Sunday, July 27, 2008

Direct Bamsu to avoid

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After a very intense weather check we took off into the UK Sky, knowing that it'll be a bit bumpy in the Benelux. Since Kassel is at the same latitude as Blackbushe and seeing the radar image we needed just a heading of 090 to be fine, but our routing went via LNO which was in the middle of the activity. A simple "Request direct Bamsu to avoid" in the vicinity of Koksijde (Belgium Coast) simplified the routing and cleared us well of the "Charlie Browns". Nice flight. 2:50 from Breakfast at Tamsin's house to Coffee at Ollie's :-)


Tamsin and her parents, Kathleen and John, also met Lola for the first time. Clearly this kid likes airplanes, so I promised to take them on a sightseeing flight the next time we will revisit again.

As for the moment the shadow of Lola was just fine.

Call it a day

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After Annelies started her baby-day, I left to Blackbushe Airport and first met the "technical committee" having tea. I quickly had one in my hand and already felt like a board member.

David Buttle, who knows the Comanches inside-out and just returned from his 20th Atlantic crossing, quickly inspected Lola and agreed to test-fly her along the bristish coast. After ca. 1h of beautiful cruising around the Isle of White we returned to Blackbushe.

His opinion on Lola: One of the best he's ever seen and flown. Thank you David!

In total I never had a more friendly welcome to an airport crowd than to the ones in Blackbushe (EGLK) and I can only encourage any normal thinking pilot to visit that airport and their bunch of old school nice people.

Annelies, please go and schedule some more baby-days soon!!

Friday, July 25, 2008

Too much traffic for a Friday

Seen that the pilot lies KO in the sofa, I'll need to take over and ensure Lola's trip of the day is written down. In my own words :)

Even though Joerg didn't feel like leaving 'la Belgique' this morning, I convinced him using some of my charm (and the idea of meeting Comanche-guru David which probably did it) to fly to Blackbushe in England to go and see my newborn niece Tamsin.

Leaving Liège went well, even though Brussels kept on repeating they wanted us to climb to FL 180. Joerg used his charm this time and they admitted confusing us with someone else... Tsss...Too much traffic on a Friday morning, I suppose...

My first over-water experience. I kept on checking if the land behind us stayed in sight as long as I didn't see England coming up. Lost it for some minutes, but Lola and I were doing fine.

A lot of clouds once we crossed that English border, a lot of radio talk - I always need to applause Joerg afterwards managing all of these chatterboxes on the radio - and finally a lot of traffic. So much traffic that we even found another plane on our landing strip in Blackbushe. Even the control tower was surprised... But the captain managed brilliantly! And so did Lola.

And while Joerg will enjoy some hangar flying with David - an extreme friendly comanche-guru - tomorrow, I will have a baby-day ;)

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Grandfather's Land



One of my ancestors is from Belgium, but we only discovered that lately. So Annelies and I took Lola for a ride to Grandpa's land :-) Smooth. Nice. A very warm welcome from a guy in EBLG (Liège) who flies Twincos in the flightsimulator and an easy transition to nearby brussels made it a super summer weekend trip. Let's see what else the weekend has in place for us ...

Saturday, July 19, 2008

The "Umkehrflugzeug"

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Funny. An elderly Microlight Flightinstructor called Lola some days ago an "Umkehrflugzeug", verbally translated: A "return-airplane". Not so sure what he ment since he only flies traffic patterns, but I am happy to have an Umkehrflugzeug. Henrik and I flew yesterday at 1pm to Liege (EBLG), landed there 1:10 h later and he returned back to Kassel before I even finished my Cappuccino in 0:48 h. A nice "Umkehr" in a total of 2h where you would need minimum 8h by car or train. So the elderly guy wondered 2h later why Lola returned back to the field. For us: Mission accomplished, but for him maybe too fast to be true...

The warm-front between Kassel and Liege was smooth. Light rain. But visibillity from start until 2000ft when popping out of the clouds absolut zero.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Bye, bye Tempelhof

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One of the great accomplishments of modern, urban cities is their infrastructure. Thousands of business travellers or tourists come for short or long term visits.
So did we on Tuesday morning to Berlin. A meeting that took place at 3pm, the preparation in the morning in Kassel 400 Km away and back to our families in the afternoon. That is only doable with general aviation AND infrastructure. From Kassel to Tempelhof in 1:10 h. From Tempelhof to the meeting in 0:30 h so less than 2h from the office in Kassel to the meeting in Berlin.

So if anybody knows why this great piece of infrastructure in Berlin will be closed shortly, please advice!!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

On the Rocks

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A normal business day. A meeting in Dresden. So sure we'd take Lola for a day trip there. 30 Kts wind from the West and icing in FL 90. Enough to make some whiskey on the rocks out of it, so time for a complete de-ice test: windshield, props, boots. Nice. All worked. Great Job Jan!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Heading South




Ibiza. Known for Sun & Fun, hot beaches and cool drinks. Most of the people who go there get into their T-shirts, Flip Flops and take a cheap direct flight.

Another way of going there is with Lola, Henrik, Peter and Michael, heavy guys and luggage and not enough fuel to make it direct from Kassel. So a planned fuel stop in Montpelier sounded easy and convenient. Until you meet french "officials". In perfect "we ignore any other language than french" and we want to see "douane papers" that the VAT for the plane was paid 10 years ago and bla, bla ... Lola was grounded for some hours until the papers were sent from Germany by fax.

Anyway, Ibiza was obviously nice with, Lola ran well and who needs Turbos anyhow :-)