14.10.2012: I have been flying with a friend from Denmark today, as well as with his two sons, showing them the mountains. They enjoyed it very much, and the boys did quite well at the controls of the plane.
21.10.2012: After some busy days, as well as a two day workshop of the board of our flying club I just could not resist the perfect autumn weather, so I decided to fly to Samedan (Europe’s highest airport at 5’600 feet). It is very nice to fly there in autumn, as the forest in the Engadin valley consists mostly of larches, which turn yellow before loosing their needles.
We flew first past the Walensee,…
…then along the Churfirsten range,..
…and from there via Chur into the Alps.
There is a chain of lakes in the Engadin valley, starting just on top of the Maloya Pass as can be seen below.
Maloya is also one of the reporting point when approaching Samedan airport. Samedan is a pretty strange airport, as it only has a fight information zone, no tower, but handles jets up to the size of a Boeing 737. In winter they sometimes have more than 150 movements of jets in a single day, and all of that with “land at your discretion”.
When passing Whiskey point one can see a side valley towards the Bernina pass, …
…but then has to concentrate on the landing. Fortunately the runway is quite long, around 1’800 m.
We stayed there for a coffee and went hiking a bit, enjoying the sun, before preparing to fly back. We had to hold at the runway crossing for a business jet that just landed,….
…a Canadair CL-604 registered in Austria. I quickly figured out how much landing fee they must be paying, including ATC charge, ground handling etc. that’s around 4’000 CHF. Compared with my 30 CHF that’s quite a difference. They pay about as much for one hour parking, if they stay for only a day that’s another 1’000 CHF.
The weather was exceptionally warm, with around 15 degrees C at 8’600 feet and 21 degrees C ground temperature at Samedan airport, meaning a density altitude of around 7’300 feet. Even with that, and a take off mass of around 600 kg we were airborne in maybe 400 m, but the climb rate was significantly lower than in Lommis.
We flew back over the Flüela Pass, and then via Davos toward Lommis.
Below to nice pictures of the low sun,…
…as well as of the Säntis which lost all the snow again it had received only a few days ago,.
