This week I’ll shut up about myself for once and share a collection of links that have shown up in my inbox.

Vincent (Plastic Pilot) and Jason (MzeroA) have successfully launched their new website: http://www.flyingacrossamerica.com. They are starting in Florida and aiming to make their way west to my home-state and visit Catalina Island – I used to go to Catalina on the ferry for sports matches when I was in highschool. I didn’t even know they had an airfield! I’m very much looking forward to reading the GA adventures that Vincent and Jason enjoy on their travels. You can follow the journey on their website:
Flying Across America

We found our first stop: We’ve been invited by the guys at DestinJet, the premier FBO at Destin, on the Florida panhandle. With their brand new 6,000 sq ft executive terminal and state of the art facilities for passengers and crew, Destin Jet combines the Glory Days of aviation with every latest technology and service. They also accepted to refuel our Cessna 150 for free which is a great help to reduce our costs.

I have to admit that this looks like a lot of fun:
Cluster Ballooning: 100 Helium Balloons Strapped to a Lawn Chair

Sure, it looks like being carried off by a multicoloured raspberry, but would you care about such style points if you were floating coolly on a cloud – and with so little keeping you up there? Prepare for lift-off as we take an aerial tour through this extraordinary and breathtaking form of ballooning.

Rob Mark of Jetwhine reviews Artful Flying by Michael Maya Charles, thoughtfully sorting out my Christmas present for the aviator in my life:
Artful Flying – Jetwhine: Aviation Buzz and Bold Opinion

Artful Flying will bust your chops if you’re simply an airplane driver because it talks to readers about the philosophy of flying the way the old guys – and girls – used to do it. No, the physics of flying hasn’t really changed, but the art of flying has, at least in the sense that flying as an art seems to have a lot of its luster over the past 20 years..

Delayed and cancelled flights are a standard hazard for air travel but some of the recent reasons have been quite bizarre:
Copilot peeing in public cancels JAL flight from Honolulu | Gadling.com

Of all the reasons to have your flight canceled, I’m pretty sure this one is high on the “no frikkin way!” list.

On the other hand, that’s got to be better than kicking all the passengers off the plane and flying alone:
AMS: 737 Pilot Has Pax Removed And Flies Out Empty – Civil Aviation Forum | Airliners.net

For the first time in the history of Schiphol, a pilot had his entire plane evacuated after a dozen passengers behaved badly. The aircraft then left empty, and the passengers were sent home.

And last but not least, two videos from last month which hit the top of my list of “So glad I was not piloting that one”. Note neither of these accidents resulted in serious injury:

To be honest, it’s the commentary that really gets me. “That kinda blows” ?! Yeah, kinda…

This three-part story was originally published in the November 2007 issue of Piper Flyer magazine.

Part One: If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother
Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

After spending over two hours filling out paperwork at the Rome Urbe airfield, I asked the one friendly person in the place for details about getting fuel for the plane. He looked at the clock. “It is Sunday,” he said. “They will leave at noon.” It was 11:30.

“You must hurry,” he told us.

Cliff dashed out to the plane and then came straight back with a scowl. The battery was dead.

We soon found the culprit, a light switched to the on position in the back. My son went pale. Connor had blocked up all the windows to avoid the sun glaring on the screen of his Gameboy and when he found he was sitting in the dark, he had turned on the overhead light. In the excitement of arriving, he had forgotten all about it. And now, the battery was dead.

He ran straight to his grandmother as the only person who might protect him from the lecture that was clearly due. I made a mental note to sort out a passenger check-list for the future flights.

Funnily enough, this took the pressure off as we now had no chance of getting away at a sensible time. We called the people at the gas pumps who expressed sympathy for our situation and arranged to send out help. They committed to staying until we were able to taxi over and get fuel, I was still going to be able to fly the family to Mannheim today. Just one issue left: I still needed VFR charts.

I invited my mother to join me in a visit to the main building to sort out the charts. A long-haired man in a rumpled shirt greeted us. This place looked much more like a general aviation terminal and he confirmed in very slow Italian that this was where in future all pilots would go, but not yet.

His English was minimal and my Italian worse. I waved my clip-board at him and he handed me a blank flight plan which I filled out quickly.

