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A month back or so, I informed around to see who would be interested in flying with me to Spain.... one of things on my fliying-wishlist. Etienne liked the idea, also to obtain a few IFR hours.
Although Girona is in the north of Spain, flying to Girona from Rotterdam takes about 6.5 hours if you don't have head wind, so it is not a short trip. To make it more fun, we tried to not be any longer in the air than 2 hours at a time, because landing is fun, and it allows for personal pit-stops and fuel.
The goal of the trip was also to take some family living on the Costa Brava for a local flight over their house and businesses.
We prepared the flight during a couple of weeks and had selected a grand variety of airports (from regional airports to ultra small aerodromes and quiet airfields).
My niece Floor has flown before with us, but my niece Sofie and my sister did not ever. Time to change that! We had a great flight over Scheveningen, their house in Zoetermeer and back to the field.
English readers: click here for the english translation
Mijn beste vriend is er niet meer. Na 17 maanden vechten tegen kleincellig longkanker heeft uiteindelijk de ziekte gewonnen. Afgelopen zaterdag blies Onno zijn laatste adem uit, in het bijzijn van zijn vrouw en kinderen.
English translation available at end of article:
My best friend has passed away. After 17 months of fighting his small cell lung cancer, the disease has won at last. Last saturday, Onno died in the company of his family.
The Flyblogger flight to Germany (Marl) was cancelled due to the weather in Germany, and high crosswinds for almost all fields and expected rainshowers in The Netherlands. Ton and me decided however to fly out, and meet Frank and Pascal in Lelystad.
The flight to the field was wobbly, but Ton's landing on EHLE was a very neat and controlled crosswind landing. Beautiful scenery on the way, but hard to shoot pictures.
We bought some updated VFR charts in the pilotshop and after that went for lunch with the Lelystad based Flybloggers. Nice to see you guys!
The flight back was different. The weather had deteriorated (at least over the Flevopolder), and we took off with light rain. Visibility from 1000 feet was marginal. Ground view OK, but poor ahead (with VFR limits of course :-) ). We had planned to cross the Schiphol CTR but decided that in these conditions that would not be a good idea. We called Amsterdam Info to report our position, altidtude and asked for other traffic reports. There was only 1 police helicopter playing around, and the frequency was otherwise very quiet. In the vicinity of Victor the weather cleared, and Schiphol METAR reported 10km's visibility. We asked Amsterdam to inform Schiphol of our crossing intention, which was approved. Cool!
The weather improved towards the coast and we even saw some sunshine. In Scheveningen a few of the beach bars were already set up again:
The wind in Rotterdam was 300 with 13knots which is a nice cross wind. The TAF earlier had pointed out a 30018G28 with 250v310, so the actual situation was better! My landing was not the best I ever made but quite OK. Great flight!
A few more pictures: click this link
For a trip this sunday, I had a short checkout this morning on the PH-ATW (Cessna 172N). Great flying, but I am rusty on the special exercises I saw. Steep turns, stalls, simulated engine failure on downwind, and simulated engine failure on take off, all in 20 minutes..... Hopefully the weather is fair on Sunday!
picture by Kees van Boven
Sometimes you enjoy a flight for the piloting skills, sometimes for the views. Today I had a severe case of the latter. What a beautiful scenery even close to the home field. It has been a while since my last flight and the wx (weather) forecast was so-so but I decided to drive to the airport (new name: Rotterdam The Hague airport) to see whether my flight could take off.
At the airport it turned out that the TAF (aviation weather forecast) had been corrected and that no rainsnow showers were to be expected. So there I went for this solo flight. The route was EHRD-Scheveningen-Hoek van Holland, Haringvliet river, Dordrecht, Romeo arrival and back to the field.
The landing was a neat cross wind landing, well before the rotation point of a 737 that had taken off just before.
Cool flight! More pictures here!
3 members of the flying club I belong to, have decided to fly a Jetprop to India in March. The trip, with destination Goa and with stops in Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India is at this moment being prepared. The Piper Malibu Jetprop is thoroughly serviced, applications for visa's are submitted, etc etc.
On March 8, they will take off towards the east. Good luck guys!
Follow them on: Flight of Imagination blog, and/or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/indiaflight
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