02.06.2013: Rain continued for the last week, and got even worse for this weekend. Our glider friends at Amlikon airfield (LSPA) had their 50 years airfield anniversary planned for this weekend, we will have ours in three weeks. Amlikon and Lommis airfield got both opened 50 years ago as replacement for the former airfield of Frauenfeld, which had to make room for an artillery firing range (which is now largely closed). The gliders moved from Frauenfeld to Amlikon and the powered airplanes to Lommis. I actually learned to fly in Amlikon, flying gliders there from 1977 to 1980, so visiting with my own plane was high on the wish list. The airfield is normally closed for powered aircraft, but not so for this weekend.
To celebrate their 50th anniversary they had planned a fly in, some aerobatics and vintage aircraft displays and passenger flights with a Junkers Ju-52, but had to cancel most of it on Saturday due to the rain. Lommis airfield had to be closed on Saturday too, as some of our hangars got flooded due to the heavy rain, and as there were large puddles of water on our grass runway. Here a view from the hangar, taken Saturday afternoon:
And here a large puddle just west of the threshold of Runway 06. I even saw two ducks swimming in it, I wonder whether they paid the landing fees….
On Sunday the runway in Lommis was still closed, so instead of flying to Amlikon I drove there by car. It’s only 10 km from where I live, and 6 km from Lommis, so no big distance to drive / fly. Arriving there I just saw the Junkers Ju-52 doing a low pass. They could not let it land due to the runway condition, so instead they shuttled passengers by car to Dübendorf and did the booked flights from there, but with a low pass in Amlikon.
It’s away an amazing sight, and even more sound, to see / hear these 74 years old planes fly. I then met some members of the board of our club and we jointly decided that I should drive to Lommis to check whether we could open the runway with some restrictions, to at least allow us to send some planes to Amlikon as there were only very few planes flying in. They also could still only run a limited program, so we were hoping to help them a bit with some additional plane movements.
The runway in Lommis was ok, but not the taxiway and the parking area, so we decided to allow a single takeoff and landing per aircraft, with backtracking on the runway. I of course readied my plane as quickly as possible, and took off for the short flight.
From the air the flooding caused by the Thur river were clearly visible, but luckily it stayed largely within the dams.
After the landing I could just hear the noise of the JU-52 doing another low pass, catching it when it appeared behind the hangar.
I stayed in Amlikon for maybe two hours, and then decided to fly back. Before taxiing there was yet another Ju-52 low pass, the last one of the day,…
…which was finished with a pull up that looked like slow motion. It’s an amazing sight, seeing at plane of 10’000 kg doing a pull up at only 100 kts.
The flight back would have bee even shorter, as the departure to the west leads straight to the northern approach point for Lommis, but I took a boy with me who lives in Lommis, so we went to have another look at the flooding.
04.06.2013: It’s the first day with really nice weather in a very long time, and I’m flying. Bur unfortunately not with my own plane, I’m on a business trip to Brussels. Even though I booked a flight with Swiss the flight was operated by Edelweiss, a daughter company of Swiss. Another Edelweiss plane of the same type was taxiing behind us. The CEO of Edelweiss is a homebuilder too, but these ones are factory build…
Just after takeoff we had a wonderful view at the alps, here Eiger, Mönch and Jungrfrau.
06.06.2013: On the way home from Brussels we had a Fokker 100, from Helvetic, below a view just before landing back in Zurich. Swiss let Edelweiss and Helvetic operate many of their short European flights.
07.06.2013: And another business trip, this time to Hanover. And again with very nice weather. Unfortunately it was on short notice, otherwise I might have considered flying myself, but then again for a one day trip that’s a bit too much.
Below the City of Zurich in the morning light, always nice to see.
Flights to Hanover and other destinations in the same directions normally leave on runway 28 in the morning, and then make a 270 degree turn to the left, which gives a nice view also on the mountains and then the lake.
Below another flaps study, this time on the Avro from Swiss. I am slowly thinking of starting another plane building project, even though I have no idea how to finance it…
On the way back in the evening I saw a number of small lakes, probably old gravel pits, each one with a sand beach. It seems they are getting converted for public use, but maybe one cold be bought privately as a seaplane base.
