The magic that is Holland in the Spring

It's been a busy few days this past week. I've not flown this much in such a short space of time since flight school!! This is the time of year that Holland looks her best, and especially when viewing Mother Natures majesty from above. It's as though she has cast her wand over this wind swept flat land and turned it into a carpet of colour, each one individually exquisite. But the life of a Dutch tulip is short lived because man soon comes along to chop it's pretty little head off. 

For those of you who are aghast at this inhumane treatment of the poor defenceless tulip, fear not. It's because of the decapitation that the plant can put its energies into making the bulb grow fatter, rather than spending it on the high maintenance energy hungry flower. And the tulips growing in the fields will be harvested and sold to you and I so we can grow them and enjoy them in our own gardens.

But today was all about admiring their beauty from above. It's one thing to cast your eye across a tulip field from the ground, and quite another to see them from the air. And I had the pleasure of doing this pretty much all weekend long. I took a colleague up in Nippy first. He's new to flying in light aircraft, but had dabbled on Flight Sim before, so he had an idea of the basics. I let him steer us over towards Amsterdam whilst I negotiated with the boys at Schiphol Tower to let us into the Amsterdam sector for a spot of "I can see my hotel from here" before moving on to the delicate procedure of passing overhead Schiphol itself en-route to Lisse.

The negotiations successfully concluded, we carried out a few orbits of the city and then headed over towards Schiphol. I was asked to fly towards the threshold of runway 24 (I assume to avoid runway 18C which was being used by landing traffic, and therefore to keep clear of them in the event that they boltered and carried out a missed approach) and to wait for their call for heading change. Eventually the call came to route direct Lisse which meant I managed to fly right over my house :-) Yes, I let out a "I can see my house from here" to my colleague sat next to me :-)

By the time we arrived on station over Lisse, my colleague was struck in awe. I heard lots of "wow" and "amazing" in between his clicking away at the camera. Schiphol asked me to keep clear of their airspace as the lunchtime rush was now in full effect. So that meant routing North along the coast and across the Noord Holland peninsula back to Lelystad. The fun bit was mixing it up with the big iron which were about 1000ft above us descending into Schiphol.

The next flight was Easter Monday. A new photographer had found this very blog and the photo's from last year and asked me if I could take him up on Easter Monday. He was driving up from Belgium with another friend of his, so I booked a C172 for the mission and agreed on a time. That time came and went sadly, due to a Numpty who was late leaving, then went to the wrong fuel dump to refuel and decided to eat into MY booked flying time just because he was late and got lost of the airfield. I was allowed extend my flight by 30mins to make up for the time I lost, so without haste we were off.

A call to Curtis, my photographer friend from the US and the man in the know when it comes to all things tulips told me the night before to avoid Lisse and head for Anna Paulowna and Julianasdorp...."Clay it's wall to wall tulips there all the way to the coast" he told me in his inimitable Louisiana accent. Well, that would certainly avoid the Schiphol CTR headaches, on the other hand, I still have a military airbase to contend with. I called them up the day before and was told it shouldn't be a problem.

The GPS decided right before our flight to run out of power, and as luck would have it, the 172 I was flying had not cigarette power adaptor. So I was going to have to do this the old fashioned way....VOR beacon and the Mark 1 eyeball to figure out where I was.

We were soon overhead Venhuizen and Normann was giving me directions on where he wanted to go. This meant of course that the navigation was going to be a challenge. I not only had to know where I was in relation to De Kooy's class CHARLIE airspace, but I knew of a gliding club and an ultralight airfield all within close proximity to each other and where I was currently at. Damn you GPS!!!

Once I was happy we were clear and safe from traffic, I dropped down to 700ft and slowed down to about 70-80kts. The boys opened the windows up to stick out their lenses and began snapping away feverishly. Their tulip field fix being met :-) I gave Dutch Mil a call to let them know I wanted to enter De Kooy's control zone. We stayed south of the airport and remained in and around the areas of Schagen and Anna Paulowna.

With the boys happy and their cameras full to bursting with Mother Natures splendour on show, we climb back up to 1,200ft and powered up to 110kts for the flight back to Lelystad. Curtis, was right on the money. And the season's not over yet!

In a fix, Squawk 76

We're level at 1,000ft just past Hoofddorp and I'm setting the plane up for low and slow flight overhead Lisse....when it happens. The radios made a "plink!" noise and they're all dead. The transponder was still working, so I dial in 7600 to let ATC know that I have no radios.

I'm in a bit of a bind now because today's mission was to take the Internal Auditors who were over from the U.S. auditing my company up to see the beauty of the tulip fields from the air. But now I'm right on the fringes of Schiphol's CTR with no radios.....and now no Transponder....that's just gone and died too.

OK, first things's first.....I need to get us out of Dodge and quickly. Once clear we head west to the coastline. I'm going to have to take the long way round to get back. Even if the radios come back alive, I doubt that Schiphol Tower will let me back in in case they died again, and I also don't trust them to stay alive. I have full fuel tanks so it's a no brainer to decide on the safest route along the coast and cut across the north end of Schiphol's approach.

