Undercast

What a miserable day. Fog, rain .... and overcast in 700 feet. Really not a day for flying? Well, not so fast. Beautiful sun expected us in 3500 ft after popping skywards out of the clouds and a wonderful flight to Mannheim for a meeting. In Mannheim was CAVOK, btw, and took Lolchen only 50 min to get there in 14,000 feet.

The way back in 9000 feet was also extremely nice - too bad I forgot my sunglasses - until the approach to Kassel airport. A solid "undercast" which looked like a snowy mountain ski piste, made me realize again how important a second engine is. What would you do now if you have a single engine airplane and the engine quits? Or even "only" the damn suction pump, the alternator or whatsoever. True the airplane would still fly without the suction pump, but how about your approach without the instruments? Or the alternator? Yep the battery provides juice for 20 min, which means you are running out of radios, gps, dme, and loc just at the moment you dive into the clouds and you badly need those. No way, it's an insurance. It costs 8Gph and it's worthit.





Here is a nice small Video from the flight (direction Mannheim):

Lola meets Ohlala

Time to see what happens when Ohlala starts flying. After that long beautiful fall day in the woods near Calden we took our new Cockerspaniel "Ohlala" for a ride in Lola. Knowing that it was bumpy, noisy and absolutely unusual we truly had expected a very nervous and uncomfortable puppy in the plane. But nothing like that. Curious and easy as if flying was the only thing Ohlala ever did, she enjoyed that short ride into the cold November day. Our new family member earned her first Wings. Approved for further take-offs!

Frequent Flyer

We have a new frequent flyer member!

A chocolate brown English Cocker Spaniel. She has no idea yet being a privileged member of our crew, even though flight school will start soon...

Well, honestly ... and we have no idea how to learn a dog to fly.

So... Write down all your experiences. Tips.
And let us know which head set you use for the dog. Cause there's a lot of ear on this Cocker Spaniel...

High Pressure

The Turbos of the Twin Comanche transform the brave IO-320 engines into 2 high performance, 25,000 Feet and 200 Knots fast hot rods. But they need good caring, especially around the 2 or 3 major air leakages. One of them is the turbo box, which moves a little flap inside the box and needs to be very airtight. Well, see above how it looks when being tested with a new seal on the kitchen table and waiting to be intensively tested in FL 200.

SFO at night

Agreed. San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Great living here with it's vineyards, beaches, victorian houses and buzzing nightlife. Time for us to get a bird's perspective on that ... and follow the night silhouette around the bay from a C182 out of Livermoore.

The freedom of flying in the US versus in Europe is at it's most when flying at night. In the US you need an airplane and an airport. That's it, have fun and a save tripIn Germany you need an airplane, an airport a lawyer to walk you through the regulations, a notary since you will have to sell your house prior to your take off - otherwise you can't afford the landing fees - and many more things like dozens of phone calls, permission etc.

So, anyway, a nice 2h flight in smooth air ... back at 11pm and zero landing-fee!!

Back to the roots

For fun and training dead reckoning skills,
we fly with a small Microlight (DMSAC) again to Berlin-Tempelhof (EDDI), maybe for the last time....

It takes more than 5 hours flight time for the round trip, a lot of fun with the very busy Tower-Lady w/o transponder on board and a nice sunny Afternoon in Berlin.

And Lola? She´s awaits eagerly the next trip to whereever. But she lend us a comfortable headset :-)


Bye bye, Tempelhof.....

50h later ...

Every 50h I bring Lola to an inspection. Konstantin and Jan from Piper did the first 50h inspection after a long period without having any troubles with Lola. She flew nice and smooth in the last weeks and didn't miss a beat from the engines. So what came out was a broken wire to the left Alternator (David was right!) and a broken exhaust pipe. That's it. Nothing serious but nice that they could fix it all right on the spot. Good job, guys!

Direct Bamsu to avoid

.. ..
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

..
..




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!!

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 ;)

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 ...

The "Umkehrflugzeug"

..
..




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.

Bye, bye Tempelhof

...
...





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!!

On the Rocks

...
...





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!

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 :-)