“The time? Do you have the time?” Assuming no further problems, we should be able to take off within half an hour. I tapped my wrist, the spot where my watch would be if I hadn’t lost it.

“Dodici,” he said followed by a moment of thought before he remembered the word in English. “Twelve.”

“No, it’s not,” said my mother. He frowned, wondering what he’d said wrong. “It’s two.”

“Two,” he repeated uncertainly.

“No, twelve,” I said. My mother frowned. “Zulu,” I told her and then more helpfully: “It’s the time in GMT.”

The man didn’t appear to be sure what the problem was. “Dodici,” he said, just to be clear. I nodded with a smile and then tried to ask him about charts.

I drew a rough outline of a boot kicking Sicily on the back of the flightplan with a little dot for Rome and a box around it. He smiled in comprehension. He led me to a table with a glass-encased chart of the area on it. It was beautifully done, clear VFR paths shown for all directions out of the airfield.

It was exactly what I needed. I smiled happily and told him I’d like one.

He looked at me in bemusement for a moment and told me I couldn’t have it.

I tried again: I want to buy one?

Nope. This was his map. It is there, for looking at.

He refused to part with it. I got a blank flightplan and sketched a more precise boot, with notes of our route and the visual reporting points we would pass. I just hoped I could find them again on the IFR chart.

I returned to find the battery charged and the plane fueled. The customs man admitted he had no further reason to detain us. Three hours after our planned start, we were finally ready to go but I was still nervous about not having the local VFR charts. I had tried recreating our route on the IFR charts, using the VORs to cross-check, but it wasn’t exact. I told Cliff that perhaps we should cancel the flight.

Hot and grumpy, he showed little patience: “Well, we could just never fly anywhere when we don’t have the charts.”

“Well, yes, precisely,” I muttered under my breath, with just enough self-preservation to ensure he couldn’t hear me.

On the other hand, I couldn’t quite imagine the response at the airfield if, after all the waiting and the jump start and staying on to get the fuel, I told them that, on second thought, I wanted to cancel owing to bad planning. I looked at the IFR charts and my notes again. It looked straight-forward and there were frequent VOR references for the route out. I was pretty sure I had it right and we had the GPS to ensure I knew where we were at any given time.

We flew at 2,500 feet, following their low-level routing as I watched for my landmarks and reporting points, some of which were marked on the GPS making it even simpler than I’d imagined. As we joined our flight-plan proper, I started to feel more confident.

“Sylvia.”

“Yes, Mom?” She had been so quiet up to now, I was impressed.

“You are talking really fast when you are on the radio. It makes it hard to understand you, especially for non-native English speakers. You need to slow down.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. I knew that her words were undoubtedly true but I really didn’t want to set a precedent of my mother helping me to fly over the next three hours.

“Yes, Mom.”

It was surprisingly easy to understand the Italian guys on the radio. The only problem was place names, I’d never heard of most of them and finding them quickly on the map wasn’t easy. Report where? Pruja? I can’t find it! Ah, Perugia! I dove for the chart over and over again, ignoring my mother’s entreaty to keep my eyes on the road. Each time I found the place in question and we carried on, climbing in preparation for the Alps, the sun streaming in through the windows. Even Connor (still suitably chastised) looked out the window and pointed things out for us to look at.

We crossed the border to Austria and switched frequency to Innsbruck as we climbed to FL105. The view was astounding. Lakes nestled in dark green valleys surrounded by rough mountains glistening with snow. Glaciers loomed up ominously at us, too close for comfort. My instinct was to climb further but we couldn’t get much higher without needing oxygen. I stared, amazed and nervous, at the mountains so close to us; spell-bound until ATC interrupted me with my next reporting point: Brenner Pass.

I had been totally distracted with the view and panicked for a moment – unnecessarily, the pass was part of my route and clear on my map. But still I stuttered and by the time I had responded, we had already reached the pass. I immediately reported it. He sounded vaguely impatient as he asked me to report the Sierra VRP.

Busted – that was neither on the map nor marked on the GPS. I asked if I could report the Patscherkofel VOR instead please.