Much earlier, I was thinking about the last time I transitioned from "Nippy" to a Cessna 172. I remember the senstation that the Cessna was like flying a truck with wings when comparing it to "Nippy". But amazingly this particular C172 is VERY light on the controls. Not sure which version it is, but looking at the log book she's an old bird....almost 10,000 hours logged on her. But she's it great shape and well looked after.

I've checked all the fuses, nothing has blown or tripped, I have no "low voltage" warning light and all the fuel gauges and giros are working....so it's not an electrics problem. It's isolated to the avionics. This particular C172 has the Garmin GNS 430, which means that the GPS and radios are coupled. It has a spare back-up radio, but neither of them are working. OK....I'll try recycing the avionics.....nope, still nothing. OK, nevermind.

We're abeam Ijmuiden and I can see the steelmill below me to the right. A quick look at the chart and I could zip under Schiphol's CTR here are 1,000ft....the base of the Class "C" is 1,200. But I opt to continue north a wee bit further until I'm well clear. Since the transponder doesn't work, I do not want to risk tangling with a 737 on finals for Schiphol.

Since most pilots are stubborn and never give up, I continue to recycle the avionics....and eventually my stubborness pays off....first the transponder returns to life, followed by the navigation instruments and the the Garmin and back-up radio......PHEW!!

Amsterdam Info informs me they can hear me loud and clear and they welcome me back. They must have seen me on their primary radar the whole time, but the voice of a familiar controller is music to my ears. I explained to her what had happened and told her I was routing to Lelystad.

Passing south of the field, I called overhead "BRAVO" and set us up for the circuit. My head has the power and speed settings for the 172 memorised.....my instructor would quiz me on the speeds every morning when he picked me up for flight lessons. So it was a matter of slotting into the circuit and pulling off a smooth landing. Sadly, the landing was a little laboured, and we hit with a bit of a bump....I just hope that's not reflected in the results of the audit :-)

Transair....they're not always greedy buggers

It's a pretty widely accepted opinion amongst the piloting community in the UK and Ireland, and to some extent those on the continent, that if you're ever going to buy anything that's aviation oriented, then you should steer clear of Transair, based in the UK.


My own experiences have not been negative, and on the few occasions I happened to buy something it arrived on time and at a reasonable price. However, that was limited to about two or possibly three instances. The rest of the time I would either buy when I was in the U.S. or buy online (ebay, Sporty's etc) and then either have it shipped direct (it it was under the Customs threshold) or brought over by a visiting work colleague. And failing the US option, there was also "The Pilot Shop" for charts etc based at Lelystad airport.


That is until recently however. The EPIRB/PLB that I had for the Robin ATL had suddenly sprouted legs and walked. It's location is to date still unknown and given there is a legal requirement to carry on onboard at all times, I had to replace on pronto.


I carried out the usual scouting around in the U.S. first, then took a look at "The Pilot Shop" and then finally looked at Transair's online store. Long story short, by the time I factored in the shipping and import costs from the U.S., Transair was by far the cheapest place to buy it. I was surprised at first, so I went to compare some other items, and found that they were also equally priced compared to the shipping from U.S. option and better priced than TPS. This isn't the case on all items of course, TPS is cheaper on certain products they carry.


I guess the whole point of me writing this is to advise my fellow pilots to take the time to shop around. Flying is already an expensive hobby, and reputations precede some organisations, but they're not always true.

Bloggers Fly-in

We're level at 1,200ft overhead Enkhuizen and the warm and fuzzy meter is well into the green. Ouen is at the controls and doing a very nice job at keeping "Nippy" straight and level, tracking course nicely and listening to me explaining the FREDA check (Fuel, Radio's, Engine, Direction, Altitude). This is a check I was taught, and continue to use today, whenever I'm doing a cross-country flight. 

We're on our way over to Texel to meet some fellow flying bloggers for one of the twice annual get togethers they organise. This is the first time I've been able to attend myself, with either the weather or life getting in the way, so I'm looking forward to it.

The weather has already started to brighten up, with the sun poking through a layer of haze. Ouen was quizzed by his wife before leaving because it was drizzling when I picked him up in the morning. But the TAF's for the day matched the weather picture we saw on the trip up to the airfield.


Ouen is sitting in the P2 seat, and he's jabbering on about how he cannot feel the rudder. In his opinion, the rudder is very light and non-responsive. But I keep reminding him that he's not yet got the feeling, and that given time, he'll figure it out. I was the same in the beginning and the important thing to check is the ball in the Slip Indicator.

His take-off was good, keeping centred on the centreline and he applied constant and steady back pressure to help get us airborne. But he started tracking right of the runway, which I had to help with some application of rudder, so I'm not surprised about his comments on the rudder...he's just not gotten used to it yet.

On the way over the water to Enkhuizen I asked Ouen the "what if.." question my instructors asked me ALL the time. "What of the engine quit right now, what would you do". He's a quick learner, because he said he'd set-up for best glide speed (which he remembered from our last flight), aim towards the dike (the Houtribdijk) and then try and land. So I expanded on that and said once he'd set-up for best glide, his next priority should be to look for a field, then run through the "Engine Out" checks, and while doping that to get out a Mayday call.

We were doing quite nicely as went "Feet Wet" past Enkhuizen on the next water section towards the Afsluitdijk on our way to Texel. I'd been walking through the idiosyncrasies of getting the plane trimmed. Using the simple acronym of PAT (Power, Attitude, Trim) Ouen was beginning to get the hang of applying small gentle inputs to the controls to feel-out the plane, letting her settle and then adjusting the trim wheel.

