01.04.2012: Today my wife and I flew to Gruyère aerodrome (LSGG), which lies about an hour and a half southwest of Lommis. The weather on the flight there was not specially nice, with a lot of haze and some low hanging clouds in between the mountains. I initially even had doubts whether we would manage to get there, at least via the planned route over the Brünig Pass, which is only 3’300 ft high. Anyhow, we finally managed, and the closer we got the more the weather improved.
Here a picture of Gruyère Aerodrome taken on short final. Note that they had to shift the runway to the left due to soft terrain on the right side.
Once I had parked my plane a number of people came inquiring about what it is, which quite surprised me. Then the Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter of the para-jumpers landed and parked next to us, quite a difference in size, power and shape. That could be a nice next project, a turbine powered bushplane…
When we flew back the weather had improved further. We first flew over the Schwarzsee, where there is an annual winter fly-in on the frozen lake, and one could still see the runway quite clearly even though the ice has started to melt.
We then continued past the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains, climbing to around 12’000 ft to have a view at the Jungfrau Joch observatory.
I am always surprised that I still manage to achieve around 500 ft/min climb rate with my SportCruiser even at that altitude, and on top it was quite warm, around 0 degrees C where standard temperature should be -9.
We then passed a number of other spectacular mountains, many of which I don’t know the name like the one below.
We then continued with a good tailwind of around 25 kts past the Glärnisch and then made a straight, shallow descent from 12’000 ft directly to the South reporting point of Lommis at 3’500 ft, all under autopilot control.
Installing the Dynon autopilot was probably one of the best decisions I have taken when building the plane, it makes flying so much more relaxing. I often just engage it to do some paperwork, navigation or also to take pictures. That’s why I configured it so that whenever I engage it it maintains current heading and altitude.
02.04.2012: Today I went once more to do a break in flight of a newly overhauled engine, as I already did twice last year, this time with our Archer II HB-PGM. That’s a three hour flight at full power, and as the weather was once more absolutely great I did the usual “around the Matterhorn” tour with one of our mechanics. This time it was Philipp’s turn.
Again past the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, as already yesterday…
…then over the Jungrau Joch (observatory)…
…and then down the Aletsch glacier towards the Matterhorn.
Below the south side of the Matterhorn, with the Italian side of the alps fully in clouds.
I admit it really makes a difference to fly a “vintage” airplane, as many of the information items I got so usedto finding on the Dynon glass cockpit in my SportCruiser are missing. This includes moving map display, density altitude, wind etc. Here a panel shot at just about 13’000 ft I normally don’t fly higher than 12’000 ft, but had to climb to 13’000 ft twice during the flight for a few minutes, the first time to cross the Jungfrau Joch and the second time to fly around the Matterhorn.
We then went to check skiing activity, and most skiing areas are still active. That’s not bad, considering that we had two weeks of sun with warm temperatures, and that it is already April.
Here a last look back, always an impressive sight.
We then continued east, happy that we had not planned to fly to Locarno for a Pizza as also the Tessin was fully under clouds.
Above Chur (below) we turned North and then continued until the lake of Constance, where we landed at St. Gallen for a coffee. From there it was a short flight back to Lommis, during which we did some handling checks.
20./21.04.2012: I have not been flying in a while, as the weather has been very bad, but at least it’s Aero time again and this year I went there for two days in a row. On Friday I went to check out a number of specific issues, such as looking for flight planning software, life vests and CAMO software, on Saturday I went with my wife to have a look at potential new projects! It’s of course only a dream to build another plane, as I would no know how to finance a second project, but keeping dreams alive is what it’s all about.
Already going to Aero is every time very nice, as the quickest way (if not taking the plane) is by train to Romanshorn and then by ferry across Lake of Constance to Friedrichshafen. The ferry takes around 40 minutes, and as a lot of people take that route I every time meet people I know. Going there by public transport is really well organised, there is a free and direct bus from the ferry terminal in Friedrichshafen to the exhibition venue.
One of the new things on display was the long awaited fuel injection version of the Rotax 912 engine. There were rumours since a while that Rotax is developing such an engine, and finally they did it. Looking at it in detail I have to say that they seem to have done it well, the fuel injection system and the electronic control unit are
fully redundant. They claim that it consumes around 3 litres less per hour than the carburettor version, at that it starts just like a car engine.
I have also seen a small 150 hp propeller turbine from a Czech supplier, which would probably look cool on the SportCruiser, but I guess the fuel consumption is in another league.
On one stand I saw a map of a guy that flew an ultralight aircraft to Australia, but the “other” way round, maybe that’s a route I should consider if ever I get the chance to do it, at least you can avoid some of the nasty countries.
There was also stand of the EAA, of which I am a member since many years, and they had the world’s first electric powered helicopter on display. It is built like one of these octocopter toys one can buy, but with even more individual engines and propellers (I think 20, They originally build it unmanned, but it flew so well that they put a seat on it and flew it manned. Note that the landing “gear” is one of those gymnastics balls.
On the “toy” side I saw this head up display, From what I heard them say it costs around 4’000 €, ready to install with all the sensors. That would look cool in the Kitfox Thomas is building…
What I absolutely can’t understand is that someone builds an ultralight, like the one below, that looks like a military trainer but is not permitted to do any kind of aerobatics. To me that’s even dangerous, as people will try it anyway, with possibly catastrophic results.
But now to what my next project should look like. My dream would be to build a seaplane that looks kind of like the one below, with a sturdy gear so that it can be normally operated off a grass runway, but also from water. I really like float planes, but they only make sense if flown nearly exclusively from water, even with amphibious floats. Something like the seaplane below could however be flown as a normal landplane, but with the potential to go anywhere.
Here another one, an ultralight. From my point of view this makes no sense, as it has a useful load of only 180 kg, including fuel, which means it is only usable as a single seater, and even then only for pilots with decent weight. If you are 80 kg and your passenger is 65 kg, and you have 15 kg of baggage that leaves 20 kg for fuel, or 30 l, which is less than two hours flight without reserve. Again, just like for the non-aerobatic ultralight “Tucano” above the designer must know that people will fly overloaded all the time…
I also went to see whether Jeppesen finally offers the electronic version of the VFR Manual with support for my Garmin 695 GPS, but they don’t yet. They offer it for the 795, however, and said that the 695 will be supported later this year. Until then I will keep my paper subscription.
I also bought a copy of PocketFMS for flight planning. So far I have done all my flight planning by hand, but I always wanted to try an electronic tool. I will used it offline to prepare flights, and then download the routes into my 695, so I won’t use it on an iPad. To use it when I am travelling I bought a small HP Folio PC, that’s one of the new Ultrabooks. I have to say I am amazed, it can really run just about any program like a regular notebook, but it’s only 1.4 kg. I even installed Office 2010 on it, and that runs as fast as on any other PC. Some functions are even faster, as it has a solid state disk. And best of all it has about 7 hours of battery life, highly recommended.
29.04.2012: I have just spent another week in Australia, so again no flying, but today I went with a passenger that has never been in a small plane in her life. She was initially quite scared to go, but wanted to try it anyway. She enjoyed it so much that I would not be surprised if the now takes flying lessons…