{"id":11280,"date":"2016-06-21T20:08:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T19:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=11280"},"modified":"2017-01-31T20:57:49","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T20:57:49","slug":"another-fantastic-mornings-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/another-fantastic-mornings-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"Another fantastic morning’s flying!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was exactly the kind of day we should<\/em> be getting at this time of year. Over last week-end, Wim and I had planned to fly back to Le Thou in the Charente Maritime where we’d had such a good time last year at their evening’s celebration of la F\u00eate de St Jean le Baptiste, as Saturday was the day for it again this year. The weather beat us unfortunately, and sadly we had to give it a miss. We’d also wanted to combine it with a visit to the Rib\u00e9rac ‘wings and wheels’ open day on the way back on Sunday, but that also went by the board.<\/p>\n

We’d been watching the weather forecasts however, and knew that things would be changing for the better this week, so as a kind of compromise, we’d put together a plan for today to drop into several more local airfields that Wim already knew but that I’d never been to. Here’s a shot of my intended route. Wim’s was a bit shorter as he’d be in the Red Baron and I’d be in the Savannah, but we planned to end up at the same places at about the same times.<\/p>\n

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After leaving Malbec, our first landing would be at Base ULM LF2438, Meygnaud Valeuil, one of the airfields I’d looked out for during my recent flight up to Brant\u00f4me, just to the south of the town. Then we’d head off west to an airfield called Argentine, which is open for ULMs but is mainly used by club aircraft that are based there.<\/p>\n

From there Wim would head off direct to Rib\u00e9rac while I, with my greater airspeed, would fly south-west to spot a large airfield that’s shown on the chart but has always intrigued me, as it has no name. After doing so, I’d then also join Wim at Rib\u00e9rac.<\/p>\n

From Rib\u00e9rac, Wim would then head straight back to his own airfield at Plazac while I would return to Malbec with a bit of a diversion to spot another ULM airfield, LF2465 Le Pas de l’Aze.<\/p>\n

It all went really smoothly and just as planned. Wim came into Malbec at 9.00am and the morning was perfect – no wind whatsoever and the day just beginning to warm up. And as I found when I took off, dead smooth, hands-off flying conditions with no thermals whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Although Wim took off before me, I just beat him into Valeuil and cleared the runway just as he was on final. We taxied over to a parking place and shortly afterwards were greeted by Andr\u00e9, who it turned out Wim knew from about 15 years ago, and the charming Ina, an English lady who joined us a bit later. Here’s a shot of Wim and Andr\u00e9 standing together next to the Red Baron.<\/p>\n

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After a conversation of about half-an-hour we had to decline their kind offer of a cup of coffee as we were worried about thermals beginning to bubble up, as by that time the morning was growing much hotter. They said that in that we case we should come back especially another time and on that note we bade our good-byes and Wim took off for Argentine, followed by me a few minutes later.<\/p>\n

Once again, I arrived before Wim, however, and although I’d looked at Argentine on Google Earth, found it not that easy to spot, despite its long runway. The reason was that the ground is very bare, dry and rocky and the runway hardly stands out at all, and it also didn’t help that the colours of the windsock were rather faded. However, I joined downwind and had cleared the runway and parked before Wim arrived.<\/p>\n

The airfield is where the Aeroclub Rochebeaucourt is based and we parked next to their hangar. There was nobody around, however, and a peek through the gap in the hangar doors seemed to indicate that despite appearances from the outside, inside it was a little bit more run-down. In fact the whole airfield unfortunately seemed to reflect that kind of image, although maybe I was being influenced too much by the arid, rather desolate state of the apron and runway which were really just the result of a poor area of ground unsuitable for much else being put to good use as an airfield.<\/p>\n

Here’s a shot of our two aircraft outside the club hangar with Wim programming his GPS for his next leg to Rib\u00e9rac.<\/p>\n

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Once again, Wim took off before me and headed almost due south while I headed off in a south-westerly direction to find the airfield with no name. Here’s a shot I took of my panel when I was just over half-way there, as can be seen from my GPS.<\/p>\n

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And here are shots taken out of each side of the aircraft at about the same time, the first looking north and the second, south.<\/p>\n

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I managed to find the elusive airfield without too much trouble – hard to miss it really because of the length of its runway.<\/p>\n

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It turned out to be not an airfield at all really, just a ‘piste priv\u00e9e’ with a very long runway. Obviously the owner doesn’t want to encourage any visitors, which is why he hasn’t given it a name and added it to the FFPLUM file.<\/p>\n

Then on to Rib\u00e9rac. Although Wim had left Argentine before me and I’d made quite a detour to find the airfield with no name, I saw him on short final at Rib\u00e9rac just as I was joining overhead. After landing, I taxied up and parked next to him and here’s a shot that I took of the two aircraft on the Rib\u00e9rac apron, a bit later actually, just as Wim was about to depart.<\/p>\n

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Although I’d heard a few aircraft making radio calls at Belv\u00e8s, which we landed at the other day, and Chalais to the north-west of Rib\u00e9rac, which I’ve not yet been to, it turned out that Rib\u00e9rac itself, which has a thriving aero-club, was as dead as a door nail. Here’s a shot that I took of the immaculate, but locked up, control tower followed by one of yours-truly slouching, as usual, outside the aero-club office.<\/p>\n

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Then it was time to head for home. Wim went off first and we both took off in the opposite direction to the one that we’d landed in as there was hardly any wind. I went off to find LF2465, which I did without too much difficulty as shown below.<\/p>\n

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Then I had to climb to over 2500 ft to avoid infringing danger area R251 that is active only on week days, after which I continued towards Malbec descending all the way as I went. I’d programmed my GPS for a long final to give me plenty of time to set myself up to land and found that on days like today, it’s a piece of cake spotting the vivid green of the hangar roofs.<\/p>\n

By now, a few thermals and bumps were making themselves felt, but I didn’t let those worry me and just concentrated on holding my landing speed all the way down and keeping my eyes on the arrows that mark the threshold. The landing was fine, not my best of the day but quite satisfactory nevertheless. And so our morning’s flying came to an end – 2 hours 5 minutes and three new airfields in the log book. A pretty good morning’s work I’d say!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was exactly the kind of day we should be getting at this time of year. Over last week-end, Wim and I had planned to fly back to Le Thou in the Charente Maritime where we’d had such a good time last year at their evening’s celebration of la F\u00eate de St Jean le Baptiste, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11280"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12588,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11280\/revisions\/12588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}