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August 28, 2005

Another fine day of formation flying

Shelter Cove was to be the site of another Grumman Fly-In, but ended up socked in. Wisely, we decided to meet in Ukiah to then proceed onwards, so we could elegantly change our plans to stay in the sun and practice there.

Four planes participated: Wolfgang Pollak, John Bunker, Colin Aro and myself. Our first session was:

We were all somewhat rusty, and the first rejoin was a gaggle. As time progressed, we all found our groove and things started looking good. The best part was the appreciative radio calls from the ground as we did our initial. There may be hope that we may become presentable someday.

Me being the junior member, I was #4 all the way - there are inconveniences and advanatages to that - yes, one has to scramble to keep up, since being on the outside of turns means that the speed changes are considerable, but on the other hand I didn't need to do much thinking or planning. Following orders suited me just fine, had enough to do to keep in position.

After a hearty lunch at the blue bird diner opposite of the terminal building in Ukiah, Colin Aro and John Bunker decided to return to Reno. Wolfgang and I decided to fly back to the South Bay, and I again was wingman, no thinking required.

We tried some echelon turns, and they are bizarre. I'm not sure I like them, they seem unsafe. I'll need to go up with an instructor someday to make sure I know what they are supposed to look like.

The best part of the return flight was our transition through SFO's class B airspace along 101. We had lots of opposite direction traffic, therefore lots of knowledgeable spectators - very motivating to stick to my station like glue. It helps that I know the transition very well, so was able to anticipate all turns.

No photos, sorry. I was happy to be solo, no distraction whatsoever.

Posted by Christian Goetze at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2005

Going to Europe (part I)

My wife and I are going to Europe end of September. No, not by ourselves, the personal transatlantic flight will have to wait for adequate funding, but, I will be renting a C172 from a french aeroclub.

Some preparation is required for this, and, besides contacting the nice people at the Aéro Club Paris Sud, Toussus le noble, the most important thing is to obtain a validation of your FAA license.

This requires writing a formal letter to the french equivalent of the FAA and include the following:

In the letter, you should state your request to obtain a validation, and you should indicate exactly where it should be sent to. It works best if you do it in french, but with a little bit of luck, it may work in english too. See the link below for the actual letter I sent.

Next step in the planning process is to obtain proper charts and airport directories. The European equivalent of the Jeppesens are the Bottlangs, and they're about the same price - in other words: way too expensive! Unfortunately, even VFR approaches and patterns to airports are somewhat unusual, and for noise abattement, the charted routes must be followed unless you wish to pay extra, so it is probably necessary to bite the bullet. Note that the Bottlangs need to be ordered from Europe, Jeppesen is so messed up they can't do it from here, even though their website has them listed. I chose to support the local airport shop and order it from them.

If you own a handheld GPS, make sure to take it with you and have the european database on it.

In part II, airspace and other bizarre rules of the air - coming as soon as my charts arrive.

Update:

Charts are on the way, but meanwhile I found Fly in France, a great website. It also seems that at least airport diagrams are available

Posted by Christian Goetze at 09:41 PM | Comments (2)