New home for "Nippy"

It's been a roller-coaster two months to say the least and no flying in between. In mid-June, right before I was heading off on holidays, I got a phone call from my friend Wouter, the owner/director of Polder Aviation, telling me the sad news that his business had gone belly-up. The old adage of "How do you make a small fortune in aviation? Start off with a big one" finally rang true for him. With a large amount of debts mounting up, he had to close the doors. This had an immediate impact to me because I have been storing "Nippy" there now for over a year.

The added complication was that everything that was on Polder's balance sheet would now be sold-off, including the hangar, and I would have to find a new home. I started looking for hangar space all over Noord Holland. Hilversum has absolutely no space, and to be honest, the two wankers working in the control tower on the day I went there, would put me off even flying into Hilversum. They were extremely unfriendly, and even more so when they heard me speaking in English. I eventually found a new hangar only two doors up from Polder. It was advertised in the local pilot shop and they were more than happy to have us move in.

I collected the keys last weekend from Wouter and moved "Nippy" into her new digs. With Wi-Fi, a pilots lounge and ample parking, it should be a nice new home. 

Sands of Time

With the scramble for a new hangar before our holidays, and then the three weeks off during June-July with work getting in the way the rest of the time, there has been absolutely no time to fly. Mind you, Mother Nature has decided to not bother granting us a Summer in these parts this year. The weather is absolutely SHIT. I'm off travelling again for work next week, so the chances of getting up in the air this Summer slip away as each day passes. I must be honest though....I really do love Summer in the Netherlands.....it's my favourite day in the year ;-)

Club Med in the North Sea

I've never known a Spring like it. Practically no cloud or rain to spoil those plans of getting aloft, and a high pressure system just sitting right over the Netherlands for the last two months straight. Sadly the month of May was a busy one for me, what with family commitments and business travel getting in the way. But today a pilot friend and I decided we'd make the most of the weather. Destination for today's mission was Borkum, a small island off Germany's north-western coast. It's the westernmost island that constitutes the East Frisian Islands, and came highly recommended from some other pilot friends of mine as a place to visit.

I scoped out the route the previous night and filed the flight plan to route us North-east to Emmeloord , then continue towards Heerenveen, slippling between Groningen and Leeuwarden's Class "C" routing overhead Drachten airfield and then out over the coast towards Borkum.

Cruising at FL050 above the clouds

I was PIC for the outbound leg, my friend choosing to fly on the way back. The flight-plan I filed had us set to climb to FL050 (5,000ft). But we departed at around midday, so the heat and the midday sun meant "Nippy" was struggling to get up that high. We eventually levelled off 5NM north of Emmeloord and I leaned out the mixture to conserve fuel. There were a few smalll fluffy cumulus clouds which we had no problem climbing over, but as we got closer to the coastline the clouds had disappeared and it was blue skies all the way. I've noticed that once she gets a little higher, "Nippy" is a very smooth girl.

We heard another aircraft, a Grumman AA-5, on the same frequency as us (Dutch Mil Info) who'd departed Texel and was also enroute to Borkum. Seemed like someone else was in the island hopping mood today. I made a comment about our groundspeed being so slow (only 87 knots) due to the headwinds at our altitude and wondered aloud if he'd get there before us. 

At ten minutes out I told Dutch Mil I was switching to the folks in Borkum, and I started my descent. I called up the folks in Borkum as was asked surprisingly if my intentions were to land there!! To which I was then asked if I had filed a flight plan. Seems he never got it, despite being on the recipients list when I filed it the night before.

Borkum lying off to our left

During the descent we looked at the approach plates to try and figure out which runway they'd have us use. The wind was coming from the North-east, so I guessed they'd have us use runway 05, a grass runway approximately 810m long. But instead we were told runway 31 was in use. It's a long and very narrow asphalt runway. Because it's so narrow, you have this optical illusion that you are too high.

On Final for Rwy 31....a long and narrow runway!

With no "circuit" in place to worry about, I routed us over the isthmus that the ferry terminal sits on and set us up on final. But I soon noticed that it was blowing a hooley out there because I was very left of the centreline and crabbing like crazy. We were being bucked about so much that I decided to only use half flaps and decided to land a little fast so I would have more control of the plane on final. A quick kick of the rudder to the left and we were down, albeit a little firmly, and coming to a stop.

We parked "Nippy" right in front of the tower and had the usual gaggle of photographers snapping away at her. On the way in to the apron we noticed another Robin ATL parked up on the long-term visitors area and heard the Grumman had landed too....crikey he must have been going at full pelt! Not long after paying the landing fee, we accosted ourselves a taxi and were heading off to "downtown" Borkum.

Can you see "Nippy's" sister parked up?

The first interesting thing we found was that Borkum has its own railway!! Apparently this railway is free and shuttles people back and forth between the town centre and the ferry terminal. We took a stroll along the seafront and found a nice little place that had Curry Worst on the menu as today's special. Sounded like a plan to me. Sitting in the sunshine, and protected from the wind, you could almost be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere in the Med. Especially with all the Dutch and German accents that surrounded us :-) 

Borkum's railway

Tummies full, we took a short stroll through the small village, then jumped back into a taxi and headed back to the field. It was my turn to play with the camera and help with the navigation. Same runway for take-off, only this time we had to avoid overflying the town. Not a problem....straight out over the beach, left along the coast and head back the way we came. I saw some bloke below us using the winds to his advantage on one of those wind buggy thingies....looked like fun! Must try that myself sometime.

We climbed to FL040 this time, and settled into the cruise. But I had to remind my friend to lean out the mixture and lower the rev's. Once settled into the cruise we chatted about planes and trips we'd made or have yet to make. Soon enough, we were getting closer to the Flevo Polder. I explained how Biddinghuizen has a lot of gliding activity, and the best way to avoid it is to fly along the eastern side of the polder over the water and then turn into "BRAVO". My friend is still new to flying out of Lelystad, so it was also a good opportunity to show him some of the landmarks I use when trying to get my bearings.

Sand flats between the coast and the islands

We dropped lower so as to avoid busting Schiphol's Class "A" TMA and said our goodbyes to Dutch Mil...the radios in Lelystad were surprisingly quiet. Pre-landing checklists done, we were just turning downwind when a pilot came on the radio asking if he could make a straight-in approach as he had two sick passengers....I'm guessing they were suffering from motion sickness. We had no idea how far out he was, so it was decided to do a Spitfire approach....a short downwind, and a continuous turn onto Final.

Drachten Airfield...not sure I'd like to have an engine failure if I was using Rwy 26!!

 

Flaps were set to full, and the wind was blowing hard again. It was straight down the runway this time, but it was gusting a fair bit. But the wheels kissed the Earth very gently and we exited the runway fairly lively. I think I would like to try the islands of Juist and Nordeney next time. Would be nice to have all the islands in the logbook, don't you think?

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 :-)