Ok ok, since you all insist, we’ll continue this successful series 
RC flying yesterday, today’s mission, the Rote-Wurst fly-in…
A pity. I almost decided to come as well. It‘ll be for another time, Dan.
I was planning to fly with four friends to Menorca for the weekend on our 210. One of them, who was the reason for the meetup, had his home burgled the night before and with all attendant formalities had to cancel 1hr before the early am planned flight.
I suddenly found myself with a lot of unplanned time available for other airplane stuff…so instead:
-serviced the NLG strut to better prepare for upcoming trips to grass fields, and
-was lured by a friend(see note) to sample the local rebel aviation underground flying his airplane to a couple of the rebel bases on our island , too small to accommodate our heavy bird. Weird feeling to be at three different airfields on our island within the course of one morning, when I had previously seen it as an island with a single GA airfield.
Note: He also lurks around herein, but as we say in Spanish, you can publicly speak of the offense, but not the offender
Just returned from the above mentioned event… that was a cool fly-in set in a beautiful location. A good turn out of around 20-30 visitor aircraft, ULs, a couple of RVs practicing indecent flap exposure far from prying eyes, Pitts, Bücker, Do28, etc.
The field of Gruibingen-Nortel is kinda difficult to make out… here in the middle of the pic
As a 1st timer I was given good approach tips from Nortel radio when I called in. I also had studied the VAC and noticed the runway’s profile…
Having had recent altisurface experience with @Antonio sure helped, as the picture on finals was quite similar 
Really beautiful airfield and very friendly people – recommended for 2024!
I was kind of lonely for a while, thankfully many more aircraft came for lunch.
Did a solo navigation LFPT → LFQA (Reims) round trip.
Picture quality is not great (I didn’t have my proper camera, only my phone). I’m more focused on PPL than photos, until I have the licence. I’ll have a little more time and freedom to take better pictures then !
As it’s been already said here, learning to fly “à la bite et au compas”, even though it’s necessary (at least as a backup) for flying in simple planes, takes a lot of mental effort, and I’m looking forward to using systems that reduce this workload. Also, other methods reduce the workload (for instance taking remote visual landmarks and following them for 5-10mins, easier than holding a heading and checking your position using surroundings every minute).
A couple more navigations to go ! Currently sitting at about 36hrs total (this is currently what’s more likely to be blocking, I’m on good track on quotas for solo flying – 10 hrs – and solo navigation – 5 hours), although with the improvements I still need to make, 150nm solo navigation and other test preparations I’m likely to go beyond without an issue. Hopefully I can take the test before the end of the year.
I flew to EDHE Ütersen (near Hamburg) and enjoyed a beautiful sunset:
Just a little local today, under the spooky sky. Could almost imagine a witch flying on a broom under that… and a hand flown (not completely out of limits) ILS to EGMD, to minima
to EDHE Ütersen
On Saturday we flew home from Slovakia through the Alps at low level…lots of fun :-)
And an “Alpeneinweisung” (introduction to flying in the Alps) to Aosta on Sunday.
