Tripreport: from Thailand to Spain in a DA40

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Tripreport: from Thailand to Spain in a DA40

Post by Kai »

Image

The following tripreport has been posted before, but some people just didn't have access, so I post it here again:

After a less eventful stay in Thailand with my DA40F and struggling with Thailand's annoying bureaucracy within the last 5 months, it was time for me to move on. A minor motorcycle accident has left my girl-friend with a torn ACL and MCL which will need rehabilitation. If at any point I dreamed of continuing westwards, at this point I had to face the reality and plan to go back to Europe.

So I prepared my trip back, trying to figure out which stops would be the most comfortable ones while avoiding India at any cost.

I opted for Chiangmai-Chittagong-Karachi-Fujairah-Luxor-Sfax-Alicante. Some of these legs were over 1400 nms long and spiced with a strong headwind component, I knew I had to opt for the lower power-settings. This and my notorious overweight were the reasons why I achieved only an average ground speed of 109 kts.

During the trip this routing had to be changed, mainly because the overfly permit for Libya wasn't granted in time and in Luxor I didn't make the entire touristic program I planned as my dog scared the people too much. I guess that traveling in these countries with a small aircraft is one challenge, but if you really want to make it complicated, just throw in your dog and make a few overnight stops in countries with a mainly muslim population

So in the end it turned out to be Chiangmai-Chittagong-Karachi-Fujairah-Luxor-Rhodes-Figari(Corcega)-Alicante.

I will describe each of these legs in later posts, but here are the stats already:

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1st day:

Post by Kai »

ImageAlthough I already knew the airport security guys from Chiangmai airport, this morning they gave me a hard time because one of my jerry cans was filled with fuel and they just wouldn't let me pass. It took the intervention of their supervisor to guide me through the airport. Unfortunately, also the customs officers haven't arrived as they simply didn't expect an international flight this morning and I had a 2 hour delay.

With 400 l of fuel on board and 20 l in one jerry can, the take-off was as slow as expected and the fumes of the burning rice-fields around Chiangmai made it a departure in complete IMC. I had the plane fully tanked because I wasn't sure about the AvGas prices on my stop in Chittagong and preferred to carry all the fuel I could.

As expected, the headwind picked up and we averaged a groundspeed of 100 kts. The flight over Myanmar was nearly uneventful, except that a 20 mile-leg went through and Indian FIR and my overflight permit for India wasn't valid until next day. We were vectored away from the airway to avoid India and the overly nervous controller from Chittagong tower gave wrong vectors, as she mixed up heading two-three-zero with three-two-zero.

There were fighters training landings and a helicopter in the traffic pattern, so I rushed into my gap and had an interesting landing with over 220 l of fuel on board.

Immediately my DA40 was surrounded by a bunch of airport personnel, which came to look at the airplane and the weird crew. I took Felpudo, who is my personal travel companion, 1st officer and furry friend out of the passenger cabin and walked him along the apron while Paul, my friend and co-pilot, gave away general declaration forms like sweets to impatient kids.

We went through customs and immigration and it was absolutely easy and hazzle-free. Our local contact person picked us up and took us to the hotel. The 40-minute ride through the chaotic traffic of Chittagong was impressive, the hotel crap. But that's the only thing you will get when travelling with a dog in these parts of the world...

See the pix under http://405fp.com/1-VTCC-VGEG/index.html
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2nd day: Chittagong - Karachi

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This day is the day we overflew India. After an early walk with the dog in a road of our hotel in Chittagong, where no green could be found, we had a quick breakfast and went with the hotel-shuttle to the airport. The depressing walk made me feel sorry for my first time for my furry friend, who might have been better off in airliner which I was so eager to avoid. But it was too late and we had to go on...

Again, everything went on quite fast on Chittagong airport except for the customs which wasn't there as they didn't expect any international flight this early. While Felpudo and me were being the favourite foto-model of passing airport-personal, Paul ran around the airport trying to find some customs officer to put the missing stamp on our flight-plan. After an hour or so, at least 5 of them showed up, we had to shake hands, explain our "mission" until they finally signed and stamped our papers. Again, we shook hands and rushed off to the apron.

My plane was refuelled already the day before and the price of 660 $ seemed o.k. The only curiosity: they tilted the barrel to fill a 1/2-gallon milk-bottle and ran with it to the wings to empty it there. My 5-gallon jerry cans were widely admired as a superior western invention and they wanted to keep one, which I couldn't allow as we needed the extra fuel as reserves.

