Check flight done

We have had a beautiful day today and are still enjoying it at the time of typing this, which is earlier than usual. The reason is that there’s a Marché Gormande at Plazac this evening which I’m going to as it’s the first one of the season.

They are great fun. The village has put out marquees for the attendees with trestle tables and chairs and on the evening, which starts at 7.00 pm, there will be lots of vendors of many different types of food and refreshments. Then you go around to see what’s on offer, choose what you want, buy some wine to go with it and sit down with your friends and enjoy it. Plazac usually has a little band as well providing music, so it’ll be good fun.

But that’s not the reason for this post, which is about the flight I did this morning in F-JHHP to check its new radio and transponder with Bergerac. Everything went just fine. I asked the controller for a radio and transponder check but he was a bit busy and just responded normally to my radio calls, so I assume that’s working OK. He also gave me a squawk code and there was no adverse response, so I’m assuming that’s OK too.

We had a QNH of 1025 today, so quite high. I seemed to detect quite a discrepancy between the transponder FL and my altimeter readout and I’ve been a bit concerned about the latter for a little while. It’s too early to say whether it’s inaccurate or not so for now I’ll just keep my eye on it.

The flight was from Malbec to Sainte-Foy-la-Grande via the Bergerac reporting points NE and NW to the north of the Bergerac zone and then from Ste Foy to Sarlat to the south. I wasn’t intending to take any pictures as that wasn’t the purpose of the flight, plus it became very thermic as the flight went on, but I did fire off a few shots.

Here’s a shot of Ste-Foy-la-Grande as I climbed out en route for Sarlat.

A bit further on to the east of the town I noticed this newish golf or country club, presumably where the Ste Foy wine barons go to get their weekly exercise.

Here’s a shot I took of the airfield at Belvès in the middle distance as I flew on my way.

Here’s a shot of the old town of Belvès itself perched up on it’s promontory overlooking the surrounding farmland.

To finish off, here’s a shot of the new panel actually in use. It shows the squawk code that Bergerac gave me which I was no longer using as I was by then back to squawking 7000. When I took the shot I was being thrown around quite a bit by the thermic bumps so I’m surprised how well it came out. As you can see, I’m not getting an oil temperature readout so I’ll have to find out why that is.

So that was mission accomplished. I can now go ahead and arrange an appointment at La Rochelle to get the installation checked and signed off, which you have to do here with a brand-new set up and every 6 years thereafter. Sadly, the weather doesn’t look as though it’s going to play ball during the coming week so I’ll just have to remain patient and see how it turns out. Oh, and by the way, my second new headset arrived today so I’ll be well set up for it.