The trip was taken on board G-ELLA, the West London Aeroclub's PA32 Saratoga II HP. The aim of the trip was three-fold: first of all to have a good time flying, secondly to overfly the D-Day beaches, and thirdly as a general rehearsal for a family trip planned to Limoges at the beginning of May.
Flying with me was Marcos, a friend I took flying for the first time in July last year, and who has since started and finished his full PPL license ! He would do most of the radio communication on this trip.
On the way out we would take the direct route straight to the South Coast, then deviate slightly to the East via the SITET waypoint to avoid the various Danger Zones in the Channel. The flight was planned with SkyDemon, a new software which is extraordinarily pleasant to use and makes planning such a trip a very straightforward affair:
On the chart you can see the danger zones in red. The software makes planning around controlled airspace a breeze, and prints a very useable plog. Its only downsides are the weather module which is so far limited to METAR/TAFS, so no access to more forward looking models like NWX, or no direct import of en-route winds; and a lack of tools for filing flight plans and Customs reports. For all this and as a back up, I used PilotWizz on the iPhone, an app which is not only very useful but a definite steal at a very low price.
The flight plans were filed via AFPEX. This hasn't evolved much. The adressing bit is still the one you need to be careful about when flying VFR.
I made a mistake on the return plan, which Marcos pointed out, and which was corrected via the phone to the APFEX helpline in 5 minutes. They were very helpful as always.
The transit part of the outbound flight was uneventful: a basic service from Farnborough, a hand out to London Information, then Deauville Approach once over the boundary.
The plane performed very well and all the timings were bang on. Total flight time 1h10min.
Approaching the French Coast, Deauville Approach told us the Danger Zone 82 was inactive, so we went straight to Caen well clear of Le Havre.
This picture was taken with a 300mm lens with a 1.4 converter on a 1.6 crop factor DLSR... so equivalent to a 672mm lens, in a moving aeroplane, and in less than ideal visibility, but you still can see the harbour.
We went straight to Caen Tower, but were approaching too fast and too high so did a 360 to lose height and speed. At that point the Controller spotted us and with a nicely French-accented English informed us "G-ELLA, I can see you, you are going the wrong way round". "Thank you, aware, G-ELLA". We then proceeded to land, with a fairly heavy cross-wind. Not a single traffic was heard or seen, but the Controller still managed to make us repark "to make sure you don't prevent others from finding room". When we finally stopped on his designated spot, he uttered a definitely ironic "Niiice"... At that point I was very, very tempted to make a very rude remark in French about his mother's interaction with Smurfs.
Anyway, there we were...
Traditional picture
The landing fee was EUR4.50. That's right. Huge runway with full ATC and customs, and a third of the price of most UK airfield. EUR20 took us to the city by taxi, where we had a very nice sandwich and chocolate eclair on the lawn in front of the Ducal palace.
St Pierre Cathedral
On our return we went through Customs, had our bags x-rayed, checked the met via PilotWizz, and found this very nice piece of hardware parked next to ELLA:
The return route would take us via the D-Day beaches to Cherbourg then the Isle of Wight via the VFR route that crosses through the Danger Zones, talking to Plymouth Military (in the event they were closed and we just talked to London Info).
Total flight time was also planned at about 1h10min, although we went around the beaches quite a bit so ended up longer than that.
The D-Day harbour at Arromanches
Then it was up to 7000 feet over the Channel, looking for boats we could land next to if needed.
Traffic was light in the UK, apart from some balloons
Then back to White Waltham. My landing was too fast which didn't conclude the trip on a high note, but overall it was... very niiiice. Amazing what you can do in one afternoon when you have wings !