When walking to the plane, we were followed by many people and I still don't know what they are working in or what their interest was in following us. And again, they took pictures, sat in the plane, posed in front of it in all kinds of positions. Of course, I had to load the luggage, pull the chocks, take pictures of them, too, and finally had to kindly ask them to move on as I really needed to start the engine and take off.

Again, it was foggy-hazy. Indian radio-talk is annoying especially as you have to monitor 2-3 frequencies, you are constantly being switched from one to another, report that you have established communications with the prior controller and report position, estimates etc to all of them. Last but not least I should mention that I never had to say this many times "say again" as their radios are as bad as their pronunciation. "NUVEMBBAAA-FFOOO-ZERRRAAAW-FAAAF-FUXTRUTT-BABBBBAAAA. Rebaawht Booosition!" was the kind of stuff I most heard. (And feared)

Indian civil controllers don't have a radar and rely that you fully follow the airways. No directs given. No deviations allowed. You have some weather right in front of you? Go through or go back. Now, if you would think, you could cheat a bit because they don't have a radar anyway, you will get into trouble as the military does have a radar and intercepts even airliners if their captain he could fool the controllers a bit....

The headwinds were changing, but after filling even the jerry cans' content into the ferry tanks (yep, I am capable of in-flight-refueling), we knew that we would make it to Karachi.

Everything else was unventful and boring. When the night broke in we were getting to the Pakistani-Indian border which is fenced and completely lit, which looks quite impressive to see a lit, never ending line through otherwise completely unpopulated areas. I knew Pakistani-Indian relations weren't the best, but that they had such a well-protected and defined border was new to me.

In Pakistan we finally had a lot better controllers and they vectored us for a straight-in into Karachi. The landing was soft as we had burned most of the fuel and we were immediately received by the handling agent, customs officers and other airport staff. While going in a crew bus to the terminal, I was asked if the dog had a passport, which (of course) he has. The took the passport, passed it on from one to another, joked around and said it was the first time they have ever seen a dog with a passport. (I don't know why they asked in the first place, but suspect they need an excuse to put him into quarantine or get rid of the furry intruder as soon as possible.)

Felpudo was added as "crew" in our general declaration and in none of the checkpoints they could come up with any document regarding the dog which I wouldn't have had ready. Many of the enquiries were made with 10 metres safety distance between the officer and me and the dog, as they were scared by Felpudo's presence. I will never understand that.

So we all left the airport and I quickly walked Felpudo in some green area near the parking. I am quite proud to say that he was a very brave, well-behaved dog during the entire flight and even held on to himself for over 15 hours.

The only impressions I got from the taxi-ride to our crappy, worn-out hotel was that it was a lot more organized, cleaner and not as chaotic as India or Bangladesh. Only the smell of old fish and brimstone was a bit irritating.

When reaching the hotel it was after midnight already but the hotel still organized us a few sandwiches with old, dry chicken and greasy french fries / chips and I had a few hours to sleep before flying to Fujairah on the next day.

See the pictures on http://405fp.com/2-VGEG-OPKC/VGEGOPK...chi/index.html
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3rd day: Karachi-Fujairah

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Image Image ImageKnowing that today's leg would be shorter, we scheduled a relatively late departure for 9 a.m. local. When we arrived at the airport, the local agent's office was closed and the only phone number I had, wasn't answered. So we were quite late once the handling agent found us and guided us through the airport.

Karachi Intl. airport is full of security checks even way before entering the building there are military-style security guards. Fortunately, they fear dogs and waved me and Felpudo through other gates which were far away from them, haha.

Within the airport we were stared at by security guards, airport-personal and at one checkpoint the security guard didn't forget to mention that he "just loves Germany. DEEP from my heart. They have a great history and did better things the Arab world ever managed to do." Knowing at what he was aiming I politely thanked him and tried to hide my embarrassment but he went on: "But I hate the American people, I hate America." Again, I nodded politely waving to my US-American friend and co-pilot we should quickly move on before this guy would have gotten more insulting.

