And finally – mountains!

For previous episode – click here. To read from the beginning – here.

Before a 10-minute flight towards Bled.

8th and 9th June 2019, days three and four

We’re flying to the Alps!

But before we set off, we have to get the regulatory rest first. To be fully rested I shall not fly for more than 3 or 4 consecutive days which must be followed by 1 or 2 days off respectively. In our particular case, the roster pattern was 2-1-3 (2 days on, 1 off, 3 on).

Saturday turned out to be the day off. We moved out of our place in the morning to leave the baggage in another one, which was close to the city center. We spent the rest of our day visiting coffee shops and some less popular places and discussing political and religious topics (in a polite manner 🙂 )

Sunday, on the other hand, was a very active day. We took a bus to the airport in the morning where we made an efficient flight preparation. The flight time to Lesce was 10 minutes, same as the taxi time together with waiting for the takeoff clearance.

Soon after reaching 2500 ft we started approach briefing and immediately after completing it, I changed the frequency to Lesce where we received information about the local traffic and runway in use. Yet another time clapping was heard after touchdown.

We shut down the engine, secured the aircraft and went towards the car park. We wanted to get to Lake Bled, 6 kilometers away, though we didn’t know how to do it. Also, we had to get back to the aircraft in the next 4 hours as we had to land at our last destination of the day before the sunset.

There was a woman walking across the car park whom Michael asked for a ride. She was here with her little nephew who was doing his trial flight at that time. It didn’t look like she would be able to help us but we obviously sparked her curiosity.

– How did you get here? Who brought you here? – she asked.

As a captain, I stepped forward and proudly stated:

– I did. I flew them here on a plane.

She just couldn’t believe us. She was still denying it when dropping us off by Bled to which she gave us a lift, presumably only to find out more who we are and how we got there. ‘Cause it’s impossible to fly that far in such a small plane!

Lake Bled. You can actually see the island in the middle of it.

Just a casual break between the flights.

We had enough time to rent a boat with oars for two hours, reach the island in the middle of the lake, get off to have some ice cream and turn back. After returning our 4-seater vessel we went back on land and headed to the nearest petrol station to hitchhike. The first attempt was unsuccessful, our second try was an Austrian-registered brand new Mercedes. The 60-year old driver was distinctly shaking his head so I wasn’t hoping for much. A few seconds later though, Michael called me to show that he had arranged two seats! Paul and I got in the car; we had to be back first to prepare the aircraft for departure.

This looks even better in reality.

It turned out that our driver was an active glider pilot based in Tirol, occasionally visiting Niederoblarn as well. Lesce airfield was not really along their route but they decided to detour to drop us off directly at the aeroclub’s car park.

We took our time getting to the aircraft being confident that the other two will arrive at least half an hour later… it came as a surprise to me to see them walking towards us just 10 minutes after our arrival. 

The aircraft is ready for the flight, we are departing 15 minutes ahead of schedule. My requested altitude is FL100 (10,000 feet) and the routing to Seitenstetten is via Zell am See and Niederoblarn. I also have a plan B – in case we are unable to climb that high, we will not be able to clear the terrain. Therefore flying at 6-7 thousand feet should also be just fine, provided that we will deviate some 30 degrees to the right, flying more or less towards Niederoblarn, avoiding the region of extremely high terrain near Zell am See. We quickly found out that Plan B is more reasonable and we ended doing a step-climb to 8 thousand feet and flying an alternate route.

All this hassle, hours of flight planning, phone calls. It finally paid off.

Wakey wakey, you’re missing the best views mate!

Maintaining even 8000 feet was sometimes not enough to be clear of terrain.

Everywhere around us there were just mountains. It is a completely different feeling when you have to eyeball the possibility to jump over the ridge…

The views were just so stunning. We overflew several areas of flat ground totally covered in snow, despite the fact that the temperature at the sea level was exceeding 35 degrees Celsius!

It seemed that encountering traffic at 8000 feet, in the Alps, far from any airfield is improbable but we did get traffic flying in an opposite direction at the same altitude. We hadn’t been warned about it by the controller. It taught us a lesson that we must stay vigilant even at times when it would be reasonable to just sit back and relax.

We obviously kept our eyes open while approaching Grimming which was besieged by a number of gliders, towplanes and paragliders.

