03.06.2017: I have finally found the time to update my website since my last update on the 18th February. My job kept me busy as usual, but I also did quite some flying, the annual maintenance, my bi-annual check-flight, medical etc.

04.06.2017: We are on vacation in Japan, as our older daughter spends a semester at Keyo University in Tokyo.

By coincidence we were in Tokyo while the Red Bull Air Race took place in Chiba, which lies about an hour by train east of Tokyo. My wife always wanted to see a race, so before leaving for Japan I booked tickets for the event. Doing so was a good idea, as the event was sold out!

Below a few impressions from the race, which was a truly spectacular event.

In the end it was a quite tight finish, in which Matthias Dolderer gave away a possible victory by clipping one of the towers at the last gate. By coincidence I took a video of his race, in which the mishap can be seen close to the end.

In the end the only Japanese pilot on the tour, Yoshihide Muroya won the race, to the obvious excitement of the Japanese crowd.

Apart from the air race there was not much about flying, Japan is more a country of trains, and we traveled around by train extensively. For the longer distances we of course used the Shinkansen, which translated means New Trunk Line, so nothing fancy at all.

There are however also many suburban, and regional lines, which are much less fancy than the high speed trains. They do however all operate on time, reliably, and are very clean.

We did a trip to a mountain village near Mount Fuji, to notice that the railway going there is the sister railway of the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn in Switzerland, one of our good customers.

And we of course took the suburban trains in Tokyo every day, very efficient, and not as crowded as one might fear. We did at least not see passengers being squeesed into trains buy staff wearing white gloves….

The Japanese people love their railways as the Swiss to, and there are quite a few railway museums. Below some pictures I took at the Kyoto Railway Museum as well as the Nagoya Railway Museum, both highly recommended.

13.06.2017:  It’s amazing how quickly time flies, we are already on our way home again. We have a direct fight from Tokyo to Zurich, which at least does not unnecessarily extend the duration of the trip. It’s however still a 12:30 hours flight. That’s about the number of hours I have on my SportCruiser since January 1st….

15.06.2017: I’m back from Japan, and already travelling again. This time I had to go to Toulouse, via Munich as there are no direct flights from Zurich. There were significant thunderstorms over bigger parts of central Europe, so we flew from Munich south to Bolzano, then west to Geneva and then with some zig-zag around thunderstorms north of Lyon.

The flight brought us over Mont Blanc, as can be seen below.

A lot of planes had to fly detours, so the vertical separation minima of 500 ft was taken advantage of quite heavily, I managed to take a picture of one plane passing us nearly directly overhead.

Below a few pictures of some of the cumulonimbus, quite impressive.

This one went a lot higher than were flying, which seemed to be FL355 according to my iPad. So I guess it must have reached at least 15 km / 50’000 ft.

I used the flight to play with my flight planning software EasyVFR, which I now have not only on my home PC but also on my iPad. Before the holidays I have tested the Jeppesen VFR software, next I will also get a trial installation of Skydemon for further tests. Then I will probably decide how to proceed with flight planning and mapping, and also what to do with my Jeppesen VFR manual subscription. 

We arrived quite late in Toulouse, as Lufthansa had to do a plane change due to some oil leak in one of the engines, so I could only take some not very sharp pictures of the Airbus facilities at Toulouse Blagnac airport.

There were three Belugas parked there, two are quite well visible on the picture below. The third one is behind the two, only the vertical stabilizer is visible.

16.06.2017: It’s time to fly home again, this time in better weather. After takeoff I had some glimpses of the Airbus facilities, seemed pretty crowded.

26.06.2017: I found some time to flying today, so we decided to visit Neuchatel. As we left Lommis after the morning rush-hour at Zurich Airport I asked for a crossing, which they approved.  

I like the crossing in Zurich, as they give you a spectacular view of the airport from above. This time we had to hold for two 360’s over Embrach, but could then proceed with the usual “via threshold Rwy 28 to Chatzensee”

After passing Zurich airport one has a great view of the city of Zurich to the east.

We then proceeded over the central part of Switzerland to Neuchâtel, which can be seen below.

Neuchâtel airfield lies to the south-west of the city, close to the shore of the appropriately named Lake Neuchâtel.

The restaurant at the airfield was closed, but we found a nice one within walking distance to have lunch.

After departing Neuchâtel we flew south-west. crossing Payerne airbase, which was closed.

From there we flew along the mountains of Fribourg…

…and past Eiger, Mönch and Jugfrau.

All in all we did around 2 1/2 hours of flying, a nice little tour.