We must have gone through 5-10 checkpoints before we finally got to the crew bus which took us to the remote area where NovemberFoxPapa was parked. The handling agent came with the next surprise: he had no AvGas, but has some from a local flight school, we just needed to taxi there. Of course, the tower didn't give us taxi-permissions for another 30 minutes because the handling agent forgot to hand in our GenDec. Finally we received progressive taxi-instructions to a wide gate, stopped, and went on once it was open.

Then we had to stop again in front of the next gate while the gate behind us was closed. On the right hand side of our position were smaller boothes with guys with machine guns on stands behind sand sacks. They were definitely looking at us and I wondered what this was going to be.

The gate opened, we rolled on and stopped in front of the third gate while the 2nd gate closed. It was all not understandable and I felt like taxing into some jail or secret compound. It was so incredible that there was just the flight school located a bit after the third gate, that I still can't believe it and don't understand what they need all this security for.

At the flight school, we were suprisingly well received by chief-pilots, training pilots and the owner of the flight school. They all were eager to hear our story and while we were busy explaining, about 8 mechanics pushed the DA40 to their gas-station. It took them ages to open the barrel, tilt it and fill the fuel in smaller cans and take them to the wing tanks. But I was used to it and quite enjoyed Schon-Air's hospitality.

After settling the handling agent's exaggerated invoice, we were bid farewell from each of the pilots and the flight school invited me to sleep in their flight school and enjoy their hospitality next time I would stop in Karachi. I am not sure if Karachi will ever see me again, but the flight school would have made the stay a lot easier.

We taxied through the magically opening and closing gates, while the guards and other took pictures of us with their mobile phones' cameras. I taxied straight to the holding point, and was cleared for take-off. Unfortunately I received a different departure than the one I requested, but confirmed to be able to do it and the took another one.... I messed it up completely, the controller corrected me and my co-pilot even worse.

After apologizing to the controller and getting vectors, Paul and me found out that the problem was that we really didn't have a clear agreement on who takes which part of the job. We definitely have learned the lesson and the rest of the trip, we didn't fail again.

After departure we have flown for quite a while along the Pakistani coast and it is amazingly beautiful, deserted coast where there were no signs of Tourism or even civilization at these never ending beaches. Despite of some disappointing remarks at the airport, I learned that Pakistan is a beautiful country with very friendly people and it might be worth stopping for a bit longer (and without my furry friend).

The routing to Fujairah lead us for a few hours over water, mainly to avoid Iranian airspace which costs $0.50US/nm and an overflight permit, which I haven't had this time.

Eventually we hit land again, the coastline of Oman and were vectored for a straight in approach to Fujairah, a freight hub for the Middle East. The landing was uneventful and the Skyline of Fujairah looked like any other modern, western city. We taxied right to the ramp of Fujairah Aviation academy, a place where an English engineer promised us to sell us AvGas at very reasonable prices. Keith came right up to our plane which was parked right in between a couple of other DA40s and a DA42.

Keith, the british engineer, was as friendly as on the phone a few days ago and attended all our needs. Especially he helped us to refuel the aircraft and we had an interesting conversation about his job in UAEs ruler's own flight academy and why they were still with Thielert-propelled DA40s. To make things short: he will have a job as long as they have DA40s to be equipped with 2.0 engines.

We then walked over to the international arrivals area to clear customs and immigration while Keith wanted to wait outside to pick us up and take us to our hotel. Unfortuantely, we didn't get very far: the immigration officer said I have a problem. The problem is called "dog" and I would have to wait until the vet arrives. The vet who came some 20 minutes later said it wouldn't be a problem, if the dog had a passport. I showed the astonished vet Felpudo's passport and he said "Everything o.k. I just need to look at the Veterinary certificate." No problem from my side and showed him the certificate. "Ahh.... verrrryyyy good. But I will need to see the lab's analysis of the blood."

Also, no problem from my side as I even had that on me. I could see the "vet" veins on the forehead swelling while he tried to make up another excuse to not let me pass with Felpudo. "Thank you, but your certificate is too old. You need one from this year."

Well, discussions went on and while I considered sleeping in the transit area, the vet still wanted to put Felpu into quarantine. Obviously, I objected and told him, if they wouldn't let us in, I would just fly on. Paul couldn't believe what I was saying but I was determined to fly with or without co-pilot rather than leaving my dog with these "persons".

