Continuation

This was it.

We entered the aircraft, settle down. Proper passenger briefing and some captains brief. Ivan decided he will handle flying and radios, I was to help with navigation and radio pre selection. Continue reading →

Early start on monday, I did Center of Gravity calculations , Ivan filed General Aviation reports to Police, twice. Onece to Devon… Mistake and proper one to Dorset.

We agreed on all checkpoints, took radio frequencies down on single list. Check A done by me, started putting stuff on the aircraft, boarded and started the trip.

Well, actually we started seriously planning the route to EDFH before going to Shoreham.

Sky deamon, charts, Air Navigation Pro, all employed to get us the least annonying routing.

Decided on spending most of the flight routing along French side, not touching the scary Belgian airspace, oh my, chart for it doesn’t have a single empty spot not covered with danger or restricted areas.

After dinner the we wanted to finish the plog. Hower something amazing happen, Mr had a quick look and shook his head. “nah, you wanna go direct”

After this nice conversation our routing for flight plan was EGHH DCT LYD DCT EDFH. A few midpoints for position verification and two pages of frequencies for radios later we had it all ready.

On Sunday we had a trip from Bournemouth to Shoreham to buy French charts, great flight with my cousines boys (their first flight on light aircraft).

Unfortunately Transair was closed, however when we were low down we noticed Dean landing with his family. After not finding any food at the airport we decided to return to Bournemouth in a formation.

Took some amazing pictures and videos, will upload them later when we find a second.

We had a nice, almost uneventful flight from EGHH via KATHY and GARMI to LFRC. Flying with Garmin G1000 cockpit is a whole new experience comparing to regular “steam” gauges.

Ivan flown the outbound leg and he landed on deserted LFRC about 4pm local, the only a/c on the ground was PA28 from flying club in Wycombe with famous British Airway livery.

Terminal, oh my … Empty, toilets in a basement … No light … Scary…

It certainly looks like this airport had it’s best times already.

Flight back was mine, this was my cross channel and a/c checkout. Fortunately I had already flown in Florida on C172 with G1000 and last couple of days I’ve spent watching training videos. Wasn’t hard but I felt that I’m not using the full potential of my avionics. Will have to get that during our trip proper.

After reaching English shores we went to training grounds for some general handling on the new aircraft, then back to EGHH for ccts, flapless and glide included (hate the glide one)

We logged over 3h on that trip togher, a lot for a first flight.

On my way to EGHH for checkout flight in DA-40TDI as well as channel crossing flight to France to get used to seeing only water under my wings.

If WX permits we will also take WI, a C172 to Shoreham later on.

After months of planning and conversations we have a go… Soon

There was a few wonky points, like oh which aircraft to take, countless adverts skimmed, some tough decisions. After all, we decided that we are going with G-SLYN. Slightly underpowered diesel a/c which we know pretty well. However last Sunday we had bad news, we can’t take it around europe and it’s actually too popular to get it touring for a week.

Then comes getting new aircraft job for Ivan. He managed that, we had to delay the flight past the weekend for the club to even consider lending anything. Now the idea is to take off on Monday with a DA-40TDI.

Lets see how that comes together.