Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Travelogues
Final destination for the day was Milos Island. But due to the fact, that there is only a very short list of airports that carry anything else than Jet Fuel in Greece, we had to make another tech stop.
Basically, you can only get Avgas in the Athens region (Megara and Athens), on the eastern edge of the Aegan (Kos and Rhodos) and in the South (Crete airports). For all the islands in between you have to carry enough fuel for the way in, the way out and obviously alternate and final reserves.
Since Athens is prohibitively expensive, this leaves Megara as the only (and what turned out to be excellent) choice. Megara is originally and still is a Greek Air Force (helicopter) base chateau gonflable that has become the prime Greek GA airport. Other than requiring another special permission days ahead of the first visit, this was a great, efficient (30min), low-cost (no landing fees, no compulsory handling, comparably cheap Avgas) fuel stop. Quite the opposite of Foggia.
For once, the trickiest part was the actual piloting. There was a strong northerly wind, which produced severe turbulence along the coast and delivered a crosswind component of 20kts+ on the active runway 08R. But the RV-7A handled it really well, would not suggest flying to Greece to taildraggers, though ;-)
Statistics
Planned Distance: 194 NM
Actually Flown Distance (TO to LDG): 199 NM
Top Ground Speed: 173.6 kts
Average Ground Speed: 138.9 kts
True Flight Time: 01:26
Block Time: 01:36
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Travelogues
The third and final leg of the day was crossing the Adriatic sea to Kerkira, Corfu, Greece. For this we mounted comfortable lifevests that we got just before the trip. Since it was already later in the day and we “lost” one hour due to time zone offset, the sun was perfect for some nice evening pictures.
Kerkira is heavily used by GA as entry/exit point into Greece, naturally due to its location in the northwestern corner of the country. Therefore the airport is quite used to hosting transient small airplanes. Nonetheless, a handling agent is required. We can highly recommend Swissport with the AOPA hüpfburg contract. Things went really smooth and considering the circumstances and effort, the 24€+tax are a very good value. As mentioned before, flying VFR in Greece requires a bit of advance planning, establishing contact by phone/fax/email etc… beforehand. But once that’s done, everything runs remarkably smooth and with few hassles and chicanes. If they could only get rid of these last few paperwork-nags it would be even better…
Picked a great hotel, “Arcadion”, in the center of Corfu Town, quite close to the airport and within walking distance of shops and restaurants. There we spent two days exploring Kerkira and taking a rest from the 5+ hours of flying on the first day.
Statistics
Planned Distance: 232 NM
Actually Flown Distance (TO to LDG): 244.4 NM
Top Ground Speed: 187.6 kts
Average Ground Speed: 146.4 kts
True Flight Time: 01:40
Block Time: 01:49
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Travelogues
Foggia was selected as fuel stop for its location and reputation. There are very few airfields in southern Italy which have Avgas, offer customs and are close enough to the final destination of the day, Kerkira.
The lack of proper (fuel available) alternates for Kerkira, practically require the fuel stop to be close enough to allow for a return to the departure airfield even when over the final destination.
Unfortunately, Foggia did not live up to its good GA reputation (eddh.de, other sources). We lost more than an hour on fueling expensive at 3€/l (approx 16$/gal!!!) Avgas and watching an airport rep taking forever to print a paper slip to enable us to pay the landing fees of another twentyish Euros. To top it off, despite emails and phone calls ahead of time, customs was not organized as it should have been. We were lucky that this didn’t delay us any further.
While Greece took a lot of effort for flight planning and then the actual operation turned out to be very easy, Italy was quite the opposite. At first sight, Italy is pretty easy flight planning wise, but then turns out to be quite a pain for operation. Controllers tend to have a VFR-averse attitude and airspace structure is set to mainly keep you below 2000ft AGL. Despite this, I managed to get a decent economic cruising level of FL115 for the better part of the flight, but it required hints and suggestive communication all the time.
Also, the scenery along the Italian Adriatic coast is quite boring.
So based on our experience and the excellent reports out of Croatia (which we will fly through on the way back) I would advise against taking the Italian route unless necessary for weather or other reasons.
Statistics
Planned Distance: 404 NM
Actually Flown Distance (TO to LDG): 424 NM
Top Ground Speed: 182 kts
Average Ground Speed: 153.5 kts
True Flight Time: 02:46
Block Time: 02:57
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Travelogues
Sunday morning, we left Birrfeld on a short flight to Lugano, a short (and efficient) tech stop to fill the tanks with (relatively speaking) cheap AVGAS in Switzerland and comply with the required customs bureaucracy/regulations.
