This is a report of a one day trip from White Waltham to Deauville on Sunday Oct 25th, on board the West London Aeroclub's PA32R Saratoga. It was my first solo trip to France, my second solo flight in the PA32R, my first actual use of my shiny new IMC (all weather) rating, my first use of AFPEX (the on-line Flight Plan filing system put in place by the UK's Air Traffic Management Service). The report is first of all for my records but also to share with both flying and non flying friends, so please accept my apologies if the language used is not appropriate for you (either too technical or not enough).
I've had my license for two years, have about 130 hours of which 7 on type, and passed my IMC in July.
This trip was initially meant to be to Plivot, a small grass airfield just south of Reims in the Champagne region, on the last weekend of September. It didn't happen then because I had not completed my PA32 conversion. It didn't end up in Plivot because checking the Notams on Friday, it became apparent that some new grass had recently been laid on the runway and traffic was limited to locally based aircraft. So looking at a map of Northern France, and wanting to avoid a "simple" hop to Le Touquet, I settled on Deauville. A quick call to Billy on Friday morning settled the passenger side of things. I had never taken Billy flying before, and as I realised later this could have caused some issues. It thankfully didn't.
On the way out, the selected route was first doing a counter-clockwise circle from the west to the south east of London, via Farnborough, Midhurst, MAY VOR; then going to Lydd, crossing the Channel to Le Touquet. We would then follow the French coast via Eu and Dieppe, paying special attention to the nuclear power stations on the way. Then a quick dash inland to the Seine between the Normandy Bridge and the Tancarville Bridge would lead us to Deauville.The return route was more direct :
Flight planning was done using PilotWizz on iPhone, an application I'm very happy with. Expected prevailing winds of 25 knots from the South West meant flight time was predicted at 1h45m. The flight plan for both inbound and outbound was filed the previous day using AFPEX. I found it rather straightforward to use, the tutorials are well made so the part about addressing (who should your flight plan be sent to) was not too hard. Having said that, I was quite relieved the next morning when I arrived at the club to find that my flight plans had been received properly; during the flight controllers usually started with "I have your details". When I had a question I rang the helpline and they were very helpful. Apparently they will now also offer Flight briefing, even without filing a flight plan, in line with what you get on the French system Olivia I guess.
Because the forecast winds were quite strong, and coming pretty much perpendicular to the only runway at Deauville, I selected Le Havre-St-Romain as my alternate; its runway is in the proper direction. I also selected Lydd - if crossing the Channel didn't seem feasible because of weather on the French side, it would be the closest airfield. On the way back I selected Le Havre again, and Shoreham which would have been our closest airfield when arriving in England.
The Customs form was handed out to White Waltham ops the morning of the flight (you don't need to notify them in advance for your departure, but at least four hours before your return). In the event they didn't show up. On the French side though we had to show our passports on the way in and on the way out.
On the morning the weather looked mixed; clouds over England would not prevent us from flying, but with the IMC rating not being valid in France we would have to be careful; especially across the Channel, and at Deauville were the report was scattered clouds at 600 feet. After showing a few things to Billy (notably how to operate the Emergency Beacon) we took off at 0947 from White Waltham and headed south at 2000 feet, getting a Basic Service from Farnborough. Cloud base was about 2200, and tops much higher; below the London control zone we couldn't climb out. It was fairly turbulent but nothing major.
I also used PilotWizz for the WeightBalance calculation. In the PA32R with full fuel, you usually cannot have two adults in the front seats; so Billy had to spend the first hour of the flight at the back.
This is were we had to make a tactical choice : we could stay at 5000 feet or higher, and risk finding a complete cloud cover on the French side that we could not have descended through (again IMC not valid); or we could go below the clouds, which meant a below average visibility and being much closer to the sea in case of an emergency. After hearing a report of very cloudy conditions from a pilot flying on top of clouds 15 miles ahead of us, we decided for the second route, and did a descending orbit south of Lydd down to 1800 feet. We crossed the Channel and spent much of the rest of the flight at this altitude. This is also the time Billy warned me that he had a tendency to be sick in airplanes ! I have to say he was very brave and after we had used enough fuel for him to move to the front, he felt better.