I told him that I was open to any solution and would fully understand that at this point he might be better off getting an airliner. But after his surprise has passed he said "Yeah, well, better two pilots than one. I can't let you fly alone." If I would have known how right he was, I would have staid in Fujairah anyway, but the worst was yet to come.

So we walked back to the Flight Academy, called up Keith, who already expected that something weird must have happened and assured us it wasn't the first time they had friends being rejected by immigration fir the strangest reasons.

I then went to the flight planning office to file the flight plan. It was more complicated than I thought because of a Notam, a lot of military activity and the fact that my overflight permission for Saudi wasn't valid until 0.00 a.m. local, so I had to fly either slow or wait another hour.

At this point I should say that Fujairah airport is probably the best organized airport I have seen. The flight planning office right next to the Met office and the met-office right next to the administration and cashier. The attendance was perfect, they even printed the routing from their own Jeppesen charting program and gave detailed recommendations how to handle the complicated and dense airways in the gulf.

I filled the water bottles and we walked off to NovemberFoxPapa who must have been surprised to see us back this quickly.

See all the pix of this leg on http://405fp.com/3-OPKC-OMFJ/index.html
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4th day (actually the third): Fujairah - Luxor

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Meanwhile I walked Felpudo along the gas station and felt constantly watched by the airport police which always had an eye on us. Also we re-filled our empty water bottles and had some tea with Keith, who still couldn't believe we were to fly on to Luxor through the night.

Image So we hopped back into the plane, took off with 460 l of fuel on board and enjoyed the skyline of Fujairah. It would have been a beautiful stay, if it wasn't for these @#$#@$ at the airport. While slowly gaining altitude, suddenly my kidneys started to hurt. I asked my co-pilot to take over while trying to figure out what this could be. The pain was getting quite bad and I started sweating and shivering.

I told Paul just half of my pains as I didn't want him to be too concerned, but we both said that returning to Fujairah, although being the most legal thing, would be very impractical. The plane was way too heavy to make a safe landing and maybe I wasn't really in the best conditions to make such a difficult landing while my co-pilot wasn't current on the DA40 and wouldn't be able to land it either.

Image So we decided to fly on and Paul asked me if I had enough to drink. Drinking? I must have forgotten about it. We were flying in extremely hot conditions and in Fujairah I just had a tea and a little bit of water. So I drank quickly as much water as I could, but it didn't get any better within the next hour. We were overflying Dubai at night, the world's tallest building and a clear skyline but I was too concerned to be able to enjoy it.

Could my co-pilot fly all night another 12 hours after a hard day and get us to Luxor? I realized he already opened the window latch to get some more fresh air into the cockpit and I still sat in a crooked position staring at the moving map of the G1000... it was impossible.

We discussed which airport along our track would be alright for an emergency landing and we were sure to get ourselves into huge trouble, not to mention the dog. Qatar, Bahrein etc are not known to like deviations, emergency landings of small aircraft with dogs on board. While discussing our very limited options, each one of them being able to take me to the hospital, but implying long interrogations for us and quarantine for Felpudo, I suddenly felt better again.

It really must have been de-hydration.The pain faded and another hour later I was finally able to release some of the tons of water I drank. I took the controls back and Paul sank into a deep sleep for the next couple of hours. He must have suffered only from thinking he would have to fly another 12 hours. Even the controllers were sleepy and gave me the next 4 frequencies in case communications were lost. As expected, they didn't call me again and I checked in with a few of them, but they didn't even care for a normal operations call.

ImageI was doing very well and not tired at all and was overly happy to fly the plane over the Saudi desert until the morning broke in. It was one of the most beautiful mornings I have had for a while and the desert with its little townships along some sandy roads seemed to cheer me up to go on.

We swapped controls a couple of times until we finally hit water again and crossed the red sea. The Egyptian controllers vectored us to Luxor and the landing was smooth. The ground staff of the airport immediately came to collect our GenDec, and even the handling agent was there to wonder why we came so much earlier than expected.

ImageAt the airport, they waved us through all control points and it seems all of the airport guys who crossed our way, even the vet, received a bit of "Bakshish" from the handling agent. Outside I found some green to walk poor Felpudo who again was the one who less complained. A pre-ordered Taxi took us to the Nile shores where we picked a boat to ferry us to our apartment, which was the only pet-friendly accomodation I was able to organize before hand...