Closer towards the end of the flight, the terrain was getting lower though the views were still awesome. After about two hours of flying, we landed at Seitenstetten (LOLT) for refuelling. AVGAS was fairly expensive but we had to buy some to get back all the way to Poland.

Before the last departure of the day, I sit down to do my performance calculations… and just can’t believe what I see. It’s all red! How is that possible? I am recalculating the performance but it seems I have put in the right figures. I’m checking Google Maps for obstacle limitations – there’s just a group of trees just right of the runway centreline and other than that, it’s fine. I extended TODA up to 150% of runway length and this time it showed me a green light.

All done, I’m getting my crew aboard and off we go. Lift off went as planned, then I made a slight left turn at 50 ft AGL to get away from the trees (we could have overflown them anyway).

The last flight was uneventful. After landing we parked up next to some tents and a military car registered to Austria – I double checked that we actually landed in the Czech Republic.

Next to the airfield there was a house of a local retired parachutist. He invited us for a coffee and home-made orangeade. Meanwhile, we phoned up a hotel to rent a room. 

Turned out we got the whole place for ourselves! The building seemed to be abandoned quite a few decades ago and was only rented to cover the cost of maintenance and taxes. I played a bit with the lighting in the restaurant and turned on some radio (which only played some Czech disco music). We also got a pizza from the town.

Around 11PM it turned out that we’re actually not alone. Had to turn off the radio.

Thunderstorms and decisions

6th June 2019, day one

80 questions. That’s how many I had to answer to pass the Aircraft General Knowledge exam which I sat in the Polish CAA. After submitting my final answers (I passed, of course) I set off to Modlin Airport.

We gathered at 3pm and went to our TB10 aircraft which was already waiting for us, having gone through an engine overhaul.

My passengers – Monica and Michael – were exploring a wide range of aircraft parked up in the hangar. Meanwhile, I took my co-pilot to complete the pre-flight inspection. The plan for today is to reach Znojmo (LKZN) and make one technical stop on the way in Czestochowa (EPRU). The PFI caused a slight delay as I had to drain about 0.5 litre of water from the fuel tanks.

Pre-flight inspection in progress

We were all boiling in the 30 degrees Celsius which was not beneficial for the aircraft performance either, so I taxied all the way to the runway end to use the full length for takeoff. The first flight was uneventful and we even had some time to have a meal in the local restaurant and to chat with other people.

Following Ryanair all the way to the end as we need the full runway length too

A quick meal and weather review before we set off again…

We were coming back to the aircraft when I noticed a group of people surrounding it. One of them was sitting on the leading edge. I yelled at them to get off my aircraft not knowing who they were or what they were doing there. It turned out that all of them were pilots of another German-registered TB10 and they just wanted to see what our plane is equipped with.

Our next takeoff was in the late afternoon. The blueness of the sky gave way to frequent thunderstorms and lined up over Silesia creating an east-west border. Soon we saw frequent bolts of lightning which left us with only one option – fly along the front.

And the mother Earth is preparing a surprise for us. At this time I was still only considering a course deviation but not a diversion.

It’s time to make a tough decision. One that is safe, economical and convenient.

I chose to go upwind (eastbound). We had to carry on deviating from our original route until reaching the west end of the Krakow CTR, where we managed to steer south safely again. It all happened within controlled airspace so my every movement had to be cleared by the ATC.

It was obvious that now we can’t make it to the Czech Republic before the sunset. I could either divert and land at one of the local airstrips on the Polish side (EPNT or EPKP) or jump across the border and hit one of the Slovakian ones.

And we’re making it just before the sunset.

The weather in Slovakia was looking promising, thus I decided to land at Ruzomberok (LZRU). The surroundings were somewhat challenging for the approach but the landing itself was straight-forward. Nice soft landing, a quick taxi to the grass apron and a few moments later we were on the ground enjoying the views and breathing fresh air.

Finally, we had to take care of overnight accommodation. One can never tell where we are eventually going to end up, so it’s good to leave arranging hotels ’till the end.

With the help of a local Slovakian tourist (who clearly struggled to spell the name of the nearest town), we found a place to stay just 20 minutes away from the airfield.

We went out in the late evening to get some food but only bars were open so our only catering were chips and chocolate bars for that night.
The weather forecast was showing thunderstorms through the night and ending in the early afternoon, so we didn’t rush with planning the next day…

To be continued…