Back in the air

After a few weeks’ break, with a precious cargo. But on a terribly murky day. I hadn’t flown for a while due to getting my house ready for the extended planned visit of my sister and brother-in-law so I was keen to get airborne in any case. So when Wim said that his 15-year-old granddaughter, who has ambitions of becoming a pilot, would be excited at the idea of a flight before leaving for home today after visiting with her family, I jumped at the idea of treating her to one.

But first I needed to make sure that 77ASY was all good and ready to go after standing hangar-bound for several weeks, so after repairing a hose that had split on my electric refuelling pump, I topped up the tanks and did a short local flight taking in Condat and Galinat on the afternoon of 26 December with the idea of taking the young lady on a longer flight the next day.

I didn’t take my camera with me so was only able to take few shots with my phone whose camera I’ve now decided is all but useless due to its abysmal quality. First a shot on the grass at Condat.

Two more parked at Galinat in the feeble winter sunshine.

Any idea of doing a flight the next day was dashed, however. We are currently in a high-pressure period with very little wind and as a consequence, we’re being dogged by banks of very low cloud and mist. The trouble is that the cloud cover is preventing the sun breaking through to raise the temperature to burn the mist off and as there is little or no wind to clear it away, some days are remaining cold and gloomy from dawn until dusk. And unfortunately, Thursday 27th was one of those days.

So it was fingers crossed that conditions would improve by yesterday as that was the last day my young passenger would be able to fly and luckily, although it was still far from an ideal day, we did manage to get up and away. Here’s the route that I’d had planned, taking in landings at Sarlat, Figeac-Livernon and Fumel, the latter being a first for me even though it’s only about half-an-hour’s flying time in the Savannah from Malbec.

We overflew Galinat but didn’t land there as I’d found two days before that the runway had been badly damaged by wild boar and didn’t want to take any risks, having a passenger on board. Flying conditions deteriorated quite dramatically the further south and east that we flew, with visibilty decreasing due to mist and the cloud base lowering to not much more than 2000ft. I shot a video of the flight that I’ll be processing and editing shortly and a screen shot from it taken as we were approaching Figeac shows what I’m talking about.

But we made it OK. It had brightened up quite nicely by the time we took off from Malbec and although there were a few bumps due to the broken low cloudbase, conditions were still pretty good by the time we got to Sarlat. Rather unsurprisingly, there was nobody around and I noticed when we taxied in and parked that the airfield had had a bit of a spruce-up with newly painted lines and new yellow markers for what is now the long-term grass parking area, as can be seen in the next shot.

We didn’t hang around for very long and as there was nobody else flying in the area, after taking off on runway 28, I did an immediate sharp right-hand turn to head off for Figeac. The further east we flew, the less broken the cloudbase became until we were eventually just below the base of continuous cover. And it became noticeably colder too. However, despite being considerably reduced, visibility remained quite safe to fly in and eventually Figeac hoved into view.

I called and approached normally but it was evident that yet again, there was nobody else flying in the area. After parking in front of the clubhouse and taking the following shot, I did find that there was a young chap in the aero club who was thinking about flying and planned to top up the tanks of the club’s Cessna 152, which he was doing when we eventually taxied out to take off. We didn’t hang around too long because it was actually pretty cold outside the aircraft!

Next stop Fumel. The route there took us back out of the murk and the sunshine began to break through the increasingly more broken cloudbase as we proceeded westwards. I also noticed that the radio traffic was growing in volume, from several aircraft operating at Belvès, which we were getting closer to by the minute the more we headed west.

By the time we were approaching Fumel, the sky was quite bright with broken patches of cloud so it wasn’t difficult spotting the airfield, which is on a plateau with only a single runway with no taxiway and access only at its northern end. It was again clear that nobody else was flying in the area but I still did the normal radio calls and an overhead join to approach and land left downwind for runway 35. Here are the final shots that I took there with my young passenger out stretching her legs before taking off on the final leg to return to Malbec.

Shortly after leaving Fumel, we passed overhead Belvès town and to the east of the airfield. We were well clear of the airfield zone and circuit but could clearly see the aircraft in the pattern and were surprised by how slowly they seemed to be flying!

The whole flight took just over two hours including engine starts, taxying, takeoffs and landings. It was definitely not the best day to fly but it was warm enough in the Savannah’s cabin with a bit of hot air coming in from the engine’s exhaust. It blew my cobwebs away anyway, and my passenger also said that she’d enjoyed every minute, so taken all round, it was well worthwhile 😉