The fun, speed and flurry of checks soon arrived when we begin our Pre-Landing checklist. runway 04 is in use today, which means after the reporting point ALPHA we'll need to avoid the town of Oosterend keeping it on our left to join the DOWNWIND leg halfway. I asked Ouen to feel me through on the controls for this landing so he can get a feel for the control inputs. By the time we turn final, I'm still a little too high. So I explained to Ouen that I'll side-slip to lose some height and then put in the last few stages of flaps once I know I can make the field.

When we landed, Ouen remarked on how impressed he was at how quickly we had lost the excess height and were still able to pull off a very gentle landing. So I explained the aerodynamic principles to him over lunch. Our fellow bloggers arrived and we had a lot of fun chatting with them and exchanging stories, but time was ticking and we both had to be back in Amsterdam by early evening.

I taxied the plane to the run-up area and Ouen handled the take-off. When he got her airborne I said "My Plane" and kept her in ground effect until the speed built up to 90kts, and then I said "watch this" and pulled straight up at about 60 degrees. The speed dropped as we climbed altitude and when we were at 65kts I said "Your Plane" and he continued the climb-out....albeit a little giddily :-)

On the cruise across to Lelystad Ouen had pretty much mastered keeping "Nippy" trimmed and was doing his FREDA checks every fifteen minutes or so. There was the funny moment though when he confessed that he was using a sailing boat as a reference point to try and determine the wind effect....we both let out a chuckle.

This time I am quite happy to let him set "Nippy" up for the approach and see how he handles it...maybe he'll get a landing today. He takes her nice and steady to BRAVO, turns inbound and gets the "Pre-Landing" chacks out of the way. I show him the reference points for turning DOWNWIND, and explain the power-settings he needs to set when abeam the threshold and again for turning onto BASE. We start descending a little when we turn BASE and adjust the power again for FINAL. We're a little high, not much, but when I said "Throttle to FULL idle, we're a little high" he said maybe "you should do this one? Your plane". So I slipped a little and got the speed right back. I was teaching Ouen to aim for a specific point on the runway (the threshold, the numbers etc) and try to keep that spot in place on the windshield during the entire descent and to aim passing the threshold with 60kts and ready to flare. I landed on the numbers and slowed us down all within 180 metres. I still think that Ouen could have managed his first landing. Maybe our next trip will be across the border and we can do some touch and go's so he can pop his "landing" cherry :-)

All in all a really great day....we met some nice fellow pilots, enjoyed some gorgeous Texel sunshine and had a very good training session. 

And I'm looking forward to the tulip fields returning to their full splendour in a week or two :-)

Not easy getting in or getting down

Have been debating whether or not to pop this AIRPROX report form into the postbox or not. Maybe I'm over-reacting, or maybe I'm justified?

It wasn't the best starts to the day either. I had picked up a friend who is interested in either buying a share of "Nippy" or at the very least, using her on a regular basis. We've been trying to arrange a date to complete the check-out for the best part of three months. Maintenance, bad weather and worser scheduling conflicts have resulted in the series of delays in getting together to do the check-out flight. When we arrived at the airport there were road blocks at every road leading into the airport. Everyone was asked to exit their cars and both people and cars alike were searched. Unfortunately, a rather plump middle-aged policeman bodysearched my friend and I, whilst the car was given a once over by a rather nice young looking blonde female officer. 

Arriving at Polder was a little like arriving at the scene of a police raid. The instructors were panicking and asking their students if they'd remembered to bring the Weight & Balance docs and a copy of the NOTAM's with them. It seems the police were airside too, checking all arriving pilots. Interesting....first time I've ever seen such a thing in all the years I've been flying in the Netherlands.

We rolled "Nippy" out of the hanger and I showed my friend the in's and out's of the walk-around for the Robin ATL. We topped off her oil and headed out to the run-up area. I suggested that we head over to Texel, do a few practice landings, have a spot of lunch and then head back to the training area and do some slow flight, stalls etc. By the time we'd get back, the "Rozzers" would have gotten bored and buggered off. 

Since it was a check-out flight, I elected to sit on the right hand seat. This was a first for me. My friend climbed in next to me and we walked through the idiosyncrasies of starting up "Nippy" on a cold morning. She's a bit finicky and there's the added curve ball of using the choke. She spluttered into life and we quickly closed the choke and headed off to the run-up area. It was quite a busy morning, and even though we were last to join the run-up area, we were ready quite quickly and managed to jump the queue a wee bit. The Dutch pilots were probably grumbling into their headsets :-)

We lined up on runway 23 and my friend advanced the throttles forward. He was a bit unsure of the rudder and when we lifted off he had a bit of trouble negotiating the crosswind we had on take-off. I heard a "Interesting" from him in my headset and asked if that was god or bad. He replied "good" and commented on how nimble and almost "fighter like" the handling was. We weren't climbing as fast as I would like and reminded him to set the trim and climb at Vy to get the best climb performance out of "Nippy". 

