A German never comes too late...

We took off at 6 from Salerno Pontecagnano (LIRI), saluted by half of the airport personnel and visitors. We had decided, only an hour before leaving, that we would not proceed our trip to the South but would leave back to the North of Italy. We have only a few days left, and with possible other techie problems we would otherwise not even make it in time back to Germany and Belgium. And you know... A german never comes too late...

Lola's take-off was smoothly, and she flew gentle as always. But once up in the sky, I got nervous...We wanted to fly VFR to Perugia (LIRZ) and stay in Assisi, but it was extremely misty. We have still not had an answer to where this mist came from...The Vesuvius, dirty hot smog or a forest in fire, but during the whole flight it stayed misty and uncomfortable to fly.

Next to that, there was no radio controller who felt like talking to us in the limited airspace of Napoli. Silence and mist...

By the time we needed to cross some mountains of 7,000 to 8,000 feet to reach Perugia, Lola's performance fell back. She climbed difficultly, and the engine monitoring system showed values which where too high and low (EGT). We discussed shortly, and decided not to cross the mountains this way and land to have the spark plugs checked (Joerg assumes it's a fouling one at high temperatures).

A safety landing was prepared and we choose for the airport in Ancona, only ten minutes away... An easy landing for Joerg with a 3000 meter paved runway. No way to miss this one, even if he would not have had his contactlenses...

And it looks like we have found that one hidden spot in Italy...The coast - Portonovo - is pretty busy, but the countryside looks like Tuscany, with amazing sun sets...We'll let you know soon how Lola is doing, and enjoy in meantime this wonderful hidden spot of Italia...