“Sierra is just south-west of the VOR,” he told me. “You should have a VFR chart with you.” I turned beet red. I could hear my mother shifting around in the back, clearly aware that I was being told off but not sure why.

“If you look down,” he continued. “you might notice there are mountains. It is dangerous.”

I struggled for a moment for the correct response. Affirm? Roger? Wilco? Nothing seemed right. “Understood,” I said after a moment. I prayed for another plane to cause a distraction but the radio remained silent: the other pilots in the air were no doubt grinning quietly as they listened to him reprimand me.

My ink pen chose that moment to begin leaking violently – my fingers and clipboard turning a deep blue. My friend at Innsbruck continued his lecture, this time receiving no response at all while I tried to minimize the staining. I wanted to make a note – “always bring pencil for high level flights!” but my pad was covered in ink. Innsbruck finally concluded the tirade with “report the VOR”. By now I had reached it. I reported this, leaving a blue fingerprint on the control.

We exited the pass and as we gently turned left the autopilot disengaged with a loud series of beeps.

I made sure we were straight and level and then checked – my dark-blue fingers weren’t anywhere near the button. The switch was in the correct position. I re-engaged the autopilot and it took control. Someone must have knocked it.

I was relieved when we switched frequencies to Munich and entered Germany, for which I had the correct maps. Then the autopilot disengaged again. Definitely no fingers near the button, the switch was normal. The electric trim was on, the power settings were correct. I re-engaged the auto-pilot. It disengaged.

My mother became very quiet as I cursed.

I was uncomfortably aware of how long it had been since I had needed to hand-fly the plane. Every time I spoke on the radio, I deviated 5 degrees or 50 feet.

We stuck with our routing but I was sweating, blue ink now smeared on my forehead.

Munich switched me to Stuttgart who cleared me to transit at not above 3,500 feet. I have not tried to fly a precise height since I got my license. Cliff volunteered to do the radio so that I could simply concentrate on keeping it straight and level. I glanced at him and realized that he had turned an odd shade of green: his offer was a desperate attempt to stop me pitching up and down like a rollercoaster.

I agreed and took the chance to check the gadgets again. I reset the electric trim and looked for any anomalies. I made sure I knew where we were on the map and shut down the GPS, resetting everything. It booted up nicely and the autopilot gave me a warm beep to say that it was ready, immediately followed by a series of jarring beeps as it disengaged itself again.

But without the distraction of the radio I was getting back into the swing of it, remembering the thrill of getting the plane perfectly in trim and letting go of the control – look Ma, no hands! She looked terribly disconcerted at my hands in the air, which made it even more of a pleasure. In no time at all we were over-flying Heidelberg and coming into Mannheim. We would arrive just in time for dinner.

As I focused on the approach, Cliff tried the autopilot and it engaged. I couldn’t help but take it personally, we were now ten miles out from our destination and I no longer needed it. I disengaged it and brought the plane in smoothly.

We parked by the terminal and my mother thanked me for a very interesting flight … but would I be terribly offended if next time she just went commercial?

This three-part story was originally published in the November 2007 issue of Piper Flyer magazine.

Come back on the 26th of June for Part Three.

When my mother announced she’d be in Europe for a few weeks, I asked for her itinerary so that we could arrange to meet. She had an eight-hour day dedicated to traveling from Rome to Germany to see her family in Mannheim.

Cliff jumped into the conversation and told her that it was only a three-hour flight in the Saratoga, flying from Roma Urbe direct to Mannheim City Airport. The small airfields at Roma Urbe and Mannheim were clearly much more convenient. She could avoid all the lines and the security checks and the standing around waiting for something to happen. She wouldn’t even miss lunch.

He then told her I would be happy to fly it.

I panicked. I tried to come up with coherent arguments. Meanwhile, my mother was telling everyone how excited she was, stopping strangers in the street to inform them that her daughter was a Real Live Pilot and was going to take her flying and that it was more direct than a commercial flight and wasn’t even going to cost her a cent.

Cliff promised he would sort out all the navigation and planning: all I had to do was fly the plane. We could buy VFR charts there, meanwhile he’d plan it using IFR charts. The clincher was my son. He was so excited about going to see Rome and Grandma that he didn’t even complain about having to travel in the “little plane”.

