New member of the DA40 IFR club.

[Mchargmg]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I was gone all summer TDY. Just got back a week or so ago. I did get a really nice flight in while in the DC area. Took the "mighty" DA-20 from Martin State Airport up north of Baltimore over the Chesapeake and down to W29. Went with a local firm there that rents DA-20. Nice folks, and very scenic!

Let me know when in town. I will come up and we can go the Perfect Landing at APA.

cheers

Geoff

[Antoine]

Congratulations from Switzerland on your IFR Jeff!

I envy you guys about filing "direct". Amazingly easy, it seems...
In Europe it is almost always impossible to file directs that are longer than 40 NM or even less... So we're stuck with airways that are not exactly made for GA planes...

Just for fun try filing anything at all out of LSGL (a VFR airport) under FL100. Most of the time automatic routing systems will fail and/or generate routes that are 140% or more of great circle while sending you to altitudes that guarantee icing 9 out of 12 months...

I was told this is because we are a VFR airport in a busy TMA...
I think it is rather because we have a real problem with airspace management in Europe.

Fortunately: no matter what we file, ATC controllers are very friendly (swiss, french, luxembourg, german) and will let us have significant shortcuts... within their jurisdictions! It gets trickier in Italy, and challenging in Greece. I remember this "Climb FL 150 initially and keep speed up" while departing Mykonos. I thought it was a side effect of the previous day's Caipirinhas at first!

[carym]

Congratulations on your IFR rating. You will notice that you have become a better and safer pilot with that rating, especially if you use it.

A funny thing has happened to me over the years. I have about 200 simulated and 160 actual hours. I now find that I spend a lot of my time dodging the clouds rather than flying right thru them. I no longer enjoy the turbulence and do all I can to go around any sort of build up. Stratus is great, but most of the clouds are cumuloform and I just hate getting bounced around. I am just getting soft in my old age