Re: another tour de france
Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:19 am
I'm far from expert relative to other forum participants but, in my limited experience, the restricted areas were a good deal less work than I was anticipating from reviewing the charts in advance of flying. I did several days of my flying on weekdays and, thanks largely to the pro-active nature of the French ATC, the process was much smoother and easier than similar transits would have been in the UK. For many legs of my trips I did file flight plans in advance, so ATC knew in advance where I wanted to go, not sure how much this mattered though for the enroute portion of my trips. I always had backup plans, in the event I could not transit the restricted areas or, eg, Class D airspace, but very often this was not required. ATC typically asked me where I was planning to go, what altitude I wanted and they let me know when and where it was going to be a problem, well in advance of key boundaries, or they handed me off to the appropriate Military or airport ATC who either gave me a transit without my having to negotiate, albeit sometimes with clear and simple conditions, or in a couple instances did not let me in (Cognac on monday morning with exercises going on and U/S radar) and Nice radar let me know Le Luc was active on a Tuesday morning and when I asked to double-check which area, they were kind enough to say well in advance of the boundary something like "that it is the area ahead of you which you should track 20 degrees to the right to avoid entering," which was what I was planning to do but I just wanted to double check... due to the large number of nearby restricted areas. I had a moment of uncertainty looking at my chart and asked them to confirm that it was R95 (that they were not warning me about R138, R196, R71...)
I would say that "going for it" (with backup plans) seemed to maybe be less work, less irresponsible perhaps, than I would have expected and in most cases I did not need to ask for transits as these were offered to during initial contact or well in advance of boundaries pro-actively by ATC.
I did plan my trip north through the Rhone Valley from Cannes to land at Lyon Bron as I had read on the internet that transits were difficult to obtain through Lyon and it seemed easier to just plan to land and depart from there. I was stressing a bit about this area based on looking at my map. Not sure I would do that again as I had plenty of fuel, bladder capacity and lower back endurance to have planned that leg for a landing further north, Dijon, Troyes or similar. Not sure what others' experiences have been - in general I am much more confident of easily getting transit through classes of airspace which would I would simply avoid in the UK because it would be more hassle than it is worth or unobtainable to receive transit in the UK.
I would say that "going for it" (with backup plans) seemed to maybe be less work, less irresponsible perhaps, than I would have expected and in most cases I did not need to ask for transits as these were offered to during initial contact or well in advance of boundaries pro-actively by ATC.
I did plan my trip north through the Rhone Valley from Cannes to land at Lyon Bron as I had read on the internet that transits were difficult to obtain through Lyon and it seemed easier to just plan to land and depart from there. I was stressing a bit about this area based on looking at my map. Not sure I would do that again as I had plenty of fuel, bladder capacity and lower back endurance to have planned that leg for a landing further north, Dijon, Troyes or similar. Not sure what others' experiences have been - in general I am much more confident of easily getting transit through classes of airspace which would I would simply avoid in the UK because it would be more hassle than it is worth or unobtainable to receive transit in the UK.