Last chance!

The weather forecast for today hadn’t looked up to very much and I’d more or less given up hope of getting a final flight in this year. However, I had to go to the supermarket this morning as it’ll be closed tomorrow and on the way back I noticed that although the day wasn’t that bright, the wind wasn’t blowing anything like as hard as had been forecast and there were also very few gusts. So as this would definitely be the last chance to get airborne in 2013, I decided that after unpacking my shopping bag, I’d get changed, have a quick snack, get across to Galinat and get 56NE’s covers off for a short afternoon flight.

And I was really pleased that I did, because after walking and checking the runway, which was rather soggy even though it had been recently cut, I got a very pleasurable 45 minutes in and it wasn’t even that cold. And surprisingly, I even kept finding little pockets of lift here and there which at one time got me up to 2000 feet from my planned 16/1700 feet before I stuck the nose down to get back down again. I thought that I’d loaded my next planned flight into my satnav that would have taken me up towards the north-west. However, I found that I hadn’t done so and that in fact, the route and track from my last flight were still in it, so as I also still had the marked-up paper map for the flight to hand, I thought that I might as well go off to the north-east again, in the direction of Brive. So that’s what I did, but this time, although I could still see the runway of Brive la Gaillarde airport off to my right, I didn’t go quite as far and stayed a bit further away from the north-western boundary of the CAS zone that surrounds the airport.

In fact, this time I didn’t go very much further than Terrasson and as I was doing a long left turn to the east of the town which would eventually have me heading back towards Galinat, I took the following pic which shows the Vezere valley with Terrasson in the foreground and the paper mill at Le Lardin in the distance.

I took another a little further on showing Terrasson in a bit more detail. It’s much better than I managed on my last flight and not too bad considering the conditions, but still not up to what I hope to be getting from my new little camera when the weather really does start to improve.

My next waypoint as before, was the paper mill at Le Lardin and a left turn then set me on a heading for Montignac. Half-way between Le Lardin and Montignac on a bend in the Vezere at Aubas, there’s the Chateau de Sauveboef. It is sign-posted from the road as being something of a local attraction but doesn’t look very distinguished either from the ground or the air, as can be seen from the final pic.

I don’t know anything about its contents, but it dates from the XVIIth century, and as well as being a museum and having a reputation for being a centre for art, all I know is that locally it advertises itself as a place to get married!

After flying past the chateau, it was then back to Galinat via the by-now familiar Montignac and Thonac. I’m now getting used to the approach and landing at Galinat and I was pleased to end the year with the smoothest greaser of a landing that I’ve yet been able to achieve. Taxying was another matter though, because with the soggy surface and the uphill gradient, I needed 5000 RPM to get me from where I landed up to the top end of the runway. It was much easier, and I would also add safer compared to the old spot, getting 56NE into its new parking space, but I must remember in the new year to take my ‘debroussailleuse’ over there to cut away some of the low bushes and brambles that are a bit of a nuisance when you’re working around the aircraft, putting the covers back on etc.

But that’s for later, so all that’s left for me is to wish everyone a Happy and Peaceful New Year, and for all of the pilots out there, fair weather in 2014 and as many flying hours as you’d wish for yourself. And above all, let’s wish for them to be safe ones for everyone too 😉