{"id":6118,"date":"2014-04-10T21:38:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T20:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=6118"},"modified":"2014-04-11T08:11:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T07:11:29","slug":"just-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/just-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Just right!"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s the only way to describe how things went today, despite a couple of minor hiccups which I’ll mention later. Nature has really come alive down here now. Everything is just so vibrant and green and this afternoon at Galinat, I was enchanted by a Song Thrush singing his heart out just for the joy of it. Everything was just as it should be for a perfect flight; good visibility, hardly any wind and a temperature in the mid-20s. I took off at about 5.15 pm when it was still around 25 degrees Celsius and while I was driving home just after 7.00 pm, it was still over 21 degrees.<\/p>\n

It didn’t take me long to plan a flight for today – head north to Terrasson, turn north-west for Hautefort, which I’ve never been to, and then head back south to Galinat via Fanlac. The following image shows the route.<\/p>\n

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My first problem came when I tried to export the route into my little satnav. I was really annoyed to find that I couldn’t get a connection between the mobile device and my computer, just as happened before with my last little satnav. I know from that experience that although it’ll still work as a car satnav, it’s about as good as a brick now for aircraft navigation purposes as there’s no way that I know of recovering it. I think the damage may have been caused by connecting it to my PC while it was switched on, but I don’t know for sure. Pity, but there’s no point crying over spilt milk. Luckily I still have a larger satnav that still works. I prefer not to use it, though, because having a larger screen its display is darker and a bit harder to see. But never mind, it was OK for today, so I got it set up and was ready to go.<\/p>\n

By this time it was mid-afternoon, not a bad time to go as it would have allowed most of the thermic bumps to dissipate. I was in the middle of uncovering 56NE ready to be pre-flighted when I suddenly realised that I’d forgotten to bring the pitot tube with me, that I’d taken home to clean after my recent insect-related incidents. Nothing for it but to go back and get it – lucky that I don’t live too far from Galinat, isn’t it. It took less than half an hour and after re-fitting it, it was time for me to try something else.<\/p>\n

When I was flying back in the UK, I used to like mounting my little Canon camcorder on the aircraft so I could record my good flights. I haven’t been able to since I’ve been in France because I’ve been unable to find a mount to fit onto 56NE’s fuselage tubes. Well, I got hold of something from Ebay just recently which turned out to be faulty (wouldn’t lock properly) but I filled it with superglue and thought I might as well give it a go today. Securely attaching it to the airframe was a bit of a challenge but after a few minutes, I managed to get an arrangement that looked as though it would work. And when I was ready to go at just before 5.15 pm, I switched the camcorder on, crossed my fingers and took off.<\/p>\n

Everything went just as planned and I was delighted to see that I now had an airspeed indicator. In fact, I think that my pitot cleaning efforts did a world of good, because the gauge is now much more responsive than before and also it’s showing a higher indication of cruise speed. The gauge must previously have been under-reading and this explains why my flights have always taken less time than I thought they would! First, north-east past Terrasson up to the little village of Perpezac-le-Blanc. Just a charming little village in lovely countryside, as the following image shows.<\/p>\n

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Then a left turn to head up to Hautefort, which I’ve never been to before, either by road or in the air. On the way, a typical little Dordogne hamlet caught my eye and I took the following picture of it.<\/p>\n

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And then I continued on to Hautefort, which I could see in the sunshine in the distance. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had the impression that Hautefort was quite a big place. But it turns out that I was wrong. Here’s a picture that I took as I approached it.<\/p>\n

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‘Haute fort’ translates as ‘high fort’ and it turns out that that’s what’s actually there – a large and imposing chateau on high ground over the village. Here’s another shot that I took as I flew past it as I turned south onto the next leg to head back to Galinat.<\/p>\n

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My route took me past yet another little group of houses that I thought was very typical of the Dordogne and once again I took a shot of them<\/p>\n

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The leg from Hautefort to Fanlac took about ten minutes and although I have a shot of Fanlac that I took several months ago, I took another because of the sheer vibrance of the green surrounding the village.<\/p>\n

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Galinat was still several minutes flying time away, but I could already see the strip in the distance as I passed by Fanlac. So yet another long, long final and an uneventful landing. I checked the camcorder afterwards and I found that it had made a full recording of the flight. Now I just need to process and edit it and I can’t wait to put together my first video of a flight here in France. And as soon as I do, I’ll post it on here, of course \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the only way to describe how things went today, despite a couple of minor hiccups which I’ll mention later. Nature has really come alive down here now. Everything is just so vibrant and green and this afternoon at Galinat, I was enchanted by a Song Thrush singing his heart out just for the joy … 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-6118","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\/6118","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=6118"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6127,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions\/6127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}