was less turbulence anyway since the wind was 20kt. This time a headwind of 20kt all the way home

I managed to get some wx data over 4G and got an unexpected change of wx at Shoreham:
091320Z 22009KT 9999 BKN006 16/15 Q1018
This meant either RNAV 02 and take the tailwind, or try RNAV 20 and see if we get visual at the MDA of 800ft. This wx picture suggested it would work (ATC also then reported FEW at 600ft and more at 1000ft)

and it did

Thanks to all those who made it such a great meet-up

Great pics of the fish… I reckon I put on 1kg on that trip

Incidentally, for the Spanish, the Brits, the French and the Germans, this trip could have been done under VFR all the way. You can fly right across France VFR below FL120 e.g. FL115. That would have been 100% VMC all the way back from Menorca. The tops were about FL080. It was only over the UK that there was low level cloud on Monday, but e.g. Shoreham was accessible under VFR even while I was flying the 20 IAP.

As a re-examination of the decision to go for the first of the three weekends, the 14/15 would have probably also worked providing this stuff doesn’t arrive, ahem, a day early

This is 24hrs sooner

so it’s fast moving.