We exited the circuit and headed for Lelystad city and I had my friend dial up Amsterdam Info and ask them for a FIS (Flight Information Service) for our trip to Texel. He hadn't flown since November, and even then it was in the UK so he was a bit unsure of what the say etc. Also, given the fact that he is used to flying Tiger Moths in uncontrolled airspace with no radio, and you can soon see how he was a bit hesitant about using the radios. But after the first two or three exchanges with AMS INFO he soon got the knack again.

We didn't climb too high, just bimbled across at 1,200ft. I gave him the lay of the land and pointed out the key landmarks. It was on the short hop across that he noticed how light "Nippy" tends to be, especially when you have your head inside the cockpit setting the radios. He ended up doing the same thing I did in my early flights...the plane would slowly start banking left or right. It's a habit he will learn to correct for, as have I.

About 20 mins later we were setting up to call Ed & Michael in Texel. I helped run through the BEFORE DESCENT and BEFORE LANDING checks. It was hard for my friend to spot the grass airfield in amongst all the many farmers fields. We were set-up for Downwind, turning Base when I asked my friend to drop some flaps as we were a little high. He struggled to get the Robin down and keep the plane from overspeeding on the descent, so he side-slipped a little to lose height and traded the excess speed off in the flare. We landed (a fairly decent attempt even though it was fast) and taxied back. He was sweating a wee bit and offered up to him my own first landing, which was also too fast. We said hello to Ed and Michael and then had lunch and a debrief at the restaurant on the airfield. 

On the way back we uplifted fuel and planned to do some airwork north of the polder. But we noticed on the climb out from Texel that the ammeter showed it was discharging. I quickly set about unplugging and switching off all non-essential items, but nothing happened. As we flew on, we decided to skip the airwork and head straight back to Lelystad. As we drew nearer to Lelystad city, lo and behold, the ammeter was showing fully charged. We reckon it must be a loose connection. Michael from VOT will take a look at it next time I bring her over.

So we tracked eastwards so I could show my friend where the VRP (Visual Reporting Point) of BRAVO is. This is a mandatory VRP used by all VFR traffic into Lelystad. We descended to 700ft and called overhead. Pre-landing chacks complete we were turning right for downwind for runway 23. This meant the sun would be in our eyes on final. As we turned final, I made the call to Lelystad Radio. My friend was again trying to control the speed and lose height (slightly high again) when all of a sudden some idiot rolls onto the runway without making a radio call, when were only about 300m from landing at the threshold!! I glanced quickly over to the right (the dead-side of the runway) to make sure nobody was using the microlight runway, just in case we needed to take avoiding action from this idiot.

Thankfully he was in a powerful airplane that he was able to clear the runway and climb away, but needless to say it had our hearts going. When I landed I asked for the tail number of the plane and the pilots name as I wanted to file an AIRPROX report. Strangely the guys in the tower were a little hesitant to give the details at first. If I wasn't so cynical, I'd half imagine they knew who this person was. 

And so endeth another fun filled day in the wild blue yonder. My friend is now checked out on the Robin, and I decided....the AIRPROX is in the mail.

Sunshine and Schnitzels

A week of glorious weather has held out all the way through to the weekend. Which meant my friend Ouen and I were able to take Nippy out for a bimble. Ouen is like myself, an avid aviation enthusiast, and would gladly join me for a quick bimble across the Dutch countryside in search of some nice airfield food. So we're sitting in the German sunshine, bathing in the sunlight like two Galapgos Iguana's enjoying our Schnitzels. Sadly no beer though :-(

"Nippy" had been tucked away in the hangers of Polder since her ferry flight over from Texel, and it was about time she was let out to experience some Spring sunshine. I had a look at the charts a few nights beforehand and settled on a little airfield just across the Dutch/German border call Nordhorn-Lingen (EDWN). I saw on their website that they had a restaurant on the field, so the choice of destination was a no-brainer. That, and the fact that they charge those wonderfully low German landing fees I have come to love so much.

With it being a little less than an hours flight away, I figured that on the way back we might make a quick stop in Holland somewhere. I soon put that thought out of my head when I compared the landing fees in Germany (€3.00) versus the ridiculous prices in Holland (€18.50 for Hoogeveen for example). This has indeed become a recent bane in my side about flying in Holland and is indicative of what one has come to expect LIVING in Holland. The Dutch are simply greedy buggers. They fleece you for everything....the cost of parking your car in Amsterdam is the highest in Europe, you pay health insurance for shitty, non-existent medical care, and the price of a dinner for two is approx 3-4 times higher in Holland than the equivalent in either Belgium or Germany, AND you get way better service in those two countries than anywhere in Holland. But I digress...needless to say, you can get an idea on what the topic of conversation was on our wee cross-country.

So it was settled. I picked Ouen up from the train station and we drove to the airfield, rolled-out "Nippy" into the morning's sun and fired her up. We had to contend with two really slow pilots taking their sweet-time filling up their Piper Archer at the fuel pumps. When they'd done filling up, it took them about 10 minutes just to climb into their plane and start it up. Off to our left and also waiting for fuel was a young idiotic PPL student who was there to log some solo time. I knew who he was because I was chatting to his instructor earlier in the morning. But I wasn't impressed with him because while we were both waiting he was revving the bejesus out of his engine. Typically one would keep the plane revving in idle, with the occasional increase in revs or use of carb heat to avoid carb-ice. But his revving was idiotic. So bad in fact that someone from the control tower made his way over to the guy and told him to shut down the engine, and then invited him out of the cockpit for a bit of a bollocking. So it was a learning day for the young pilot. 

