{"id":21194,"date":"2023-05-23T17:11:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T15:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=21194"},"modified":"2023-05-23T17:29:02","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T15:29:02","slug":"at-last-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/at-last-6\/","title":{"rendered":"At last!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve had one of the worst springs since I’ve been here, with long periods of rainy days, and when it hasn’t been raining, high winds. The latter have made me fearful of losing my last ‘tonnelle’ (garden gazebo tent) as not only have we had gale force gusts but also many days when they have persisted for 24 hours or more. So the number of days when I could go flying have been few and far between.<\/p>\n

But yesterday I seized the opportunity, not because it was a good flying day, far from it actually, but because if I failed to take advantage of what was a small window I didn’t know when the next chance would arise. The morning started off with light winds and a fairly calm sky but before I could take off I first had to prepare my flight and then clean the Savannah which, although not having been flown since the last time it was cleaned, was covered in a goodly layer of brown dust and pollen.<\/p>\n

Only then was I ready to go, at something after 1.30 pm, by which time the wind from the north-west had picked up a bit and from the look of the solidly defined low-level cumulus cloud that had formed, flying conditions had become a lot more bumpy. However, although not ideal, conditions were still far from unflyable and with rain and even thunder forecast to move in from the north by 4.00-5.00 pm the weather window was just too good to miss.<\/p>\n

Here’s the route that I had planned – outbound with touch-and-goes at Sarlat and Figeac and another at Fumel after skirting by Cahors before heading inbound back to Malbec. In fact, it didn’t work out like that because the conditions deteriorated and I cut the southern part and roughly followed the track indicated by the red line. Actually, I went a little bit further south than shown but the red line gives a good idea of the decision that I took while in the air.<\/p>\n

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Now the flight itself. I had two GoPros set up, one on the right wing and the other in the cabin, but as usual their batteries gave out after I’d left Figeac, long before the end of the flight. Although I had power-banks connected, I now know that you have to remove the GoPro batteries for them to actually work. I also had the one in the cabin connected up to record my voice and the radio, but this was the first time that I’ve had it working and the results left a bit to be desired.<\/p>\n

So I’ve decided not to make a video of the flight but instead have lifted still images from the footage that I obtained from the two GoPros. Many of the images are in ‘pairs’ with the shots from both GoPros having been taken at about the same time showing the view from the cabin and the same view from outside. First the take off from Malbec.<\/p>\n

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Heading down towards Sarlat flying over the River Dordogne and passing by the small town of Domme.<\/p>\n

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Turning final for runway 28 at Sarlat.<\/p>\n

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Final to land at Sarlat.<\/p>\n

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The landing at Sarlat.<\/p>\n

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Climbing out from Sarlat on a heading of 280 prior to a long right-hand turn to head south-east towards Figeac.<\/p>\n

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Approaching to join left-hand downwind for runway 29 at Figeac. I didn’t like the look of the murky weather off to the east but Figeac seems prone to this and I think it has to do with the high ground off in that direction. Figeac is at an elevation of 1100 metres but the high ground at about 90 kms to the east tops out at about 4700.<\/p>\n

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But in any case, I didn’t much like the look of the murk so as there was no other traffic, I decided to do a quick, tight, low-level circuit and approach and get out of there as fast as possible. This was turning base leg at around about 300 feet above ground level, a couple of hundred feet lower than I would normally have done it. I’d not seen that little area with the lake so close up before!<\/p>\n

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Turning final for runway 29 at Figeac.<\/p>\n

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Final to land, runway 29 at Figeac.<\/p>\n

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Landing, runway 29 at Figeac.<\/p>\n

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Climbing out on a heading of 290 at Figeac.<\/p>\n

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The last shot was taken as I was turning left to head south down towards Cahors, which I eventually decided not to do because the murkiness down there was increasing and flying conditions were becoming more and more bumpy. I thought the shot shows why flying in south-west France, in this case in the Lot, is not everyone’s cup of tea. With all of those trees down there it’s not a good place to have an engine failure \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

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After turning to head back to Malbec I ended up joining the return track that I’d prepared at Belves. Amazingly, because of the deep shadow that was being cast by the cloud, I never saw the airfield there even though it was right on my nose.<\/p>\n

The same happened again at Malbec and I was right on top of the airfield by the time I found it. But not to worry, a quick circuit to the north and back again squeezing between the airfield and Fleurac and although I had been concerned that landing back at Malbec would be tricky in those conditions, I enjoyed the most benign landing of the whole flight. Just shows you, you never can tell \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve had one of the worst springs since I’ve been here, with long periods of rainy days, and when it hasn’t been raining, high winds. The latter have made me fearful of losing my last ‘tonnelle’ (garden gazebo tent) as not only have we had gale force gusts but also many days when they have … 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-21194","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\/21194","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=21194"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21217,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21194\/revisions\/21217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}