Upon reaching the French side, we got a basic service from Lille, who (probably mistakenly) passed us to Le Touquet which we quickly left for Paris Info, who passed us back to Lille for about 10 minutes and then back to Paris, finally to Deauville Info…all this while hopping around nuclear power stations. The workload was quite high and would have been VERY challenging without the GPS and the Autopilot. We got some very nice views of the Bay de Somme, the cliffs at Dieppe, and the Normandy countryside.
Once we were talking to Deauville they directed us towards the Pont de Tancarville on the river Seine, with some stunning views of the Pont de Normandie.
The wind and cloud base were thankfully benign enough that we went straight to a base leg on runway 30. The cross wind was light and the landing not too rough.
Because the runway was wet I didn't brake too hard. We were then directed to taxi to the grass area. I was quite peeved - given that they charged us EUR40 due to our weight, they could at least have parked us near the jets ! :-) The trip took 1h50min, bang on plan.
For some reason I didn't manage to get Met info on PilotWizz or the MetOffice's web site from Honfleur, even with data roaming turned on (I could access other web sites) and the facilities at the airport were not available. But things looked clear around Deauville so we decided to take off and take the weather en route, with the full knowledge that if we had any doubt we would turn around. The TAFs from the morning were still valid though, and looked good on the England side. We had been on the ground for about 3 hours only. Once back in the plane I turned on the radio and requested a start and taxi; after not hearing anything back for 2 minutes I realised I needed to put it on speaker rather than just headset if the engine wasn't on… A bit embarrassing as Tower had been trying to contact us. They directed us to point Bravo which is not the start of the runway; after doing my power checks I embarrassed myself further by asking : "How much runway available from point Bravo please ?" "1700 metres" came the reply, with not just a little hint of contempt. "That should be enough then" I replied… The runway does a hump so I could not see the end of it from Bravo; after rolling over the hump there was indeed twice as much runway as I would ever need.
We were off to the North East, towards the world-famous-in-France cliffs at Etretat.
There we got some weather info from Lille, and it looked ok so we headed North. Pretty soon we could actually hear the weather info from Shoreham, and the cloud base was at 2000 feet; so this time we climbed to 5500 feet, knowing that whatever was expecting us on the English side we could descend through. Importantly there was no thunderstorm activity expected, and we were picking up none on the stormscope. Apart from a big cloud blob that was probably topping 7000 and that we circled to the East, it was fairly uneventful. The crossing took about 40 minutes, which is quite a long time if you're nervous… Thankfully ELLA is in great condition.
Very quickly we said "Au revoir" to Lille (actually all over the French side controllers were a bit confused language wise, i.e. should they be talking to me in English or French… Having been trained in England I actually find talking in English easier, but I could probably have understood them better in French). We passed on to London info who were helpful but busy.
I used PilotWizz and the iPhone GPS as a back up to the Garmin 530 and VOR/ADF suite of the aircraft. Definitely not what you'd want as a primary tool, but nice as a back up.
(no it din't make the compass deviate).
About 15 miles south of Goodwood we started our descent towards 2000 feet, crossing a few clouds along the way. We went back on with Farnborough who kindly gave us a traffic service and overhead transit. Approaching them they actually had a departure so they radar-vectored us around the airfield, which probably added 5 minutes max to the flight and was kind of fun in a geeky way. From then on it was back to White Waltham, which would have been uneventful had the sun not been straight in front of us, creating some very bad visibility because of rain we had picked up in clouds.
Flight time was 1h15m, about 15min more than estimate - mostly due to the detour to see Etretat and the small detour around Farnborough. Judging from fuel remaining, we used about 18 usg/h, which is probably more than we needed but I didn't try to lean aggressively at all - I wanted to make sure the running was smooth rather than anything ! The aircraft performed very well, but the trip would have been very challenging without automatic and GPS. Next challenge is to add three screaming kids at the back instead of Billy who was the ideal passenger !
What I learned :
- AFPEX is fine.