By the time Cliff flew us IFR to Italy to meet her, I was almost excited. The views on the inbound flight were stunning. I stared down at the dusty Mediterranean coast, jagged and harsh against the bright blue water shimmering beneath us. Islands floated atop a glassy sea, tiny lighthouses on their edges.

My son sat in the back, playing his Gameboy and occasionally muttering “uh huh” when I told him to look out the window. Eventually he closed the window blind to keep the sun from reflecting off his screen. I gave up on him with a stern comment that when we were flying with Grandma in the back, he better pretend to be interested. He agreed and I left him in peace.

Ah, Rome! So beautiful and ancient and vibrant: you could never mistake this for any other city. We were thrilled with every minute despite the heat and the crowds of August. It wasn’t until the night before the flight that my fears came back to me: was I really going to put my mother and my son into that little plane? Did they really trust me to be in control of it? What if I lost concentration and twiddled the vertical speed knob counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, causing us to dive into the ground, ending up a fiery inferno on an isolated Tuscan farm?

These visions of disaster are a standard part of my pre-flight ritual. I have, on one occasion, twiddled that very knob the wrong way. The moment the nose tilted down, I disengaged the auto-pilot and tilted it back up. No drama, no fuss. I know the fear isn’t rational. But, still. My mother doesn’t like getting into a car with me driving but she was willing to climb into the plane? Was she out of her mind?

We arrived at Rome Urbe at nine, expecting my mother to arrive at eleven after everything was ready. The plan was to get away promptly and arrive in Germany in time for a late lunch. We were greeted by a tall man with a gray uniform and a scowl on his face. He asked what we were doing here. We pointed at the plane and smiled ingratiatingly but he was not so easily impressed. “Passaporto, please.” Italy and Germany are both members of the Schengen treaty, there are no border controls. Flying from Rome to Mannheim is like traveling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Savannah, Georgia: a hefty dose of culture shock but no red tape nor official processes. We shrugged and complied but he didn’t seem satisfied. “Follow,” he told us. “Fill out.” Forms. Lots of them.

An hour later, we were still grappling with the paperwork. Our sour-faced friend had put every bag through the metal detector and been making ominous noises about searching the plane itself. A French pilot subjected to the same absurd treatment lost his temper in the heat, “Are we here not in Europe?”

Cliff dealt with the customs man while I dragged the luggage to the plane and did the walk-around. We were no further along when my mother arrived to be greeted with the same surly suspicion: what was she doing here?

I eventually convinced him that she was with us while Cliff continued to struggle with the forms. A embarrassed gentleman was at the desk trying to help. I asked him about charts for the local area. He explained that Urbe is split between two terminals and that I would have to go to the other terminal for that. And fuel? The man’s eyes widened and he looked at the clock. “It is Sunday,” he said. “They will leave at noon.” It was 11:30.

“You must hurry,” he told us.

Cliff dashed out to the plane and then came straight back with a scowl. The battery was dead.

Part Three: Mother Told Me Not to Come

This three-part story was originally published in the November 2007 issue of Piper Flyer magazine. As a result, I received my first ever piece of fan mail – a reader asked if I could possibly put him in touch with my mother regarding a conference that he thought she might be interested in.

Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

Heide is a highly respected literacy practitioner and researcher based in New Mexico. She is highly regarded within her profession and invited all over the world to speak at conferences. She crosses the Atlantic at least once a year and usually ties in the conference with a trip home to Germany to visit her family. She flies United Airlines when she can. She’s very efficient and likes for everything to be just so. She’s also my Mother.

When she told me she was going to be in Italy for a week and then a further week in Germany, I started making plans to meet up with her. I made the mistake of copying my boyfriend on the email with her travel plans. He immediately mailed her.

“Don’t book a flight yet – Sylvia can fly you from Rome to Mannheim.”

Er, Sylvia can do what?

My mother was thrilled. I went into an immediate panic with deadlines looming but Cliff soothed me, promising he’d do the footwork and phone the airfields and sort out the navigation and all I would have to do is fly the plane. How hard could it be?