Fifteen minutes later and we were lining up on runway 05 for a right turn departure to the East. Ouen gingerly advanced the throttles and I scanned the engine instruments as the speed built up. At 55kts we were airborne, although not in the usual manner of a homesick angel....more like that of a slightly obese angel whose flying at max all-up weight :-) Still 700fpm wasn't bad. I reminded Ouen a few times to maintain a climb out speed of 60kt's in order to climb out at Vy (best rate of climb) and to level off at 1200ft. After take-off checks complete I dialled up Dutch Mil and asked them to climb to FL55. There was a small patch of Cu (Cumulous) clouds on our path, so we kinked left to avoid them and climbed above them. Once past them, it was blue skies all the way to the German border.

The airspace was surprisingly quiet today, given the good weather, and about 15 minutes out of EDWN we requested to descend to 1,500ft. About 10 minutes out, I dialled up Nordhorn Information and asked for the airfield information. It was at this point that I then took the reigns and steered toward the VRP, whilst Ouen and I kept a sharp lookout for both traffic and the airport itself. Which was easier said than done. The airfield is hidden behind a dense forest of evergreen trees, which are quite high. Before we left, we had a look over the Jepp plate for the destination airfield and I noticed the displaced threshold for runway 06. But it never occurred to me that the trees that created the need for the displaced threshold would be so high as to obscure the airfield when inbound from the VRP. We were told the circuit was clear to allow for a straight in approach to runway 06, so it was now only a matter of finding the damn field. I eventually spotted it and set "Nippy" up for the approach. That's when I noticed how tall the trees were. :-)

Landing fees paid, we decided to explore the airfield a little bit. We noticed an An-2 in a hanger off to the distance and were told by the locals that there were THREE inside, and we were welcome to go take a look. We wandered around talking to some of the local pilots and doing what most in the GA community do best....talking about planes, fuel prices and landing fees....and of course where the best restaurants can be found. 

Strangely, this joie de vivres and affinity with fellow pilots, it has to be said, is sorely lacking amongst the Dutch aviation community...certainly in GA circles. I've flown in the US, Finland, France, Belgium, Germany, UK, Ireland and Ukraine, and every pilot whom I've ever met would gladly talk flying given any chance they can get. It could start off with someone admiring someone else's plane, or commenting on a landing, or over some beers after a days flying...and the conversation is almost always easy going and a collection of the grey haired wizened ones advising the youngsters through the telling of tall tales and the like. However, not so in the Netherlands. I've wondered why this has always been the case ever since I started flying here, and I think Ouen helped hit the nail on the head. Our theory goes like this:

Most pilots (including a lot of European ones) have gone overseas to someplace where the training costs are lower and the weather better. This has meant that the average Joe (especially the case in the US) has been able to afford attaining their wings. With so many average Joe's, there are very few snobs about, and the ones that are there confine themselves to the expensive FBO's where the red carpet is rolled out upon arrival. Which means that the GA community I've been exposed to is full of normal, ordinary (and somewhat humble) people.

However, there is still a large clique of Dutch pilots who have gotten their wings at home. Given that it's, at best, around three times more expensive to get your licence in the Netherlands, it seems that this has bred an exclusive community of snobs. Since they're quite content to pay, on average, three times the price for their training, they seem to have this "I'm better than you" chip on their shoulder. Looking at the average car park and you'll see it's full of the usual Dutch "Ralph Lauren" wearing tosser mobiles in the guises Audi's, BMW X5's, Alfa's and the occasional Porsche or two. Now, match that "chip on your shoulder, do you know who I am" attitude with someone on the airfield and you end up with a fraternity found uniquely here in Holland, namely the "Tit who calls himself a pilot".

On our way back, we decided to do a little airwork. I had Ouen practice some steep turns, slow flight and some stalls and stall recovery. His execution of the steep turns was phenomenal....almost hitting our wake every time when he rolled back straight and level. He needs some more practice with slow-flight, but made a damn good effort in "Nippy" this time 'round.

And so it was....two and a half hours in the air spent on airwork and life's observations. And of course two well fed tummies. Ouen's already hatching some time to get back up in the air....with weather like today, I can't say I blame him.

Any Way The Wind Blows

In today's case it was blowing from the South West at >25 knots and gusts reported up to 37 knots. But the visability was good, the cloud base reasonable for todays mission, and although the winds were strong, they were blowing straight down the runway at both the departure point and the destination. So the only two things to elicit a read out on the "Pucker Factor" were the gusts to deal with at Lelystad (my destination) and the winds aloft enroute.

The mission was to ferry "Nippy" across from Texel back to her home-base of Lelystad. A previous attempt the week before came to nought. A check of the weather that weekend had beautiful blue skies on Saturday only to give way to grey overcast stratus and poor visibility. However, the forecast predicted that come the afternoon it would clear up and make way to sunshine. That it did, but only over Noord Holland. The rest of the route from Enkhuizen onwards was shrouded in mist and claggy clouds no higher than 300 ft. It wasn't a completely wasted trip. I got to do some touch and go's in "Nippy" and check the plane out after Michael from VOT had stripped her bare and put her back together again (I just hope that there were no bits leftover when he put her back). Having your mechanic only 40 minutes flight away is a damn sight better than the 3 hours or more I had to contend with when she was looked after in Strasbourg. And although the flying legs were quite comfortable, it was the 8 or more hours either getting there or back that hacked me off.

