N807DS across Europe

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Aart
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Aart »

O, and by the way, as to your bet to outrun me, I am afraid I am a moving target. Just had a serious 'cut polish' job on on my plane and added a few knots...
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Antoine
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Antoine »

Hmmm my turn to grumble.

METAR of EGJJ today temp 14 dewpoint 14 visibility 100, BKN 000

So we diverted by taxi to St Malo and are hoping to fly to Jersey tomorrow morning ....

Talk about a microclimate in tgh channel island!
:tap:

Aart what did yoz do to the DA42?
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Antoine »

Well well, N807DS just made it to Jersey. Again worse weather than previous day forecast: IMC right after take-off and landing in minimum IFR conditions.
My copilot did shoot a video of this and We will post it as soon as we find time. This trip doesn't exactly look like the island hopping holiday we had planned for :(

Now planning the leg to Blackbushe tomorrow: it is a challenge... they close at 1800 local and the thunderstorms would be just finished by then. Let us see if weather will help this time. Alternate is Bournemouth or ou next stopover Norwich...
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by psk »

small world, i have been following your posts of trip, and i just arrived to jersey yesterday to evaluate a da40 based here. fingers crossed, my offer was accepted. good luck with the weather, it seems quite unusual weather here.
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Jean
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Jean »

Not really aeronautical:
Le Tour de France, the famous bicycle race, will start from Liège, my home town
tomorrow. 8-)
NOTAMS expected !!!
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Jean
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Jean »

Hello Antoine,
Posted some pictures of Cannes airshow and Corsica tour in the Gallery
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Antoine »

psk wrote:small world, i have been following your posts of trip, and i just arrived to jersey yesterday to evaluate a da40 based here. fingers crossed, my offer was accepted. good luck with the weather, it seems quite unusual weather here.
Lol I saw your new aircraft - undressed! Looks like a nice example, 770 or so hours, right? I talked extensively with Bob and he gave us tickets for Goodwood which we sadly did not use. I wish you many happy flight hours!

We have now finished our English adventure with another two legs. We flew from Jersey to Blackbushe near Farnborough. Upon leaving Jersey, the controller let us do a low level tour of the Island before activating our IFR flight plan. We then climbed to FL090 in amazing tailwinds. We were hoping to break... 200 knot ground speed! It did not happen in level flight - we achieved only 191 knots, but we did almost 210 in the descent! I will post pics and the flight report :-)))

Blackbushe was friendly but very expensive at 41 GBP for just a one night stay. Then we got badly ripped off at a local hotel and restaurant called the Casa dei Cesari.
They will get a review on booking.com...

The leg from Blackbushe to Norwich was a very bumpy low-alt IFR flight. It started right after the crosswind take-off and I did not even attempt to switch the AP on during the climb - which made a a very credible exercise of "unusual attitude recovery". Boy oh boy, the plane was shaking like hell and both climb rate and airspeed were all over the place. Unbelievable. My navigator told me she had never seen me fight with the stick like that and I recall briefly seeing 70 KIAS and seconds later minus 1200 fpm..
It eventually became calm enough to engage the AP. We were vectored at 3400 ft (?!) across the London TMA and took a real beating in the low cloud layer which was sweeping across England. Fortunately, it was a 20-30 knot tailwind again.
Landing at Norwich was windy and extremely gusty, something the Tower controller did not warn us about. By short final we were fully informed though! We have a video of the approach almost entirely shot from the right side of the canopy :-)
A strong gust picked us up just 1-2 seconds before touchdown and sent us up maybe 2 meters. We recovered without going around but it was not a very smooth touchdown, as can be seen on the video - maybe I´ll put it on youtube.

We spent 2 lovely days in Norfolk and flew directly to Essen germany yesterday. The handling agent Saxonair in Norfolk were absolutely perfect, very friendly very competent and not more expensive than Blackbushe for a lot more service. We refueled there duty free and crossed the north sea IFR.

The coast of Norfolk is very beautiful and it distracted us enough to almost collide with a... silver and blue party balloon which was on its way to the continent at 2000 ft or so!

After studying the winds we elected for a slow climb to stay in tailwinds for as long as possible. Upon changing from Norwich to London we had a surprising request to set VFR squawk and talk to London Info. They then gave us an IFR squawk again. Weird...

We had flight planned on FL070 due to expected icing but the Amsterdam controllers asked if we could do FL100 in their A airspace. I said "we´ll try but we may need to ask for lower due to icing". Sure enough it happened. We had light icing, plus headwinds plus light hail (ruined our brand new prop paint) and we had to ask for several heading and level changes. Amsterdam were always very friendly, despite us obviously interfering with the climb of an airliner or two... We were carrying light ice and running full RPM for maybe 15 minutes and we decided we need to get out of it.

Eventually we were out of A airspace so we cancelled IFR and aggressively descended to 3500 ft before entering the next nasty looking cloud group.
While trying to keep the shock cooling within limits I managed to shut down the engine by leaning it too aggressively!!! Was a scary moment but it restarted allright.

We landed in Essen EDLE as planned, very friendly GA aerodrome, and are now in Duesseldorf for a relax day. I have no WiFi from iphone to post the pics and video.

Last leg is tomorrow to Lausanne.

All in all we were quite disappointed by the horrible weather that plagued almost all of our legs. Heavy IMC is not what we were planning for, and we did not see much of the scenery we were overflying. Luckily, we could take this evening tour of Belle-Ile and also see Jersey from above upon departing. On the "pro" side, I am quite pleased to say that I now have experience with absolute minimum IFR approaches in both fog and rain to unknown airports. The GFC700 autopilot has proven to be an invaluable tool under the circumstances, and I must admit that I missed Synthetic Vision for the first time in my flying life.

Also, we really came to appreciate the very expensive ChartView feature. Funny enough, it is on the ground that we found it most useful. It is note "safe taxi" as available in the US, but somehow the aircraft´s position is displayed on the map of the airport, and that was just great.

This trip has made full use of the DA40XL´s amazing avionics suite, except fot the Stormscope, which I will most probably use... tomorrow for the last leg...

I am delighted by the airplane´s bad weather capabilities and safe manners, and even the cliomb rate at MTOM was well into 500 fpm near FL100! Thank you DIamond

Jean, will take a look at your picz, merci!

N807DS out
Antoine
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Antoine »

Jean very nice pics, I love the one on top with clouds and mountains.
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Jean
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Jean »

That picture was shot on the way from Figari to Calvi via Bastia in the evening. There was a moist SW warm wind and the land was suddently covered by clouds on the eastern side of the mountains. We landed at Calvi at 9 pm and the sky was perfectly clear on that side.
BTW, can anyone tell me how to sort an add comments to the pics in the gallery ?
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Re: N807DS across Europe

Post by Robin »

Antoine

Great stories, thats what the flying is all about.

Having the G 1000 just makes flying and situational awareness much easier. We are fortunate in Australia not to have to fly many minimum IFR approaches.

I look forward to seeing some of the videos.

I did my instrument rating renewal test today. The ATO (aircraft testing officer) was great. He ahs flown my plane before and loves the Garmin 1000. Had to do a glide approach in the circuit at one aerodrome after a RNAV approach then a circling approach.

I vidoed my ILS into Essendon. Will post it onto the videos section.

Safe flying...

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