08.09.2012: I’m still on vacation in Canada, the more east we go the less there is about flying. The only thing we found here are birds, below two of them.
13.09.2012: I’m back from Canada, and already on a business trip to Genova, here two nice pictures taken from the plane on the approach to Genova airport…
…as well as after landing.
17.09.2012: I’m back from our holidays since a week, and today is the first day I managed to go flying again. I’m teaching a bit next to my job at Zurich University of Applied Sciences, where I went this morning, and when standing at noon at the train station to go to my office I spontaneously decided I’d rather go flying.
First I did a two hours tour on my own, flying south into the mountains. The weather was very nice, with some strangely shaped clouds hanging around some of the mountains.
Below one can see the Martinsloch, the “hole in the mountain” I already showed on this blog but this time seen from the South.
As the screen shot below shows I flew up to around 12’000 ft, where the outside temperature was still +5 degrees C. At that altitude ISA temperature should be minus 9 degrees, so a pretty warm day considering the time of the year. Density altitude was 13’550 ft, but the plane was still climbing nicely.
Below the Tödi mountain, seen from the South, which is 3614 m or 11’850 ft high, so just about my flying altitude.
Here the Tödi from closer. I kept some distance as it was quite windy (as can be seen further down), but surprisingly the air was pretty calm up here.
Here a screen shot showing 38 kts wind from the west at 9’850 ft. Indicated airspeed was 98 kts, true airspeed 114 kts. Ground speed would have been an amazing 152 kts flying east, but I had to head north back to Lommis.
I was passing lake of Zurich, which can be seen below looking west, making a continuous descent from 12’000 ft to 2’400 ft circuit altitude in Lommis.
Later in the afternoon my wife joined me at the airfield, and we did another nice tour, this time more to the west to the Lake of the four cantons, or Vierwaldstättersee in German. There were more clouds than earlier in the afternoon, and there was also some haze, but that gave a very nice and special atmosphere combined with the low sun.
Here a view of the Lake…
…and of one of the paddle wheelers steaming towards Lucerne, seen from around 8’500 ft.
Flying around Rigi mountain we could see only very few tourists enjoying the views, nothing compared to nice summer days when the mountain top is crowded with tourists.