I relaxed. Big mistake. A week before we were due to fly to Rome, I suddenly realized I had barely flown in the past few months. A look at my log book confirmed my fears: I had not managed to take off a measly three times in the past 90 days, the minimum required for taking passengers. The thought of telling my Mother that I wasn’t going to be able to fly the plane (or at least, not with her in it) spurred me to immediate action: I needed to get up in the air and fast.

The problem is Málaga. Málaga is “the only real airport of merit in Andalucía” and the fourth busiest airport in Spain. In 2006 they handled 13,000,000 passengers and over 125,000 flights.

To put this into perspective, JFK International Airport handled 42.6 million passengers with 25 miles of taxiway and four runways. Málaga has a single 10,500 foot runway with a single parallel taxiway. They are building a second runway, planned for 2010 but in the meantime, it’s a bit busy there.

As a result, Málaga does not allow circuits and have gone so far as to ban VFR traffic during the weekends. The simple solution is to go to Axarquía, the small airfield 30km northeast of Málaga where I did my initial flight training. That’s where all the light aircraft go for practice and I knew I was being unreasonable in trying to avoid it.

I’ve not flown to Axarquía since the flying school took the Cessnas away and I did my conversion to the Piper Saratoga. The airfield is surrounded by hills and the runway is 1090 meters (3500 feet) but it has a displaced threshold and thus the landing distance available is actually 637 meters (2000 foot) if you land on the numbers. This was fine for the Cessna 172s that we trained in but I didn’t fancy trying to get the Saratoga in safely. I knew it could be done: Cliff had taken me there just to prove it was possible. Even then, I closed my eyes as we appeared to race towards the trees at the end of the runway.

However, given a choice between admitting to my Mother that I’d let my license lapse and landing the plane on a runway with an LDA twice the minimum length stated by the pilot’s operating manual, the way was clear. We went to Axarquía.

Cliff relocated the plane from Málaga, a process that involved an hour of prep and 5 minutes in the air. I drove there so that we would have the car: we wanted to leave the plane at Axarquía for its 50-hour check. Also, I wanted to have lunch at Las Cruces, one of my all-time favorite restaurants which is near the airfield but not quite in easy walking distance.

During the week Las Cruces acts as a type of venta, a Spanish restaurant aimed at the working class offering what I like to refer to as “old-fashioned fast food” with a set menu that the waiter rattles off. There are always three starters and three main dishes – you pick one from each category and choose a drink: water, beer or red wine. Because there are so few dishes, your food arrives in minutes. At Las Cruces, they are a bit more up-market: they offer a third course of dessert, again with three options. After your food, the waiter reappears with a cafe sólo and takes your money: a set price of 8 Euros per person. I have seen them deal with difficult tourists who wandered in looking for an authentic experience and then want to personalize their dish: “Can I have chips with that? Substitute the vegetables with some salad, please!” I always cringe but the waiters take it with good grace and comply when they can. Las Cruces is off the beaten track so they don’t get too many tourists, the place is generally full of farm workers and truck drivers shouting jokes at each other as they make their way through the quick and hearty meal.

On Sunday, the scene changes to cater to the after-church crowd with a full menu and more traditional pricing. They run it with a single seating, you are expected to stay the afternoon. They have a huge outdoor barbecue which they fire up at noon with two people working through the dishes as quickly as they can. Lamb chops, slices of pork loin, beef entrecote. Grilled peppers, grilled cheese, grilled bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil. If they can put it on the barbecue, they will and everything is done to perfection.

But the Las Cruces barbecue is off-limits on a flying day: weight and balance would be seriously skewed after such a meal. I knew, deep down, that I shouldn’t combine flying and a three-hour lunch and that it wouldn’t quite be the same if I couldn’t sample their house red wine and so, with regret, we arranged to go in the middle of the week.

I drove up to the airfield and let myself in. There was a new banner draped across the fence advertising the flying school but the place seemed deserted. No one was outside at all. The television at the bar blared the local news into an empty room. A German Shepherd which I remembered well from my training (he ran across the runway in fright as I was landing from my first solo nav flight) was locked behind a chain link fence, watching me balefully.