- forget about doing a trip like this without automatics and GPS if you don't know the area. At least for me, that would have been too much.
- check the airport plate before asking a question.
- make activating your flight plan part of your departure check list.
- the IMC is really useful. On top of making my flying much better,it really made this trip possible - I would not have risked not being able to return "just" because of clouds on the English side... You'll always have some !
- controllers go the exrta mile if you're actually doing a trip rather than flying around, which is fair.
And most importantly... I can do this, and it's worth all the hours spent training, so a big thanks to the instructors at WLAC !
Flight planning was done using PilotWizz on iPhone, an application I'm very happy with. Expected prevailing winds of 25 knots from the South West meant flight time was predicted at 1h45m. The flight plan for both inbound and outbound was filed the previous day using AFPEX. I found it rather straightforward to use, the tutorials are well made so the part about addressing (who should your flight plan be sent to) was not too hard. Having said that, I was quite relieved the next morning when I arrived at the club to find that my flight plans had been received properly; during the flight controllers usually started with "I have your details". When I had a question I rang the helpline and they were very helpful. Apparently they will now also offer Flight briefing, even without filing a flight plan, in line with what you get on the French system Olivia I guess.
Because the forecast winds were quite strong, and coming pretty much perpendicular to the only runway at Deauville, I selected Le Havre-St-Romain as my alternate; its runway is in the proper direction. I also selected Lydd - if crossing the Channel didn't seem feasible because of weather on the French side, it would be the closest airfield. On the way back I selected Le Havre again, and Shoreham which would have been our closest airfield when arriving in England.
The Customs form was handed out to White Waltham ops the morning of the flight (you don't need to notify them in advance for your departure, but at least four hours before your return). In the event they didn't show up. On the French side though we had to show our passports on the way in and on the way out.
On the morning the weather looked mixed; clouds over England would not prevent us from flying, but with the IMC rating not being valid in France we would have to be careful; especially across the Channel, and at Deauville were the report was scattered clouds at 600 feet. After showing a few things to Billy (notably how to operate the Emergency Beacon) we took off at 0947 from White Waltham and headed south at 2000 feet, getting a Basic Service from Farnborough. Cloud base was about 2200, and tops much higher; below the London control zone we couldn't climb out. It was fairly turbulent but nothing major.
I also used PilotWizz for the WeightBalance calculation. In the PA32R with full fuel, you usually cannot have two adults in the front seats; so Billy had to spend the first hour of the flight at the back.
He didn't seem to mind too much !
After being passed to Farnborough East Radar and reaching the MAY VOR, we could see the top of the clouds through some gaps at about 5000 feet; so we upgraded to a traffic service and requested a climb, which was granted in two stages. We spent the next 5 minutes in IMC and broke out at 5000 feet. Unfortunately I was too focused on my flying to take pictures of the cloud masses, it was quite stunning. We then moved to a basic service from LYDD and turned South towards Le Touquet.
This is were we had to make a tactical choice : we could stay at 5000 feet or higher, and risk finding a complete cloud cover on the French side that we could not have descended through (again IMC not valid); or we could go below the clouds, which meant a below average visibility and being much closer to the sea in case of an emergency. After hearing a report of very cloudy conditions from a pilot flying on top of clouds 15 miles ahead of us, we decided for the second route, and did a descending orbit south of Lydd down to 1800 feet. We crossed the Channel and spent much of the rest of the flight at this altitude. This is also the time Billy warned me that he had a tendency to be sick in airplanes ! I have to say he was very brave and after we had used enough fuel for him to move to the front, he felt better.
Upon reaching the French side, we got a basic service from Lille, who (probably mistakenly) passed us to Le Touquet which we quickly left for Paris Info, who passed us back to Lille for about 10 minutes and then back to Paris, finally to Deauville Info…all this while hopping around nuclear power stations. The workload was quite high and would have been VERY challenging without the GPS and the Autopilot. We got some very nice views of the Bay de Somme, the cliffs at Dieppe, and the Normandy countryside.
Baie de Somme
Dieppe
Once we were talking to Deauville they directed us towards the Pont de Tancarville on the river Seine, with some stunning views of the Pont de Normandie.
