And now the X-Air

The possible purchaser of the X-Air who I met a few weeks ago at Ste-Foy-la-Grande is still very interested and keen to see it but I’ve been intent on having it ready for sale only when I’m satisfied with it. Well, that moment has arrived but as I haven’t flown it for some time, I wanted to do a good flight in it to make sure everything was OK and yesterday was the big day.

I did one of my usual ’round the houses’ local flights taking in Condat, Galinat, Sarlat-Domme and Belvès before returning to Malbec giving me a total of five landings to allow myself to get my hand back in, which I always like to do. Here’s the route that I took.

I did a video that I’ll try to make something of later and took several shots along the way but visibility in a filthy inversion was atrocious with a dirty layer of ground-hugging mist for as far as the eye can see, so the quality of both was very poor. Here’s a shot of the Chateau du Peuch that I took shortly after taking off.

It was sold a couple of years ago to, it’s rumoured, an Englishman domiciled in Monaco who has some sort of involvement in Formula 1. He also bought all of the surrounding houses for reasons best known to himself and now they and the chateau stand empty for almost the whole of the year.

Her’s a very poor quality shot of the commune of Aubas which is just past Montignac on the way to Condat-sur-Vézère.

Now a shot of the X-Air at Condat.

Here’s the X-Air back at Galinat, where it used to live, after a break of many months.

This is a shot that I took of Sarlat-la-Canéda on my way to Sarlat-Domme.

I didn’t take any pics at Sarlat-Domme but here’s the X-Air back at Belvès where, again, it hasn’t been for many a long month.

Finally back at Malbec. I had to go around once and then orbit while Phillipe was warming up his Citius’s engine. While I was leaving my orbit to land I saw Jean-Christophe from Milhac coming in in his Savannah. He landed a few minutes after me and while we conversed I had a chance to show him my Savannah in the hangar. Here are a couple of shots of his aircraft that I took while he was preparing to take off.

My intention was to fly the X-Air down to Ste-Foy-la-Grande today (Sunday morning) to show it to Gérard, the potential buyer but I’m typing this having had to abort the flight at just over the half-way point and return to Malbec. The reason was a fog bank to the south that became severe to the west of Bergerac that I thought would most likely affect Ste-Foy and having spoken to Gérard after landing it appears that I was right.

I’ve topped the X-Air’s tanks up again and I’m going to give it another go later this afternoon, so we’ll see then how things go. Keep watching this space 😉

FOOTNOTE

Unfortunately it didn’t happen. I messaged Gérard from Malbec at about 3.00 pm and he came back a bit later after going to the airfield at Ste-Foy-la-Grande to say that the fog there was clearing away only slowly. At about 3.30 pm he said that the sun had just broken through but then I had to tell him that by then it was too late for safety.

It’s a flight of about 1 hour each way from Malbec to Ste-Foy and allowing for an hour there, it would have meant my leaving Ste-Foy for home sometime around 6.00 pm. By then the air would be beginning to cool with the chance that the fog could start to return and if it then started to close in at Malbec just as the early dusk was beginning to draw in, it could make a landing there a bit dangerous.

So with safety being the first priority, I had to put our ‘rendez-vous’ off yet again for another week. Who would have thought it. We had clear blue sky at Malbec for most of the day but the fog bank to the south just kept hanging on and hanging on. Such are the vagaries of flying ULMs, especially at this time of the year. Ho hum… 😐