08.06.2013: It was nice weather the whole week, but today when I could have gone flying the weather changed back to “normal”, meaning cloudy, rainy etc. This afternoon it was however a bit better, so up I went with my wife for a short flight. There were quite some cloud, and quite some fresh snow. It’s June, summer should start by now…
15.06.2013: The Experimental Association of Switzerland EAS has it’s 50th anniversary this year, so there are a number of regional fly-ins on top of the two main annual meetings. One was today in Bex in the Rhone Valley, an airfield I have never flown to, so that was a nice excuse for me to go there. Instead of flying there directly we flew to Lausanne first, as they have recently bought two factory built SportCruisers and had some questions. Urs, the Swiss distributor for Czech Sport Aircraft asked me whether I could help him with answering the questions, so we decided we’d meet in Lausanne before heading to Bex for the fly-in. Lausanne is nearly on the way to Bex anyway, so that was only a small detour.
The weather was quite nice in the morning, at least in the plains, below a vie on the city of Lucerne.
Lausanne aerodrome lies above the city, which itself lies on the northern border of the lake of Geneva. The airfield is easy to find, but quite tricky to land at as there are some power lines one has to cross when approaching from the north, and the runway has some quite significant downhill slope when landing from the north. Ant to top that off the runway is oriented North-South, in a location with predominant wind from the West
Below the slope can be seen, it’s steep enough to significantly extend the flare if speed and altitude are not perfect at the gate. I had to sideslip the plane once past the power lines, luckily I learned that early in my flying career when flying Schleicher Ka-4 Rhönlerche gliders. Sideslipping the SportCruiser works quite well, and helps to kill off excess altitude.
They have built an amazing new hangar in Lausanne recently, we should build something similar in Lommis to replace ours,which are 50 years old.
After lunch we left for Bex, which is only a 15 minutes flight from Lausanne. The takeoff in Lausanne is spectacular, as the airport is on top of the city and the lake. Normal takeoff is on runway 18 (downhill), one just has to fly more ore less level after lifting off as the terrain drops significantly at the end of the runway. Below a view of the city to the left, taken just after taking off.
The flight then went along the shore of the lake in south-easterly direction…
… and then over the Rhone delta into the valley leading towards Martigny.
Below a picture of Bex airfield, approaching from the south. In the back one can seen the mountains along the northern shore of Lake of Geneva.
Bex aerodorme is at a pretty low altitude of only 1312 ft, but surrounded by pretty high mountains, up to 10’000 ft.
We met quite a few other homebuilders, but decided to fly home in the evening instead of camping due to the weather, a decision most others took too. The weather was quite nice during the beginning of our return flight, with around 25 kts of tailwind, …
..but near Lucerne it changed dramatically,. We again decided to fly home via the plains instead of through the mountains, a wise decision as can be seen below.
The weather over Lucerne looked spectacular, but was not really an issue to fly. Visibility was still very good, and we only got some light rain.
And it also looked much better to the north, as can be seen below.
15.06.2013: I went on a short flight this afternoon with my older daughter, as she recently complained that we hadn’t been flying in a long time. It was quite bumpy weather, an the mountains were in the clouds, so we went flying along the lake.
A privately operated Mooney based at our airfield had a mid-air collision with a glider about a week ago, but they were extremely lucky. The glider crashed, but the pilot managed to bail out with his parachute, and the Mooney remained flyable even though the left wing received substantial damage. This is one of the cases I have always feared, as gliders are extremely difficult to spot. For that reason I installed a FLARM anti collision system in my plane from the beginning. Nearly all gliders in Europe and most helicopters in Switzerland are equipped with FLARM, which gives a indication if another plane is detected nearby. From the trajectories of the detected planes it estimates how close they will be getting, and if a collision is considered possible then it starts an audible alarm on top of the visual indication, but that so far has not happened to me. The picture below shows a warning generated this afternoon. It’s a target at the four o clock position, in 1.9 km distance and slightly above my altitude. Usually I manage to identify the target visually once I see the alarm, and can then avoid getting too close.
17.06.2013: I had to go to Hanover again today, just for a one day trip. When our plane left the gate in Hanover on the way home I noticed a strangely looking plane. It took me a moment to realise that it was as Boeing 787 from Thomson, a UK holiday operator. .