When I had been here before, everything was organized by the instructors who had flown in from England. I remember them complaining about how lackadaisical everything was, shaking their heads at the street map with Málaga’s visual reporting points drawn onto it, finding out about the local airfields and where we could go for the cross country navigation or even just a few circuits. I hadn’t realized at the time, but they’d livened the place up immensely: from the moment I (or any other student) walked through the door, we were greeted and organized. As I crossed the dusty courtyard, it felt like a ghost town. Cliff had just touched down and parked the plane while I went in search of someone to talk to. I found a woman in the back office who looked unhappy to have been disturbed. I told her that I was planning to fly circuits and she told me not to bother her until I’d done them, then I could pay.

I’d rather hoped for an excuse to put this moment off but Cliff had thoughtfully refueled the plane in Málaga and there was nothing for it: it was time to get into the air. I got into the plane and remembered my first solo flight here: I spoke to myself, DJ style, throughout the circuit. “You’ll be just fine, Sylvia, they wouldn’t have let you out here if they didn’t think you can do it, all you have to do is get the plane up into the air, turn it around, and bring it back down.” As I remembered that first solo, my fear suddenly melted away. I’d been so worried about the short landing distance, the hills, the lack of a tower and blind radio calls that I’d forgotten the huge advantage that this airfield held for me:

I learned to fly here.

I spent 50 hours flying in and out of that airfield, compared to a few hours at any other airfield. I could hear Tom’s voice from the start: telling me to leave my hands on my thighs while I taxied to curb my urge to “steer” with the column, showing me where to pull off the runway and how to best angle the plane into the wind for my power checks without blocking access for other planes. As I took off I immediately heard him telling me that it was inconsiderate to fly too low over villages and that I should turn crosswind just a little bit early to avoid the buildings we could see coming up, the corner of Vélez-Málaga. I knew exactly where the circuit was, as if someone had drawn the lines onto the ground for me to follow.

I struggled a bit trying to get everything done in time for what is definitely a small and very fast circuit in the Saratoga but it was not a big deal – there was no reason for me to be nervous about the airfield at all. By the second circuit I was on top of things and Tom’s voice stopped nagging me by the third. I did two more for luck and then landed the plane just as the banner planes started to head out for their afternoon run over the beaches of Marbella.

My reward followed at Las Cruces. A cold glass of San Miguel, a bowl of picadillo (a soup made with chunks of Spanish ham and pieces of boiled egg) followed by a hot plate of pork in garlic. I was feeling pretty good about everything. In a few days, I would be in Rome, taking my son to see the Coliseum and the Vatican City. Cliff had plotted us a route over the Alps with a slight diversion so that we could fly over my cousin’s Bavarian bed and breakfast on the German-Austrian border which we were saving as a special surprise for my mother. Our destination was Mannheim, the city where I spent a good chunk of my childhood so I was sure I would have no problems finding the airfield, which was quite conveniently located just five minutes away from my Uncle’s house where dinner would be waiting.

What could possibly go wrong?

Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

Our flight last weekend out of Málaga was very frustrating. I couldn’t fly the first leg because they won’t allow VFR traffic Thursday – Monday. The fuel bowser took forever to get to us at which point the driver told us that it wasn’t working right and that he needed to get someone to help him. At one point the plane was surrounded by four cars – one of which belonged to the Guardia Civil who came over to find out what all the fuss was about.

When we finally got our fuel, we were informed that he had not brought the card swiper with him and one of us would need to accompany him to the office to pay.

We spent just over two hours simply trying to refuel. It would have been more sensible to leave Málaga and land at another nearby airfield just to pick up the fuel for our journey.

On the bright side, while we were waiting a friendly mechanic passed by and volunteered to remove our winterization plates which was a bit of luck!

One good thing about being banned from taking off is that I get to take a lot of photographs. As much as I grumble about Málaga, it sure is pretty…

This weekend we’ll be flying to Mannheim City Airport. We’ve been there a number of times before, it’s a lovely destination. The runway is long, the staff are professional but friendly and usually the weather is good. The fact that the airfield is two tram stops away from my Uncle’s house on the Neckar is just lucky coincidence.