I sank into the bed and fell asleep wondering how I was going to explain any FAA-examiner my logbook-entry of that day when I logged 2264 nms and more than 20 hrs of flying time?

If you are interested in the pictures, please look at http://405fp.com/4-OMFJ-HELX/
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5th day: Luxor - Rhodes

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After a good dinner and a nearly unconscious sleep, we got up next morning knowing that we would have Greece, a nice hotel and European food waiting for us. So we crossed the Nile again with the ferry and went with the Taxi to the airport.

Our handling agent was waiting already, passing his 850 USD bill which I had to pay in cash. It took me some time to get the cash out of the ATMs and he then took us through all the controls and I still wonder why we didn't even have to show our passports.

We then refueled and I was amazed about the price again: nearly 5 USD/litre! We added exactly 900 USD which should be sufficient to get the leg to Rhodes. Much to our surprise, our flightplan was filed and the controllers gave us immediately our squawk codes and taxi instructions. So it was an expensive stop, but at least it was quite a quick one. Right after take-off we were vectored over the Valley of the Kings with beautiful views of the Nile river shores. Weather was perfect again and we flew on, with a few deviations to avoid landing traffic in Cairo airspace.

Weather and neutral winds were near perfect until we crossed the mediterranean sea when a headwind picked up. We tried to fly as low as the controllers would let us, means FL65. But still we had headwinds of up to 30 kts, so it was looking a bit improbable that we could make it. My fuel flow indicator wasn't reliable anyway anymore and the only indication was the fuel gauge. So we slowed down even more and landed with about 20 litres in the tanks. That is quite scary, having in mind that this was a 800 mile leg.

At the airport we were received by a friendly airport employee who took care of all paperwork and took us through customs and immigration, which took only 15 minutes. Meanwhile a few hellenic stewardesses passed by playing with Felpudo. He definitely hasn't received this kind of a treatment for a few days. Even the taxi driver called Felpu to sit on his lap while driving. The hotel then was the best hotel at the cheapest price I have paid the entire trip. Although I get sick of Europe every once in a while, I have now learned that our civilization has a lot of advantages which I didn't think I would miss.

I then took Felpudo to the beach, where he finally could play for a while. After days in the plane and at ugly airports where people didn't like dogs, he really needed a while to get back into life.

Will post the pix a bit later.
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Re: Tripreport: from Thailand to Spain in a DA40

Post by gsontheimer »

Hello Kai,

you did not have an autopilot, did you? And the IAS seems to be between 80 KIAS and 100 KIAS most of the time. How come the DA40 was so slow? Was it just the weight? How much did you total?

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Re: Tripreport: from Thailand to Spain in a DA40

Post by Kai »

Hello Gerhard,

you are right: I don't have an AP. When I bought my plane, I figured it would be easy to retrofit one. But that is definitely not the case. DAI made me an offer of over 50k EUR and they won't help any other company to legalize an alternative installation. So, it really isn't nice flying IFR for 14 hours....

Why was I so slow? Well, very often it was indicated 80-100 kts and at the altitudes it converts to 100-125 TAS. Sometimes we were flying at FL150, but usually not below FL100. Also, the overweight didn't help at all. And I had a bit of ice pick up sometimes, which takes another 10 kts.

The most important reason was that my fuel flow indicator has a failure and indicates about twice the real amount and we had to fly more conservative power settings to assure us we will get there. Last, but not least: on the trip back we almost always encountered a headwind component and we had to slow down even more.

Total fuel pickup: 160 l wingtanks, 240 l ferrytanks and 3 jerrycans of 20 l each. Total: 460 l.

If you are interested, you might want to see a smaller report and pix of the trip from Germany to Thailand http://www.405fp.com/THAITRIP.
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Re: Tripreport: from Thailand to Spain in a DA40

Post by Chris »

Kai wrote: Why was I so slow? Well, very often it was indicated 80-100 kts and at the altitudes it converts to 100-125 TAS. Sometimes we were flying at FL150, but usually not below FL100. Also, the overweight didn't help at all.
This makes me wonder how much overweight you were when maxed out with fuel. In our XL, putting two passengers and >100 gallons of fuel on board would put us more than 150 lbs over the max takeoff weight. While I'm not planning to try to exceed the max specs, I'm interested to hear how badly take-off performance and handling suffered in this configuration. I guess I'm wondering just how much margin is built in to the specs.
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