Day: February 10, 2015

I thought that today would shape up to be a carbon copy of yesterday, but it didn’t. Sure, we had wall-to-wall blue sky and sunshine again, but whereas the visibility yesterday was so good that you could see for miles, today the haze didn’t lift. That was because the temperature stayed a couple of degrees or so lower, with a high of around 12 degrees Celsius at best. Nevertheless, that wasn’t going to stop me flying today and after I’d given him a call, my pal Victor tagged along too.

I’ve had a flight in mind that I’ve wanted to do for some time, namely a complete circuit around Brive-la-Gaillarde, and that’s what we decided to do today. Take off was just after 2.00 pm after I’d had a chance to stick some patches over yet more holes gnawed into 56NE’s seats by the resident rodent that I’m afraid I’m going to have to deal with by setting some traps in the aircraft. I don’t like the idea but I can’t risk the little blighter chewing through something more important, which it seems capable of from the chunks that it previously gnawed out of the heavy plastic that I made the aircraft’s covers out of. Here’s a shot showing the route that we took.

As before when I flew up towards Brive, we could clearly see the runway of the new Brive airport, Vallée de la Dordogne, away off our starboard wing, while we were flying directly towards the city’s old airport, Brive Laroche. This was closed in 2011 because its runway could not be extended to take regional jets like Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s and it’s now unused with the large white ‘X’s on its runways and taxiways clearly visible from 56NE. At this time of the year, there are only three return flights a day to Paris Orly at the new airport, so there was no traffic to worry about, but we remained well outside the airport’s CAS boundary in any case. As Brive Laroche is closed, we were able to fly right up to its southern boundary, tucked as it is in the south-western corner of the city, before turning right on the course I’d planned to circuit the city as a whole.

This was the first time that I’d flown this close to Brive and I was quite surprised to see just how large and sprawling it actually is. And also surprisingly, while we were flying around it, off to the north-east we could also see the plumes of white cloud hanging over the snow-capped mountains of the Massif Central. After 15 minutes or so, we’d completed our tour of Brive and we found ourselves back at Brive Laroche, but this time just off its northern boundary. That was the time to change course to head back on a south-westerly heading towards Terrasson.

As we passed to the east of Terrasson, I was also able to show Victor the local ULM field that I found on my last flight and we dive-bombed the hangar before breaking off and climbing back up to about 1600 feet so as to clear the hills to the town’s south-west. I would like to have taken some pics during the flight, especially while we were flying around Brive, but didn’t as I didn’t feel like removing my gloves. However, Victor was snapping away all the while and will be sharing the fifty or so shots that he made tomorrow. Until then, here are a few samples that he took.

Soon after flying past Montignac so Victor could take a few shots, we arrived at Thonac. Then it was just a matter of turning onto the usual 151 degrees for a long final into Galinat, where we made a safe landing with the flight having lasted 55 minutes. This equated to an average speed of 105 kmh (65 mph) including take off and landing, which I didn’t think was too bad considering 56NE was carrying two hefty passengers all wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing to keep warm. It was time well-spent I think, and definitely a flight that I’ll have to repeat later in the year when the weather is better and I have a camera in a hand that doesn’t have a thick glove on it.