So the first attempt was scrubbed, but with the strong, almost hurricane force, winds dying down, and the visibility improving, I thought it was definitely doable today. The TAF's from EHAM (Schiphol) and EHKD (De Kooy) both showed lighter winds in the morning, gradually strengthening as the afternoon progressed. No worries, I'd be up in the air by lunchtime.

Michael came to pick me up from the ferry terminal on Texel. We rolled Nippy out of the hanger and I carried out the preflight. As I started her up and asked for the airfield QNH from Mike in the tower, I noticed the windsock was fully inflated and horizontal!! Mike asked me what was the max cruising speed of the little Wooden Wonder, to which I replied "Don't worry, it's fast enough that I won't be flying backwards in this wind".

It was a blustery trek to the departure point of runway 22 in Texel. I had a hard time trying to counteract the affects of the wind on the v-tail. But with the engine run-up checks complete, I was soon in the air, and quite quickly too! Before I knew it the ASI was showing a speed of 80kts and Nippy was climbing like a homesick angel. But it was very early on that I noticed exactly how windy it was once airborne.

I was being thrown around like a ragdoll and really had to crab into the wind. On a normal day with light winds, a normal track would have me steer a heading of 143°. However on today's flight, I was having to steer 180° just to keep centered on the magenta line shown on the GPS. It was quite an odd feeling to be flying and looking 45° to my left. As a result of the winds aloft, a simple jaunt of thirty minutes ended up taking a full hour to complete.

As I flew overhead the city of Lelystad, I could see the airfield away off in the distance. I could also hear from the radio chatter that there was someone even more mad than me bashing the circuit and doing touch and go's. I have no idea if it was a poor student getting in some very valuable training (and having a pair of brown shorts by the end of his sortie) or if it was an owner getting up in any auld weather just to stay current. But given that the winds were now gusting close to 35kts at Lelystad, but right down the centreline. And since there was only one guy in the circuit, I asked the folks on watch in the tower if I could forgo the necessary join at BRAVO, and instead opt for a very long approach over the woods. The reasoning for this was to enable me to assess the strength of the winds from a good distance out and give me enough time to set Nippy up for a stable approach. 

A "keep a close eye for traffic" was the all-clear I needed. With the gusts being 15kts greater than the average wind speed, I tacked on another 15kts to the approach speed and elected for half flaps. The other aircraft in the circuit was turning upwind, so I had plenty of time to set-up for the approach. No worries. Power set to idle, carb heat hot and the flaps slowly coming in as I was feeling out the wind, before you knew it Nippy was flaring oh-so-gently over the threshold, kissing Mother Earth. 

There......Home, Sweet Home. Nippy is now tucked up in the hanger awaiting for the winds to die down and the Spring sunshine to make its appearance. And I am home enjoying a well deserved cold beer.

Below is the METAR from Amsterdam Schiphol at the time I was touching down in Lelystad.

EHAM 071425Z 22026G37KT 9999 OVC018 10/06 Q1011 NOSIG

The Science of Santa

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal, SPY magazine (January, 1990) – I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT, there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT, since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, which is 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,430 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

So using Newtonian physics, this is not looking good.

However……

If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he could be using the probabilities of all possible supposition of states that is part of quantum theory, so that Santa, in his protective plasma bubble (large enough to hold the sleigh, Reindeer, Santa and all the presents), would have to suppress the decoherence of the quantum state in the macro sized world.  Hence he can be in all places simultaneously and could then deliver the presents to all the right folks in the same night.  By using quantum tunnelling at a marco level, he could jump from one place to another bypassing the space-time fabric, not meet any other suppositions of himself, and pop out at on the roof or inside the house bypassing the challenge of “we do not have a chimney”.

The energy required for the utilising the quantum state at a macro level and to use quantum tunnelling for each hop would be equivalent to a significant part of the Suns output, so the sleigh needs to be powered by a captive black hole, which adds it’s own complications.  One hypothesis is that the captive block hole power source is contained in another dimension or even another parallel universe, to reduce the mass and radiation challenges in our universe. 

Meaning that Santa himself (we assume he is a he), is not from our dimension at all and his red suit is a containment system to support whatever requirements his life form needs in our dimension. 

The catch is that he must not be observed (ref. Schrodinger’s cat), because that would cause all the wave function to collapse and hence no presents to everyone, so please tell your kids not to look for Santa as it would stop him for everyone else!  Or better still dress up in a Santa suit and pretend to be him for your kids, to protect the real Santa from being observed as he does his work!

Merry Christmas Everyone :-)

It's A Funny Old Game....

Yes indeed, flying is a funny old game. From the characters you meet, to the stories we share and the experiences you enjoy from flying both in the air and in the hanger, it's certainly a unique world.

Recently I found a new A&P for "Nippy". My "Wooden Wonder" had been abused at the hands of the French and no more was I willing to stand for over the odds pricing they had demanded, for both the maintenance AND their supposed parking fee (for leaving "Nippy" out in the snow and ice on the tarmac on THEIR property. But I digress.