The pilot announced that there was a cloud of sand blown over from the Sahara desert to Europe and Switzerland. This could really be seen, as the sky turned a kind of reddish once we got closer to Zurich. It really looked special, in reality much more than what can be seen on the picture below.
22.06.2013: Our airfield got opened 50 years ago, so we decided to organise a kind of open day for the public. As the Experimental Aviation of Switzerland also turns 50 we invited all homebuilders for a regional fly-in, similar to the one I flew to one week ago in Bex. We did not want to organize an airshow, but wanted to have some different planes to look at for our visitors than just the standard lineup of Cessnas, Pipers and Robins.
Compared to our friends in Amlikon were extremely lucky with the weather. It was lousy for the whole week, and stopped raining only at 7:30 in the morning, but then it changed to a really sunny and warm day, just perfect for the event.
We also did a small exhibition of two experimental aircraft in our maintenance hangar, the Kitfox from Thomas which is still under construction and my SportCruiser as a finished example. It was amazing how many people came and asked quite detailed questions about homebuilding, so I was standing next to my plane most of the day answering them. Most were amazed to learn that you can actually build a plane yourself, fly freely with it around Europe (or around the world :-)), and that a plane such as the two on display does not consume more fuel than a car when traveling over the same distance.
Thomas had prepared some small glider kits for kids to build, and the success was amazing. Over lunch he had to drive home to fetch more raw material, but after around 130 had been built he run out of material.
As a result I hardly had time to take pictures, here just a few of them.
Ju-Air, the operator the Junkers Ju-52 made some fly-by’s over the airfield, just as part of their normal sightseeing flights from Dübendorf towards Lake of Constance.
There were quite some homebuilts showing up, including a Dutch registered SportCruiser on the left and two RV’s in the middle and on the right. Behind one of our Robin on a passenger flight, we managed to sell quite a few flights today.
Our friends from Amlikon came with a glider on ground display, as well as a Pilatus B-4 doing a short aerobatic display. We also had an Extra doing two aerobatics displays, but that was all next to the normal operation.
We build a fence towards the runway, so that people could walk around the homebuilt planes to have a closer look…
…which required engine starts only behind the fence for safety reasons. Below a Breezy, a plane people always like to see.
We did not charge any entrance fee, so we can’t say exactly how many people showed up, but we guess there must have been around 2000. That’s more than we had hoped, so a full success.
28.06.2013: Today I did my annual check, as well as the first 200 hrs maintenance. My plane has now flown for 158:39 hours, and everything was in perfect condition. Both the spark plugs as well as the oil and the oil filter indicate that the engine is in excellent condition, so nothing to worry about.
There is one good thing about having the plane on the lift which I enjoy every time I do an annual check. It’s that I can lower the plane to a working height, so that I can remove the wheel pants, as well as open all maintenance covers without having to creep under the plane.
Of course I had to do an extended check flight afterwards, as the weather forecast for the weekend is again lousy. So far this is the worst spring / summer I can remember, which leaves it’s marks on the flying statistics of the planes of our club. Luckily I flew to Denmark in April, so my log book shows 33 hours since the 1st January, which is not bad considering the weather.
30.06.2013: I has been raining again yesterday the whole day, but today the weather was better than forecasted, so I spontaneously decided to go on a little tour on my own. There were clouds with a base around 5000 ft, but only around 3/8, so I decided to give it a try and fly to the mountains.
Cloud density was higher in the mountains, so I did a little “sneaking between the clouds”, but taking care to clearly stay within class G airspace.
Below the Walensee, where I had a chance to climb higher into more open space.
Some of the clouds looked spectacular, especially around the mountain tops, with most peaks in clouds. The weather forecast predicted moderate icing between 7’500 and 9’000 ft, and indeed the temperature dropped between 5’500 ft and 7’500 ft from 10 to 0 degrees, so I did not climb beyond 7’500 ft..
On the way back I passed a nice waterfall, it clearly showed that there is still a lot of snow melting.
When flying back to Lommis I also did some aerial work, such s flying 60 deg / 2 g turns and chanderels, something I can’t really do when I have a passenger. It’s good to practice flying outside the normal envelope once in a while, to get a better feeling for the plane.