UK Instrument Rated Private Pilot and Instrument Flight Instructor
The Italian Riviera lies on the coast at the furthest west of Italy, close to the border with Monaco and France. The area was very popular with English nobility towards the end of the 19th century, transforming it from a fishing village and now boasts many Art Nouveau buildings. The airport itself sits deep in a valley surrounded by high terrain. While there is a localiser, you couldn’t really consider
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Definitely the highlight of my trip and one for every pilot’s bucket list. Today we flew south west VFR from Ljubljana over the mountains then down the Adriatic coast with great views of Trieste and the Venice lagoon to land on the grass strip at Venice Lido beach. This was the first commercial Italian airport, opening in 1926, and is named Giovanni Nicelli airport in honour of an Italian air
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Saturday was to be a busy day for flying, first a local flight with our hosts followed by a hop across the mountains to the south east to land at the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. I had been keeping a close eye on the weather and wasn’t definitively able to say whether we’d fit in a local VFR flight or not. I had originally planned to fly in the morning
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Next stop is Vienna where we planned to visit and stay with friends for a few days. Landing at Vienna’s main airport is possible but expensive. There are several GA airfields in the vicinity, especially Voslau (LOAV) and Wiener Neustadt Ost (LOAN) which seemed most appropriate. LOAN is the home of Diamond Aircraft and might well be worth a visit, but LOAV was closer to where our friends lived. Since
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Draw a straight line from Gloucester to Vienna and you will find it passes over the southern tip of the Czech Republic. It was about an hour’s VFR flight today south west from Bamburg towards Vienna, landing at Ceske Budejovice – the regional capital of South Bohemia, about 75 miles south of Prague and most famous for its Budweiser Budvar brewery. My original plan was for an early afternoon departure
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The first day of our two week European tour in my TB20, circumnavigating the Alps via Vienna and Venice. This holiday trip evolved from discussion with my wife who wanted to visit friends in Vienna and was also keen to fit in some beach time. I wanted to fly to our destinations by plane and include some more unusual places to stopover. So I spent some time researching the current
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Unlike European trips on the day of this flight, the Channel Islands have no COVID related travel restrictions and you don’t even need to have a passport to go there. This was just as well, because one of my intended passengers has not been vaccinated and another had overlooked that his passport had only two months left to run. That’s probably not unusual given the limited amount of international travel
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I don’t often write about my instructional flights, but I thought this one covered a range of topical IFR approach training issues. An IRR student of mine had moved on to the final section of the syllabus – learning how to fly instrument approaches – and I felt he was good enough to be ready for a more challenging flight. Although the syllabus offers the option of many different types
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With a fully operational TB20 aircraft and European travel opening up once again, I arranged a daytrip to Lille with Nigel (one of our newer club members) at relatively short notice. It was satisfying to able to travel abroad again. Planning and Paperwork beforehand Paperwork/Planning (assuming all are fully vaccinated): PPR to land at Lille (email, promptly accepted the day before although officially 48 hours notice required) IFR flight plan
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I’ve encountered relatively few problems in my shared TB20 over the eight years since I bought a share, even the minor problem with I had with the gear a few years ago was quickly resolved. We had lost use of the aircraft since November when it went in for its Annual and had the gear actuators overhauled as planned – quite an expensive operation. I flew it back to base
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