12.12.2016: We are heading towards Christmas, and it has been a poor year for flying, at least with my SportCruiser. I have so far flown only 19 times, with a total of around 23 hours, and there is little chance that I will be able to add more until Sylvester. That’s a low time record for me. For business I have flown 105 times on airliners this year, all within Europe, that’s around 140 hours.
18.12.2016: Last week I did some test runs with a train near Locarno Aerodrome. That’s the home base of the Swiss Air Force training unit. Their Pilatus PC-7 aerobatics team was rehearsing, which gave me a nice “airshow from a train cab”.
28.12.2016: Having some days off over Christmas / New Year I had planned to go flying, but realistically expected this not to be possible due to either the weather or a closed runway. Both are common issues in Lommis during wintertime. But the weather gods are obviously in a good mood, so off I went to the airport today.
I did two circuits first, which together with the longer flight I did subsequently brought me back to my “three landings in the last 90 days” status, so if the weather stays we might do another flight on the 30th December where I will anyway be at the airport later in the afternoon.
My longer flight brought me over the alps, checking whether the snow situation is really as bad as they are saying in the news. And indeed, this was confirmed, most nearby skiing stations seem closed, or only have one single lift operating over a slope with artificial snow produced by snow cannons.
There was no trace of snow up to maybe 1’500 m / 5’000 ft, and very little above. At 10’000 ft the temperature was just about freezing, which also doesn’t help. But for next week some significant snowfall is predicted.