The wind and cloud base were thankfully benign enough that we went straight to a base leg on runway 30. The cross wind was light and the landing not too rough.
Because the runway was wet I didn't brake too hard. We were then directed to taxi to the grass area. I was quite peeved - given that they charged us EUR40 due to our weight, they could at least have parked us near the jets ! :-) The trip took 1h50min, bang on plan.
"We did it" picture :-)
Then a 20 minutes / EUR40 taxi ride took us to Honfleur, where we had a very nice lunch and a walk along the town.
For some reason I didn't manage to get Met info on PilotWizz or the MetOffice's web site from Honfleur, even with data roaming turned on (I could access other web sites) and the facilities at the airport were not available. But things looked clear around Deauville so we decided to take off and take the weather en route, with the full knowledge that if we had any doubt we would turn around. The TAFs from the morning were still valid though, and looked good on the England side. We had been on the ground for about 3 hours only. Once back in the plane I turned on the radio and requested a start and taxi; after not hearing anything back for 2 minutes I realised I needed to put it on speaker rather than just headset if the engine wasn't on… A bit embarrassing as Tower had been trying to contact us. They directed us to point Bravo which is not the start of the runway; after doing my power checks I embarrassed myself further by asking : "How much runway available from point Bravo please ?" "1700 metres" came the reply, with not just a little hint of contempt. "That should be enough then" I replied… The runway does a hump so I could not see the end of it from Bravo; after rolling over the hump there was indeed twice as much runway as I would ever need.
We were off to the North East, towards the world-famous-in-France cliffs at Etretat.
There we got some weather info from Lille, and it looked ok so we headed North. Pretty soon we could actually hear the weather info from Shoreham, and the cloud base was at 2000 feet; so this time we climbed to 5500 feet, knowing that whatever was expecting us on the English side we could descend through. Importantly there was no thunderstorm activity expected, and we were picking up none on the stormscope. Apart from a big cloud blob that was probably topping 7000 and that we circled to the East, it was fairly uneventful. The crossing took about 40 minutes, which is quite a long time if you're nervous… Thankfully ELLA is in great condition.
Very quickly we said "Au revoir" to Lille (actually all over the French side controllers were a bit confused language wise, i.e. should they be talking to me in English or French… Having been trained in England I actually find talking in English easier, but I could probably have understood them better in French). We passed on to London info who were helpful but busy.
I used PilotWizz and the iPhone GPS as a back up to the Garmin 530 and VOR/ADF suite of the aircraft. Definitely not what you'd want as a primary tool, but nice as a back up.
Ella was in form.
So were we !
About 15 miles south of Goodwood we started our descent towards 2000 feet, crossing a few clouds along the way. We went back on with Farnborough who kindly gave us a traffic service and overhead transit. Approaching them they actually had a departure so they radar-vectored us around the airfield, which probably added 5 minutes max to the flight and was kind of fun in a geeky way. From then on it was back to White Waltham, which would have been uneventful had the sun not been straight in front of us, creating some very bad visibility because of rain we had picked up in clouds.
Flight time was 1h15m, about 15min more than estimate - mostly due to the detour to see Etretat and the small detour around Farnborough. Judging from fuel remaining, we used about 18 usg/h, which is probably more than we needed but I didn't try to lean aggressively at all - I wanted to make sure the running was smooth rather than anything ! The aircraft performed very well, but the trip would have been very challenging without automatic and GPS. Next challenge is to add three screaming kids at the back instead of Billy who was the ideal passenger !
What I learned :
- AFPEX is fine.
- forget about doing a trip like this without automatics and GPS if you don't know the area. At least for me, that would have been too much.
- check the airport plate before asking a question.
- make activating your flight plan part of your departure check list.
- the IMC is really useful. On top of making my flying much better,it really made this trip possible - I would not have risked not being able to return "just" because of clouds on the English side... You'll always have some !
- controllers go the exrta mile if you're actually doing a trip rather than flying around, which is fair.
And most importantly... I can do this, and it's worth all the hours spent training, so a big thanks to the instructors at WLAC !