Our new A&P is situated on the lovely island of Texel, the southernmost, and indeed the westernmost, of the Frisian Islands, and home to my favourite FISO's, Ed and his son, who provide a fantastic service.

The plan today was to visit the hanger and try to get "Nippy" out and take her to Texel, where Michael could open up her guts and have a poke around prior to signing off on her new annual. As this is the funny old world of flying though, I was not 100% certain if I could get into the hanger. You see, I was told about a month or two ago about two vacant spots in the Pionier Hanger at Lelystad. I contacted them and was told I could have one...."No Problem" I was told in that inimitable Dutch accent. M and I moved the plane over last Wednesday, only to be told by Friday, "Yah, Sorry, but der ish no more room". So, no room at the inn for "Nippy".

But fear not, because this funny old world of flying had another surprise up her sleeve. I got an email from an acquaintance who had recently sold his plane and who had three months left on his hangar rental. So, problem solved. "Nippy" will have a place to tuck up for the Winter afterall.

As I was getting the cockpit ready, I started a conversation with someone I knew who had bought a 50% share of a plane with someone else. His story was an eye-opener. This funny old world, which most of the pilot fraternity believe is filled with honest, trustworthy and honourable people, is seemingly filled with charlatans, chancers and cons. His story about how a plane he'd bought, spent money on and then was cheated out of made me realise both how naive I was to think, nay BELIEVE, that the pilot community would not screw over another, and how trusting I had been thus far. But I will try and not let his negative experience influence my normal level of cynicism.

It wasn't long though before "Nippy" and I were slipping those surly bonds of Earth and "Nippy" was doing her best to imitate a home-sick angel. I had neglected to update the GPS before I left home, and I think that was the reason it decided not to work. But fear not...it's a simple little jaunt, undertaken many times before, so I levelled off at 1200ft, heading 330 magnetic and kept a listen on Amsterdam Info for any traffic that might be coming my way, or even coming up my jacksy. But I DID remember to bring the camera, so I tried to take a few photo's and vid's while I was in the air. It's much harder to do it one handed though when you're bouncing around in the air :-)

After landing, I taxied over towards the "apron" on Texel. Boy was it busy today. Some oligarchs had flown in on a Beech 200 King Air, and there was the usual gaggle of Dutch day trippers and German vacationers. After the previous debacle I had experienced when I tried to taxy over to Micheal's hanger when the dropzone was active, I called up Ed and asked him if I could have him marshal me over there. He replied that if I made a move for it, I should be OK. But, in this funny old world, the Cessna Caravans has just emptied their bellies of those adrenaline junkies and they were already touching down left, right and centre. I stayed put on the apron and then was given the go ahead to taxy to Michaels and asked to shut down the engine ASAP. This is were it went a little Tango Uniform.

I thought Ed meant to shut down as soon as I was on the concrete taxiway that leads into his hanger. This made sense to me so as to avoid chopping off the adrenaline junkies arms as they walked back, or worse, landed into my spinning propeller when they came in to land. But alas he meant to taxy all the way up to the hanger and shut off ASAP. So as I climbed out of the cockpit after shutting down I was welcomed by the blonde fire eating dragon called Martina who works for Paracentrum Texel. She was adamant that she didn't care if I chopped off arms and legs, but that I was "on her dropzone and to get off quickly". Fair enough....."chop away"....sorry, "chocks away".

The last thing this funny old world threw at me today was the sad sad sight of the C177 sitting in Michaels hanger after somebody twanged her after a poorly judged landing attempt on the island a few weeks ago. I had the joy of flying G-BAJE, a really gorgeous airplane, when M and I held this years annual "Flying BBQ Extravaganza". I got checked out on her and was taught the many peculiarities of the all-flying tailplane and wrote about the difficulties of handling the round-out during the flare.

Depending on who you talk to, the pilot who was a low time PPL, and experienced problems during the flare, over correcting so much that he either hit the tail first and then bounced hard on the nose gear, or he hit the nose gear first, but with such force that he managed to twist, bend and warp the nose wheel, oleo strut, engine mount, firewall, stringers and the prop. The damage is quite extensive, but not blatantly so. But enough that it may be a total loss. So sadly I may be that I never get a chance to fly her again. :-(

"Nippy" will be in Michaels capable hands for a few weeks and then we'll see what this funny old world has in store for us both then.

Swapping the Jersey Islands for Texel Island

 
I have been suffering a wee bit from cabin fever, ever since the gorgeous Summer weather decided to up sticks and bolt to the southern climes of this fair continent that is Europe. But since I have the Wooden Wonder, aka "Nippy", I thought that I'd make the best of the cards that Summer had dealt us and planned a long weekend chasing the sun south.

I've always wanted to visit the Jersey Islands, and as a pilot, it's also a destination which provides a nice challenge to add to your skillset. You are effectively flying in Class "A" airspace and so need special dispensation from ATC to complete the mission.

