One down…

And two to go!

For once it looks as though the weather will cooperate and I’ll be able to fly up to La Rochelle to get my Savannah’s transponder and radio re-certified this coming Friday 27 June. The winds and weather generally look favourable and if I get away by 08.00 am, current calculations show that I should arrive at La Rochelle in about 1 hour 40 minutes. I plan to fly a counter-clockwise route from Malbec heading to La Rochelle via the north of Cognac and back to Malbec via the south.

With today’s weather forecast the return flight should only take about 1 hour 20 minutes so with the Savannah’s endurance of over 4 1/2 hours and a total flying time of about 3 hours there should be no need for me to take on fuel at La Rochelle. As I remember, I didn’t when I visited to have the avionics checked the first time.

The flight north should be fairly routine – all I will need to be sure of will be to remain under 1500 feet when passing through Cognac airspace. The return flight will be a bit more interesting as I will need to remain clear of Rochefort airspace and also the restricted area at Saintes, which is an Armée de l’Air flying school.

The latter only extends to a height of 1500 feet but to be sure of avoiding any problems I intend to avoid it completely, which is no big deal. I’ll then turn onto a route that passes between the airfields of Pons and Jonzac while neatly avoiding the two of them and with a bit of luck, depending on how long things take at La Rochelle, I should be back at Malbec by mid-afternoon.

So after Friday that will only leave the tasks that I have to complete for my Australian tourist visa. I’ve booked a rail ticket to go to Paris for my biometrics on 2 July and arranged for a medical in Bordeaux on 8 July so that should wrap those up. All I’ll then need to do is wait for my visa to come through.

That will still leave one more thing though – arranging the installation of my new swimming pool the components of which have been standing out in front of my house for the past several weeks. It would have been lovely to have had it during the recent period of very hot weather – over 40 degrees C on some days – but quite honestly I think I’ll be lucky to see it in and ready to use by the end of the summer. Oh well, there’s always next year…