03.06.2015: I did the annual check on my plane today, all looked perfect at 268 h. I had some spurious wrong fuel pressure readings recently, so I cleaned the fuel pressure sensor, which seems to have solve the problem. The only other problem was the heat, as we are currently having a heat wave with 34 – 35 degrees, that’s pretty hot to work in our maintenance hangar.
04.06.2015: I did a check flight today to verify that everything is ok after the annual check, always a good excuse to go flying. I took off at 9:30 in the morning, with an outside temperature of already 34 degrees Celsius!
The high temperature resulted in quite a restricted visibility du to the haze, so I decided to climb to higher and therefore cooler air. My wife and daughter went on a longer hike, so I overflew the area they went to, hoping they would recognise me. This was later confirmed, as my wife asked me whether I had been flying over them shortly after 10:00, which was the correct time
I overflew a large and quite impressive building near Airolo, which I had not noticed on previous flights in the area. I later found out that it is a military casern.
I climbed to 12’650 ft, as can be seen below, where the outside air temperature was still +8 degrees C. That resulted in a density altitude of 14’510 ft, where the plane still climbed pretty well. Note also the spread between the indicated speed of 88 kts and the true air speed of 109 kts, that’s a plus of nearly 25%.
On the way back I passed the Tödi, 11’857 ft,..
and the Glärnisch, 9’561 ft, where I saw two mountaineers just shy of the peak.
10.06.2015: Our factory built SportCruiser suffered a broken nose landing gear one year ago, which resulted in some damage mostly in the firewall forward section, as well as some minor deformation in the upper firewall and a hole in the fuselage skin. We shipped the aircraft to the factory for repair, and also had them convert the aircraft to permanent flight conditions (I believe it is the first one in Europe). This is necessary for all aircraft that were produced prior to EASA publishing rules for certification of European LSAs and the type subsequently receiving European LSA certification.
Today we could fetch the repaired aircraft in Kunovice. As it is not so easy to reach, especially one way as you can’t drop off a rental car there we decided I fly there with my SportCruiser with a second pilot, who then flies the aircraft back to Switzerland.
It was a beautiful day for flying, with no significant weather forcasted, so we decided to do the trip in one day.
Below a view at the alps somewhere south of Munich.
Here a view of the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany.
Navigation is fairly easy in this area, as there are quite many lakes with easily distinguishable shapes, some major rivers and a lot of highways.
Also the border between Germany and Austria is “well marked” by the Salzach and the Inn rivers.
In Austria visibility became poorer due to increased haze, and navigation more difficult as distinguishable features are less frequent. Below Linz airport from some distance, where we stopped for customs. I more and more us such “intermediate” airports, which have some scheduled flight activity, as they have long opening hours, permanent customs (no announcement necessary) and still very moderate landing charges. In Linz that means slightly above 20 €, but with excellent service.
After Linz visibility improved again, below one of many castles in the area.
There is a reporting point “Mikov” marked on the map for the border crossing to the Czech republic, which is a good idea as most town names are difficult to pronounce. It is located just south of the only bigger lake in the area, meaning it’s also easy to locate.
There is also a strange looking hill called Děvín, the only major one in the area, again easy to spot. ATC in the Czech Republic is always very helpful, so we could continue at our cruising altitude through airspace C of Brno approach.
In Kunovice we took over the plane, which was parked in one of the huge former LOT factory hangars, and then taxied with it over to the aero club for fuelling. Vojtech, the factory representative drove ahead with a car, and did all the communication with the tower, us following in sequence.
Below a nice fuel truck similar to the one we just installed in Lommis to provide Jet-A for our new Diesel powered Robin DR-401 aircraft….
… but they also have a proper fuel station with both Avgas and Mogas,
On the way back we passed a LET L-410, learning that it is a new generation prototype with many improvements, including a redesigned wing. We later saw them doing engine tests, with a fire fighters truck parked next to it, so obviously early testing.
From Kunovice we flew back to Linz, already knowing the way. There were some clouds starting to build, with quite some turbulence, and also maybe 10 kts of headwind, but nothing serious. I climbed after a while to a higher altitude to look for lower turbulence, expecting the headwind to increase, but unusually this was not the case.
Below a picture of the club plane, with which I flew in loose formation (always maybe a few hundred metres apart). This helped with ATC as we only found out in the air that the transponder of the club plane did not work, a defect we later at home traced to a faulty connector in the antenna cable.
Here again the city of Linz…
..with some major factories and a significant harbour in the city.
The club plane landed only a while after i had landed, as they had to let a Lufthansa flight depart first.
When taxiing back to the runway after a short stop for lunch and to file the flight plan to St. Gallen I noticed another SportCruiser in one of the hangars.
We then continued in loose formation again, with only me talking to ATC as the faulty transponder only triggered a lot of unnecessary questions. Below a cruise ship on the Danube, on which Linz lies.
On the way back I took a more southerly route, closer to the alps, just for the view.
We passed Füssen, with the famous Neuschwanstein castle.
Only a short time later Lake of Constance came into view, below Lindau, and opposite the airport of St. Gallen.
We landed in St. Gallen to declare the repair to customs. I had arranged with customs how to do this prior to the flight, as we don’t have a bill yet for the repair, just to be on the safe side. From St. Gallen we then flew back to Lommis, which is half an hour maximum.
This was the day with the most flying hours in my career as a hobby pilot, 8:10 off block time. I definitely wouldn’t want to do that without the autopilot, which really makes such long flights much more comfortable.