The plan was to take a leisurely flight to Jersey, stopping off at picturesque Dieppe for lunch on the way.  But as is the case with all the best laid plans, the weather was less obliging. A large trough of low pressure was edging southwards from the UK and Ireland and was forecast to settle along the Northern French coast and hover over the islands for the entire weekend, hampering any effort to get there and back and also resulting in us choosing to spend a weekend in the rain. Once bitten and all that, I decided to stay away from volatile weather systems and chose the old adage of "better to be on the ground wishing to be in the air, than being in the air wishing you were on the ground", so I decided to scrub the Jersey trip.

Initially I was a little bummed. I checked to see what the weather was going to do elsewhere. Funnily enough, as is usually the case, Mother Nature was playing silly buggers and plonked a great big HIGH right over Holland. So we decided on a short hop over to Texel. A recent development has been the transfer of Nippy maintenance from the Wallet Grabbing Extortionists in France to a more able and reasonable AME actually on Texel. So I arranged to meet them on Saturday, have them look the plane over and discuss what is required to have them take over the job of applying TLC to Nippy from now on.

The sight of having one of the Aviodromes DC3's sat next to us at the run up area got Malinka's pulse racing. She was amazed at the size of it compared to our little Nippy. The DC3 had 21 POB and was off on a pleasure flight around the polder. I pushed the throttles to max power and we were shooting up into the hazy skies above. A brisk 30 minutes later and we were on final for Runway 04 and a greaser of a landing on Texels' green sod. 

A very nice meeting with the new AME has meant that we're really happy with the decision to have to folks in Texel look after Nippy from now on, and given it's a 30 minute flight to Lelystad, I will certainly save money on the simple logistics I getting down to Strasbourg and back. 

Au Revoir Extorqueur.....Goede Dag Verfrissende Verandering.

Pan Pan Pan ........ Diverted to Eindhoven

Day two of our weekend away, and it was one of those times when you review the weather, expect one thing but experience another. You remember I mentioned the Summer Sun a few days ago? Well it's gone on vacation!!

I filed the flightplan to Lelystad as an exact reversal of the route we took yesterday. The weather showed rain showers on the radar moving eastwards. Given the speed they were moving, it was reasonable to expect them to have dissipated by the time we were taking off. But that was not to be the case!!

When we arrived at the airfield, the tower was closed for 30 mins due to a "lunch-break". As we sat outside the cafe we opened the charts and I decided to avoid Dusseldorf on the way back. I didn't want to deal their ATC, so we routed in a westerly direction and avoided their CTR. BUT, and this is were it gets interesting, to the north where I wanted to go, there was low hanging clouds, rain showers and general nastiness to be avoided at all costs. 

Malinka didn't seem fazed at all. She figured out the day before that her travel-sick tummy was a result of being dehydrated and flying on an empty stomach. She stocked up on good hearty German cuisine earlier for lunch, and she was happily staring out the window and looking for other aircraft as we trundled along. 

I continued my track westwards, passing South of Moechengladbach, eventually turning North over Roermond. Langen had me switch over to Dutch Mil Information and they cleared me to cross the Vokel and De Peel CTR's. But as we passed about 10 NM's east of Helmond, I had to descend due to a lowering cloud base. With the weather deteriorating all around me, and my warm and fuzzy meter rapidly moving towards the red arc, I told Malinka that I was going to declare an Emergency and divert due to the weather.

I declared a Pan Pan Pan with Dutch Mil who immediately swung into action. They asked me which direction I had the better visibility. I could see clearer to the west. The consensus was to divert to Eindhoven, so they gave me a heading to steer. I was also trying to avoid the showers that were ahead of us, but Dutch Mil helpfully obliged by giving steering headings to enable me to intercept the ILS for final to runway 22 at Eindhoven. At one point she asked if I had the airfield in sight, mentioning that they'd turned the runway lighting to FULL to help me find it. It wasn't long before we had the field in sight and I was asked to contact Tower for a smooth landing. 

After I landed and taxied off the runway, I got a little confused and I think I called Eindhoven Ground "Lelystad Ground". I guess that my brain had decided to relax after working hard to get us on the ground. We were marshalled to the GA parking and parked NP beside a Canadian AF A300 parked beside us. The Marshaller helped us refuel (at €2.70 a litre, I will NEVER be buying fuel in Eindhoven again) and then he drove us to the Flight Ops Office so we could consult the weather radar and make a decision on when/if to leave for Lelystad.

Malinka and I looked at the weather radar in Eindhoven and decided that the front was passing through and we could be off again in an hour. Eindhoven then tried to charge me €80....YES!!! €80 for a landing fee. Guess who won't be coming to Eindhoven anytime soon!! I told them that I had declared an Emergency and that the fee should be waived....which it was.


An hour later, we were strapped back into "Nippy" and soon on our way again. This time the weather was clearer (a small bit of clag just north of Eindhoven was all we had) and we were edging closer and closer to Lelystad. Malinka wasn't impressed with the landing I made in Lelystad, having given a thumbs up in Koln and Eindhoven and a thumbs down at Lelystad. I guess I was just glad to be back and was not bothered that I didn't pull off a greaser :-)


Lessons learned? Well, my training paid off. But I will ask the FIS for more frequent weather updates next time I come face to face with a lowering cloudbase. Oh, and the quicker you let ATC know, the quicker they can put an action plan in place to help get you out of the predicament you're currently facing. 


A HUGE thank you to the girls manning Dutch Mil Info today. Malinka and I truly appreciated your professionalism and help today.