Weekend trip to Tarbes Lourdes LFBT

That’s what I meant. The flying was the easy part of this trip. Which went really easy when I think of it afterwards. The car rental stuff I didn’t understand (did they find the Clio somewhere ??)
We travelled from Friday at noon until Sunday, so virtually all restricted areas and military TMAs were inactive, which gave the straight lines. I thought about posting the pictures of the tracks, but believe me they are really straight.
Thank you for your kind words, it’s one of my big trips of 2018, and it’s nothing compared to the trips some here describe, but it may inspire some VFR guys to travel more. And we met very nice airports, which I wanted to report too.

We took advantage of the car to visit the surroundings :

Chateau de Mauvezin

Cirque de Gavarnie (absolutely breathtaking)
We went back around noon to LFBT. We advised the GA manager using the mobile phone number he had left to us. The airport restaurant was closed but the airport bar had some above average snacks which we had lunch with.
A G550 ? jet had parked next to our DA40. It was very nice to see BA and GA happily mixed, in a relaxed manner.

TWR gave us the choice of the runway to use. RWY 20 is the most used one, had the ILS and faces the Pyrenees. They use it even with a small tailwind. We took nonetheless.
We didn’t want to take the exact same route to fly back home, and wanted to see other landscapes so I picked Montluçon LFBK as a rest and fuel stop.
We overflew Agen, Sarlat LFDS, Brive LFSL on track to LFBK. Again, from FIS to FIS, on a straight line. Out of the Paris Area, all FIS are APP units providing good service to VFR flyers. Many ULs/experimentals use it in France with no distinction from ATC (as long as you have a transponder). Most FIS see Mode S IDs, and they have a unique code for all their Mode S traffic. We could feel that every unit was waiting for us, having seen our ID on their screen beforehand.
LFBK is a very quiet airfield, with quite an infrastructure. It is manned by an AFISO and a fireman in week-business hours (and used to have an ILS), but is deserted on weekends. We landed and met a few aerobatic pilots from the outer Paris area, who come to LFBK to train peacefully before every championship they take (all volunteer, private pilots on their free time).

We took some TOTAL fuel, chatted a bit and launched again.
The last leg to LFPT was uneventful. We cleaned the airplane thoroughly and headed home.
Total time logged : 7.6 hours.
Feedback :
It was my first weekend of pure flying vacation (flying+rental car+hotel, the whole package).
It was very rewarding to do it with almost no head-scratching (at least for the flying part). That was made easy by the good weather we had (remember we changed our date of return to avoid the worst weather).
We really had time to enjoy Lourdes and the area. We didn’t see everything but we didn’t feel in a hurry, even if we stayed less than 48 hours.
The DA40 is a formidable travel machine. It is fast, has a good range, is comfortable enough (the rear seats seem a little hard for long legs). Unfortunately, the AP was INOP but being 2 pilots on board took care of that. But we had weak performance on initial climbs at MTOW, I thought it did better (like 300-400fpm).
As I said above, these 3 airports I used (LFBU, LFBT, LFBK) are all welcoming, but they correspond to different requirements. I am very pleased of the mix of CAT, BA and GA at LFBT, that kind of behaviour should be promoted.
VFR in France is easy, as long as the weather is good. If it worsens, FIS will only give you METARs and you’ll be on your own for the rest. You may switch to IFR anytime if you decide to divert to the location of the FIS unit though.
Really the worst part of the trip was getting back home ! It was a quick change of weather and atmosphere
Feel free to ask any questions !

If you ever get a tour of the TBM factory, let me know :)