Location: Mannheim

Flight Date: 29 May 2009
Sunset: 21:22 CEST 19:22 UTC

Note: Do not rely on other people to gather information for you – and for the love of safety don’t rely on my notes being correct for your flight! Always verify all details yourself.

Airfield: EDFM
Website: Flugplatz Mannheim
Phone Number: 0621-419390
ATIS: 0621-4193966
Hours: Mon-Fri 0500-2000Z, Sat-Sun 0900-1900Z
Frequencies:
Tower 118.400 and 122.5
ATIS 136.550
Langen Radar: 127.5
Runway: 09/27 1066×25m asphalt
Airfield Height: 94 meters (308 feet)
Circuit Height:
Fuel: Yes
Weather Info
Possible Diverts: Karlsruhe EDSB, Egelsback EDFE, Frankfurt EDDF or in an emergency maybe Coleman ETOR

Google Maps: Google Map View

From Wikipedia:

Mannheim is situated at the confluence of the rivers Rhine and Neckar, in the northwestern corner of the state of Baden-Württemberg. The Rhine separates Mannheim from the adjacent Rhineland-Palatinate city of Ludwigshafen. The Hessian border is north of the city. Mannheim is the largest city of the Rhine Neckar Area, a metropolitan area with 2.4 million inhabitants.

Mannheim is unusual among German cities in that its central area is laid out in a grid pattern (called Quadrate, squares), much like many North American cities. The main route through the squares leads to an enormous 18th-century palace. This former seat of the Electors of the Palatinate now houses the University of Mannheim.

Mannheim’s city symbol is der Wasserturm (the water-tower), located in the east of the city centre.

My mother is coming from New Mexico and we’ll all spend the weekend in Mannheim Seckenheim which is a 5-minute taxi ride from the airfield. Seckenheim has a lovely high street with shops and still maintains the feeling of a village. It also has a railway station and tram lines so that you can easily get around the local area without a car. Privathotel Löwen and Hotel Weingärtner are local hotels which I am happy to recommend, although Seckenheim is really the wrong side of the airfield if you are aiming for city centre which is just 3.5 kilometres away.

There is a small snackbar at Mannheim City Airport and I’m told you can get decent snacks there although we’ve never stopped for more than a coffee. The staff are friendly and I found everyone very helpful to GA pilots in both English and German. We are always given easy access to the plane for picking up/dropping off the large amounts of shopping bags I tend to accumulate when I’m back in Germany (Schnapps, Gummi Bärchen, Schinken und Brot).

However, I should share a word of warning about getting flights from Mannheim City Airport: if the pilot is in a bad mood, it is more than possible to miss your flight – even if you are her son!

I was speaking to a friend about flying and she asked about language issues when flying around mainland Europe. These are thankfully few and far between as English is generally accepted or even required for speaking on the radio. I’ve written before about struggling to understand a French controller with a strong accent but generally I know what to expect in a radio call which makes it a lot easier to understand the detail.

It did make me remember a flight into Altenrhein (St Gallen), an airfield in Switzerland on the coast of Lake Constance. It was a gorgeous flight, my first time over the Alps, but it mainly sticks in my mind as the place where I forgot my ABC’s. I became completely confused as to what language I was speaking simply because of the difference in alphabets.

As I was approaching our destination storm clouds had begun to gather and I was somewhat stressed. I was there for the first time and the load was high. Someone spoke on the radio in German – just asking a quick question, not anything critical – and I started feeling serious language interference.

I speak fluent German but I don’t speak Aviation German and even where it might be allowed, I wouldn’t speak German to ATC as it would cause a higher workload for me. I suspect there are a lot of Europeans who are most comfortable speaking in English when it comes to radio communications, simply because that’s what they are taught and the speech patterns and routines are so ingrained.

Anyway, none of this would have made a difference if things were quiet. As I was already stressed and dealing with a heavy workload, the part of my brain that deals with keeping my words straight was temporarily distracted.

At that moment, the controller asked me how I was coming in. European airfields use VFR reporting points for where you can enter their area which are based on the points of the compass: November, Echo, Sierra, Whiskey. Often there are additional reporting points further out which are marked with a single letter.