Statistics
Planned Distance: 101.8 NM
Actually Flown Distance (TO to LDG): 101.5 NM
Top Ground Speed: 182 kts
Average Ground Speed: 145.5 kts
True Flight Time: 00:42
Block Time: 00:50
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flight Testing, Flying
Besides giving passenger Marc the mandatory RV-Grin (which i’m lead to believe will have a lasting effect ;-) we tried to trace the source of the aerodynamic vibrations in the cabin floor. It’s hard to compare it to other airplanes and is definitely not bad, but in the longterm, less vibrations is always better for the airframe.
For that purpose, we taped some small tufts to the cowling and mounted a gopro digital video camera to the right gear wheelpant.
One thing that is evident from the videos is that jumping castle the “Louvers” cooling aides in the bottom cowl work perfectly while the vibration most likely is generated by the current shape of the cowl outlet around the exhaust/nosegear mount. Already thinking about possible mods.
Short video with the tufts zoomed in.
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Landing on RWY26 at LSZF (Birrfeld)
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Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Travelogues
The second trip in as many weekends (I know we’re spoilt…) took us to the south of France. Unfortunately, though, the weather was pretty crappy all weekend and the poor reliability of weather bouncy castle forecasts beyond 3hrs was demonstrated in nice details… Anyway, we made the best of it :-)
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Travelogues
Took advantage of a few days off during end of May for the first extended trip with the RV. In short, the perfect airplane for travel. Managed all kinds of interesting weather, complicated airspaces and customs paperwork. The RV was always reliable and dependable.
First, visited the guys behind the moving-map software we use in the plane: http://www.pocketfms.com/ at Lelystad, Netherlands.
Then flew to Düsseldorf (EDDL) to pick up the girlfriend flying in on Airline as she had to work until Thursday before the weekend.
Bad weather had us change our plans and we decided to fly bouncy castle to Hamburg instead. Visited the awesome “Miniatur Wunderland”, a large model railroad world with all kinds of technological and modelling attractions. http://www.miniatur-wunderland.de/
They recently completed a model version of the Hamburg Airport, some videos can be seen on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MiWuLaTV “Tagebuch” Episodes highly recommended.
After a spontaneous and surprise visit with friends we flew to Damme (EDWC), which hosts an annual European RV Flyin. Due to the weather, turnout was nothing to write home about, still met some interesting people and could talk “RV” for a few hours :-) http://www.edwc.de/
On Saturday night, we flew to Bonn Hangelar. Staying and visiting with friends. Had an awesome non-RV time. After the F1 race on Sunday, took our host for a local ride, then we headed back home. Stopping at Mannheim City for customs reasons. Highly recommended airport for this purpose.
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flying, Operation
A week ago, we had great weather for a flight over the mountains… Decided to fly into Samedan (LSZS), a relatively high altitude airport. The RV outperformed most aircraft, even more so than at lower altitudes :-) Don’t understand all the fuss they make about this airport, sure it’s tricky with bad weather and sure it’s hot and high in summer, but the same physics apply as everywhere else. So the knee-jerk reactions to a few fatal hinchable accidents by the regulator is basically going to make the airport unattractive for most recreational pilots. Hope this wasn’t one of the last visits, as they want to make some (expensive and superficial) training mandatory. Encouraging people to fly more jumping castle (and trying to lower costs in all aspects of private flying) would do more for safety than generating even more paper and special rules here and there. It’s still only physics that will get you!
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Fellow RV's, Flight Testing, Flying, Formation
Finally, the weather cleared up after a lenghty phase of more or less unflyable weather. And when it was VMC, i was sure to work… Anyway, this 2 hour flight paid for all the idling last month… After some cruise performance tests, a short recon of Arosa (where we’ll go on a short snowboard break) i had castillo hinchable planned to fly back to Birrfeld… Upon crossing the CTR of Altenrhein (LSZR), by pure coincidence, Chrigi Keller was taking off with their RV-6A HB-YKD… Had plenty of fuel, so let’s go for some pictures ;-) Unfortunately i was by myself and had left the camera at home. Thanks to Chrigi for once again some awesome pictures of YMT in the air. That makes him the unchallenged leader in YMT air to air photography ;-)
Posted by Bernhard Daenzer | Filed under Flight Testing, Flying
