Grodou
Junior Member
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2016
- Messages
- 84
- Location
- Ans, Belgium
- Aircraft
- Calidus
- Total Flight Time
- Not much but growing !
Long time did not share an adventure… Let’s fix that ! ^^
As for the last 3 monthes, I have been partially gounded due to the roll over of our club Calidus, I have gone back to flying the MTO… but when it comes to traveling a bit, the comfort of Laurent’s Eclipse is definitely appreciated.
So on a sunny-TAF day of November, we took off from our base LFQD with the intent of visiting Tournus in eastern France. The project included flying over the Soane river and a few castles.
After about 1.5 hour flight the FEW became SCATTERED and finally BROKEN with less and less windows for a ground view !!! Oddly enough for us, the weather was still reported as fair over Troyes where we were planning to refuel and have lunch.
About 10-15 minutes from destination… we ended up flying over a solid white mattress… and we went stupid !
Despite radio confirmation that if would clear up over the ‘target’, we agreed that getting back to VFR regs would be appropriate to approach the controled airfield. This implied getting under the fluff not exactly knowing of much of a margin we would have between ceiling and ground. (You feel it coming, right ?)
Buddy pilot spots a hole about the size of a rotor and enters vertical descent…Gulp !... When it clears, the ground is really close (our evaluation is 300ft) and the hole above is gone !!! For a few seconds Laurent scans the surroundings for a field landing while I track chances of blue above… Luck comes around and I’m the first to talk again : 2 o’clock, blue patch, spiral up. (You feel it coming again ?)
Of course the blue patch, follows the wind… and soon disapears as we enter the spiral !
Time really follows Einstein’s theory and 15 seconds can really become 3 minutes when fate is against you !
I took liberty to edit this as a reminder of DON’T DO THAT AGAIN !
FLY… YOU FOOLS : https://youtu.be/QPbUzWOSSo8
Once we got back up, we seriously considered aborting the trip…
But radio came to the rescue :
- The destination airfield was confirming good weather.
- A friendly IFR pilot in training on their circuit switched to us for confirmation and coordination with his trajectory through the clouds.
- 15 mins later we were having luch and debriefing with the promise to not try that again !
The rest of the trip was a succession of aviation safer decisions as the weather kept playing with our nerves. The reports were changing by the minute with sometimes hard to believe conflicting conditions : CAVOK, storm, overcast, few, rain, sunny !!!!
But is was also the occasion to fly over new places and great sights while accumulating experience.
This is the weekend trip vid for those interested (Sorry for those allergic to 360° videos but it saves big time on editing !) : https://youtu.be/DudYoThIkTA
Safe flight to all,
Fred
As for the last 3 monthes, I have been partially gounded due to the roll over of our club Calidus, I have gone back to flying the MTO… but when it comes to traveling a bit, the comfort of Laurent’s Eclipse is definitely appreciated.
So on a sunny-TAF day of November, we took off from our base LFQD with the intent of visiting Tournus in eastern France. The project included flying over the Soane river and a few castles.
After about 1.5 hour flight the FEW became SCATTERED and finally BROKEN with less and less windows for a ground view !!! Oddly enough for us, the weather was still reported as fair over Troyes where we were planning to refuel and have lunch.
About 10-15 minutes from destination… we ended up flying over a solid white mattress… and we went stupid !
Despite radio confirmation that if would clear up over the ‘target’, we agreed that getting back to VFR regs would be appropriate to approach the controled airfield. This implied getting under the fluff not exactly knowing of much of a margin we would have between ceiling and ground. (You feel it coming, right ?)
Buddy pilot spots a hole about the size of a rotor and enters vertical descent…Gulp !... When it clears, the ground is really close (our evaluation is 300ft) and the hole above is gone !!! For a few seconds Laurent scans the surroundings for a field landing while I track chances of blue above… Luck comes around and I’m the first to talk again : 2 o’clock, blue patch, spiral up. (You feel it coming again ?)
Of course the blue patch, follows the wind… and soon disapears as we enter the spiral !
Time really follows Einstein’s theory and 15 seconds can really become 3 minutes when fate is against you !
I took liberty to edit this as a reminder of DON’T DO THAT AGAIN !
FLY… YOU FOOLS : https://youtu.be/QPbUzWOSSo8
Once we got back up, we seriously considered aborting the trip…
But radio came to the rescue :
- The destination airfield was confirming good weather.
- A friendly IFR pilot in training on their circuit switched to us for confirmation and coordination with his trajectory through the clouds.
- 15 mins later we were having luch and debriefing with the promise to not try that again !
The rest of the trip was a succession of aviation safer decisions as the weather kept playing with our nerves. The reports were changing by the minute with sometimes hard to believe conflicting conditions : CAVOK, storm, overcast, few, rain, sunny !!!!
But is was also the occasion to fly over new places and great sights while accumulating experience.
This is the weekend trip vid for those interested (Sorry for those allergic to 360° videos but it saves big time on editing !) : https://youtu.be/DudYoThIkTA
Safe flight to all,
Fred