Flying around Las Vegas

A focus on flying rather than gambling Las Vegas conjures up images of glitz, glamour and excess. The desert city sits on a plain near the Colorado river, held back by the massive Hoover Dam into a huge artificial reservoir (Lake Mead) that provides both water and hydro-electric power. Temperatures often exceed 100 Fahrenheit (40C). Air conditioning is a necessity. A business trip there provided the opportunity for a day or so

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Summer Holiday to France 2014 – Leg 4 of 4 -Quiberon to Gloucester with bad weather

Thunderstorms and Embedded CBs forecast Our two week break was up and we were scheduled to return home today. We’d enjoyed some great weather, sunshine pretty much every day and very little rain. Overnight however, there was an intense thunderstorm with very loud thunder. Worse thunderstorms and torrential rain were to be found at home, with a SIGMET warning of embedded CBs and hail. Not an ideal day to be

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Ile Molene

Summer holiday to France 2014 – Leg 3 of 4 – Almost day-trip to Ouessant

I confess to getting a bit restless on holiday – I’m not one for sitting on the beach, so we agreed that I would make a flight while the girls sunned themselves at the seaside. The forecast looked great – a high over eastern France – and I thought would be good for any direction. After discounting Belle Isle (only 9 minutes away, and the airport far from anything else),

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Summer holiday to France 2014 – Leg 2 of 4 – La Rochelle to Quiberon

Mid-holiday change of resort After our first week on Ile de Re, we flew direct La Rochelle to Quiberon – about an hour’s VFR flight (compared with 3h30 by car or 5h19 by train). Direct flights to/from the UK to Quiberon aren’t permitted – you must land at an immigration “Port of Entry” first, both inbound and outbound – but there are no such formalities for flights from any French

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Summer holiday to France 2014 – Leg 1 of 4 – La Rochelle

A holiday on the Cote Atlantique After the success of our German family trip last year, we had agreed to take our family holiday this year also by flying ourselves to Europe. Not too far, must have a beach/sunshine, not too hot. So the essential criteria became airports near beaches. I had also been enthused by a presentation at the local LAA Strut, where the chairman shared his holiday photos

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Project Propeller return flight to Guernsey

Project Propeller is an annual gathering of remaining World War 2 aircrew (friend and foe), flown into an airport by current pilots. Often these passengers take an active role in the flight, either navigating and/or piloting. Mostly male, there are a few women pilots who were involved in tasks such as delivering aircraft from the factory during the war. This year’s event was held at our home airport at Gloucester,

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Getting to know Dallas again

Some minor changes since last year I had a really great time flying in Dallas last year and found myself again in the same place on business, so took the opportunity to fly while I was there. Pleased with the outfit I used before, I returned to Slipstream Aviation at Dallas Executive – they have the same aircraft (three Grumman AA5A Cheetahs) – although there’s been a bit of turnover

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Cherbourg for lunch and wine

Rich, one of the other TB20 joint share-o-plane owners, offered to share his flight with me from Gloucester to Cherbourg for the day. He had originally planned to take along a couple of work colleagues, but they dropped out at short notice. We agreed that he’d fly there and I’d fly the return leg. The weather looked promising, with a broken cloud layer between about 2000 and 4000 feet. This

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Dinard and Guernsey day trip

A trip to France and the Channel Islands from Gloucester in the same day in the TB20. With a warm front casting its shadow over the UK, the forecast was for fog in the morning and relatively low cloud in England, but sunshine for the south coast and points south of that. I had arranged a flight with Bruce, one of the Lyneham club members, in the TB20 from Gloucester

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Daytrip to Waterford Ireland

Today’s daytrip from Gloucester to Waterford, Ireland in the TB20 involved a number of unusual firsts today, in no particular order: Between a huge weather front passing through on Friday and another one coming on Sunday, there was a good weather window on Saturday as long as we didn’t head for France. I’d been considering a flight to Ireland for some time, and stimulated by a feature in Flyer magazine,

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