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<\/a><\/p>\nI was glad to get away but sorry to leave such good new friends behind and we said our ‘au revoirs’ by radio as I departed. As the pic above shows, Limoges Bellegarde airport, which Ryanair and Flybe both use, is just south of Wanafly and although I would be flying through their Class E airspace, I had to do a dog leg to remain clear of their Class D. I then only had to make one more course change to arrive at my final destination. But between me and it there were several large areas of high ground that I had to climb over. There was still no proper horizon and the rising ground only became visible from a fairly short distance away as it gradually appeared from the murk. And it also became quite hard work as the lift and sink associated with the terrain and scattered broken cloud took their toll. As I mentioned earlier, at times as I was approaching the rising ground, I was revving the little 503 at climb RPM (6100rpm) and ‘climbing’ at the usual 45 mph climb speed only to see the VSI still showing 3\/400 fpm down! This wasn’t as bad as it sounds though, because I gave myself as much height to play with as the cloud base allowed, and before things got too close for comfort there was always then an area of lift that sent me zipping back up to 1800ft or more before it all started all over again. But it did take its toll on MYRO’s fuel burn and I was glad that I’d decided to take on the extra fuel.<\/p>\n
And all was not sweetness and light in the vis department either. As the leg progressed and I began to catch up with the back end of the slowly departing weather front, I began to notice clumps of scud passing below me. As the cloud thickened there were more and more patches of cloud with their bases hanging down below the height I wanted to fly at. So I had no choice but to descend and as I began to do so it became apparent that the vis was rapidly drawing in again as well. Luckily by that time I’d passed the last area of high ground but still, as I approached my final destination, between Thiviers and Excideuil it came down to what I estimate was a maximum of 3000 metres and probably even a bit less for a while. But I knew from Bob’s earlier messages that this would only be temporary and it proved to be so.<\/p>\n
As I saw the A89 autoroute and the town of Thenon appear on my satnav, not only was I clear of the poor vis but I also knew that I was almost home. This was an area that I’d already driven around quite a bit and got to know and it’s one that I’ll get to know even better over the years when my life in Plazac has got underway. Shortly afterwards when I was about 7 or so miles out, I called up on the radio and Bob’s voice came back to me. I spotted the field shortly after, which looked terribly short from where I was, and did a wide circuit to land from what I thought would be the preferred direction from the point of view of wind direction. However, I’d forgotten that there are wires at that end and it would also have been down-hill, so a go-around was called for. I then did a full circuit of the field to approach from the other direction.<\/p>\n
While Dave (no, the other Dave from Calton Moor) and I had been talking at Wanafly, I’d said that whenever I went into a new airfield that I was unfamiliar with for the first time, I always made sure I remained high until I was sure I’d got the approach sussed even if it meant going around a couple of times. And that’s exactly what I did. In the video that Bob shot of my arrival, it looks as though I was doing a fly-by from each direction, but in fact they were go-arounds, not fly-byes. I decided to land on my second approach from the north but I could really have done with going around again because I was still a bit too high. As a result, I landed a bit too long and ended up braking like mad because I was approaching the road with the electricity poles and lines at the other end, and to be sure, I took MYRO off into the long grass to the left of the runway to bring it to a halt. I actually ended up stopping well short of the runway end but I still think it was the right thing to do in view of the weight I was carrying on board. <\/p>\n
Bob and Jude and a couple of other friends, Regis and Wim, who Bob had already introduced me to several months previously were there to greet me and I was pleased to see them there too. We had a chat about how things had gone but there will be plenty of time for that in times to come and they helped me to unload MYRO and get it covered up as best I could with the covers I had brought with me. I then also tied MYRO down using the three concrete-filled tyres that Bob had made for me because to the west there were some large rain bearing clouds brewing and I would have hated for a little local storm to have brewed up and for MYRO to have been damaged by winds after coming all that way. Here’s the final pic showing MYRO tied down in its new home and as you can see, the sky was still quite angry.<\/p>\n
I was glad to have arrived after all my experiences over the two days, although I would never have missed them for anything. Someone asked me a while back if I was going to trailer MYRO down and I said that the thought had never occurred to me. I said to my friends after the flight down, that MYRO would never be going back to England, not with me flying it anyway, but that\u2019s not true. If I had to for any reason I would, but not that I expect to have to though. And I’d say to anyone thinking about venturing abroad from the UK for the first time, if you know that you’re ready for it, give a flight across the Channel into France a try. It’s not complicated or hard and is certainly well within the capabilities of the average microlight pilot, whether ‘multiaxes’ or ‘pendulaire’. If an old fart like me can do it in MYRO, when you’ve got enough experience under your belt you can certainly do it in your Quiks, Quantums and C42s. All you need to do is make sure you plan it properly and that you stay safe and within your and the aircraft’s limits. Then you can’t go wrong \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The weather reports from Bob in the Plazac area indicated that although the weather was slowly improving, there was still no point in taking off for the final leg because the cloud base at the other end would still be too low on arrival and there would also still be a chance of a few … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3332","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\/3332","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=3332"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3343,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions\/3343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n