Oh dear…

I spoke earlier to STAR, the organisation in La Rochelle who do the official avionics checks and sign installations off. It turns out that they can’t do anything for me before next week and certainly not this coming Thursday, which would look to be a good weather window to fly up there.

Next Monday is a national holiday in France, so that would be out and it looks as though the weather will be poor then anyway. It also looks as though the poor weather will continue for most of next week right up until Friday at the earliest with some days in between being quite stormy.

So it looks as though I’m entering yet another French marathon and I bet that it will be two or three weeks from now before I get my Savannah’s new radio and transponder signed off. If the weather’s poor I couldn’t fly anyway but if there are a few good days, I’d keep flying and using the kit in any case as nobody is going to check. Plus I always have the Weedhopper to fly if I want to.

But what it does do until the check has been completed is take away my own discretion as to when I’ll be able to fly to the UK and that’s what rankles. The last time I went, back in 2016, it was in August and I’d hoped to make it before then this time around. If things happened when you asked for them to it wouldn’t matter, but this bureaucracy when you have to hang around waiting for things at ‘their’ convenience is a damn nuisance 😐