2015 for me was a year of flying extremes. It was absolutely great, as I took the plunge and bought my own aircraft. I experienced, for the first time, over 4 hours as PIC in a day where I did not land back where I originally departed from. My flying has changed from the normal burger runs, for lunch, to some useful flying. This year I have flown and landed in the UK, France, Germany and Holland. The touring and hence the real reason for the PPL has finally come to fruition.
It was over shadowed by a mechanical issue, which is proving troublesome to solve and trace. Especially as it might be propeller related and the manufacturer has gone bust; therefore direct manufacture support isn’t available. So I have returned to a few local test flights and a slow and cautious approach to the problem.
Although the disappointing thing has been to have my wings clipped, by the above mentioned issue, there are lots of positives in there. I am learning a lot about aircraft maintenance, composites, avionics and differing regulatory approaches. I have met and networked with some fantastic and supportive people, and so what I have lost on the flying side I have gained on the engineering side – and that can only be a good thing for my understanding of the aircraft and its operation.
I look forward to 2016, and if I have solved this vibration problem, I will start to stretch my wings further a field again. I hope to meet more you like minded people this year and put more faces to the “forum people”.
Jon,
just had a look at your plane again, had to remind myself what it is. That is quite a capable airplane if I read the manufacturer´s specs right. 500 NM on 18 USG fuel is not a bad range at all, nor the speed they give.
What prop do you have? I see that Europa offers 2 different ones but both with the same blades? Hope you can sort it out very soon indeed.
Crossing my fingers and wishing you a great season!
Hi Mooney,
Yes it is quite a machine for the money. Especially if you pick one up second hand, like I did.
The performance varies from aircraft to aircraft as they are exclusively homebuilt. I understand that the manufacturer has taken averages of data provided by builders. I have the Arplast PV50, which isn’t a standard propeller for the Europa; it was an approved modification. It is a nice propeller, and will offer me 115 knots cruise at about 15 litres per hour. The Airmasters and Woodcomps are proving to be very successful on the Europa as well as the standard Warpdrives.
To answer your other question, Europa offer a fixed pitch and constant speed, with both straight and tapered blades. I think the XS model propeller is slightly larger in diameter (I would need to check this) but I know there is slightly more ground clearance in the XS Mono-wheel because the engine sits a bit further forward. I also understand that the Airmaster hub can take a variety of different blades. So the customisation is very good.
Carefully managed mine is a 500NM machine, with an acceptable reserve on fuel. I also have the mono-wheel version, which is retractable; there is a tri-gear conversion available and that will hit you with about a 7 knot speed penalty for the extra drag. You can offset that by going for the bigger engines, europaxs for example, has the 115 HP rotax, (I only have the 80HP); and he can push 130 knots at up to, as high as you can, last time he came to visit me at EDTY he cruised down at FL180. If the 115HP was put in mine I can push 140 to 145 Knots (Guess what is on my upgrade list 
)
There is an American/German guy, who has one. He flies it all around the world; blogs here; and is quite inspirational – N81EU Blog
This year has seen the birth of my first child, two bereavements, and as such I only flew 28 hours, my all time low record by some major margin. Both the Tecnam Sierra RG and Kitfox pretty much sat unused. The boggy weather meant any aspirations of flying from the strip in the last 2 months of the year were squashed so I had no chance to top the total up.
On top of that, i’ve been working on the RV-10 for the past few months and finally received the finishing kit, firewall forward and IO-540 on the 23rd December. Can’t wait to get the beast of an engine installed :)
So my aspirations for this year are to finish the RV and fly more…. reality might mean only one of those 2 objectives gets achieved!
Last year achieved a lot on the build, despite only grabbing evening hours after the wife has gone to bed and the odd weekend day with a building friend. I managed to tame a chinese CNC machine into cutting the panel and designing a “quick panel” (like the one from advanced avionics) from scratch. I ended the year with the panel 95% operational.
2015
was probably a year when I flew a lot as I’ve done most of my IR training that year.
So no trips, but quite a lot of flying for my standards.
2016
will be the year i get my IR ticket (fingers crossed) and maybe also the one when I buy 1/2 of that Mooney I’ve been looking at
Flying should stay around 20-30 hours but hopefully with many more trips
cheers !
Flew about 30 hrs and squeezed in some glider flying too! Flying highlight was a weekend away with my little girl of two and a half years at the time from EHTE to LFQF, where my in-laws recently bought a holliday home. Hope to do that trip more often. A close second is a weekend away with both my little girls to EHAL. For this year I hope to book some progression on my EIR, at least do all the theory and fly some nice cross country flights.
Propman wrote:
I would be interested to know if any other UK PPL’s have had a similar experience.
I did that quite recently. In my case I prepped all the paperwork and then went through it all with the examiner who signed off on my ‘revalidation by experience’. Found that I had missed a piece of paper or two which I then downloaded and completed. Drove to the Belgrano in person and lo-and-behold: an hour later walked out with a brand new shiny EASA license. However, as I never held the old-style UK national license (I only ever had the JAR one), not sure how applicable that is to someone like you, Propman.