On this flight, I was coming in via point Z. Zee, I thought to myself, and then immediately corrected myself to British English. I should say Zed, not Zee! I keyed the microphone but somehow that didn’t seem right. I let go as I thought it through. The controller doesn’t sound English. I’m not in England. I’m in Switzerland! How do the Swiss say Z?

I opened my mouth again to speak and the words on the tip of my tongue were: I’m coming in via Zurich. Luckily, the controller chose that moment to ask the question again. That split second delay gave me the chance to work out what I was supposed to be saying. “November 666 Echo X-ray is approaching the airfield for runway 28 via point Zulu.” International alphabet to the rescue!

My brain was faster than my mouth on that occasion, but only just.

We were flying into North Weald, I was in the left seat with Lee coming along for the ride as a passenger. The plan was to pick up Cliff who had been in London for meetings before taking Lee to Newcastle.

Lee is a commercial pilot and ex-CFI. He was flattering, in a backhanded manner, about my ability to fly the Saratoga: “so much better than the last time I flew with you!” I told him that I had been finding it difficult to keep up my hours, to find the time to stay in practice.

“Every time you fly into a small airfield, do circuits,” he said. “Just let them know as you approach that you’ll be doing a touch-and-go and a circuit or two before coming in for your landing. In fact, let’s do that right now.”

I called North Weald and told them that I was inbound to them and would like to do a few circuits before coming into land. He said that he had a plane looking to start aerobatics in 20 minutes but if I was quick, he didn’t mind.

Clearly, the polite thing to do would be to simply get out of the way and I confirmed to North Weald that I would simply come in to land and do my circuits another time. He sounded somewhat relieved as he contacted the pilot of the other plane to let him know that after the inbound PA 32 the field was clear for him to do his aerobatics.

Now one thing you need to know about North Weald is that it is directly underneath Stansted Airspace and as a result, you have to stay under 1,500 feet. As we taxied off the runway, we saw the other plane – a beautiful looking bright-red tail dragger that I later discovered was a Yak 55 – entering a spin directly in front of us.

“Oh my god,” said Lee. It was only at that moment that it dawned on us that he was going to do low level aerobatics directly over us, under Stansted’s airspace, with no margin for error.

I didn’t mean to block the taxiway but seeing the plane flying upside down directly in front of us, I instinctively slowed to a halt and watched, mouth wide open.

The Yak climbed at an impossible angle and then disappeared. We both leaned forward to look up. We saw it plummeting straight down towards us.

I couldn’t really think what I could possibly do to remedy the situation so I did the obvious: I closed my eyes.

I heard the engine gather steam and opened my eyes again to see the Yak climbing away. Lee kept his eyes open – in fact it took a few minutes for him to close his mouth.

The plane did a loop over our heads and then the tower called to ask where we were headed, a subtle hint that maybe we shouldn’t just park on the taxi-way, gawking like kids at the circus. We taxi’d to the other side of the Squadron and by the time we got out of the plane, the impromptu display was over.

The pilot parked the tail-dragger right in front of the Squadron and I was rather tickled to see its registration: G-OHNO

I found a video of the plane (no idea if the pilot is the same) on YouTube. All I can tell you is, I never saw it fly straight and level like this

Last year, Cliff gave me a wonderful surprise for my 40th. He threw me out of bed at some ungodly hour of the morning and told me to pack my bags. Then we drove to Málaga for my do-it-yourself birthday present: a fully-fuelled plane and a flight planned to Marrakesh. Everything was in place for a 72-hour stay in a lovely Riad full of shadowed courtyards and tinkly fountains.

This was also our first time taking the Saratoga outside of Europe. Despite the last minute nature of the flight, I thought I was prepared – Morocco is described as the most European of the African countries and I’d read up on it before. But that didn’t save us from a healthy dose of culture shock.

Upon our return, I wrote this list of ten important facts that Wikipedia neglects to mention:

1. Casablanca Controllers don’t think it’s funny if you respond to a call with “Play it again, Sam.” Not even a little bit.
2. Although Marrakesh is an international airport, they don’t have radar, so you will continue speaking to Casablanca long after it seems like you should have spoken to Marrakesh about your imminent arrival in their circuit.
3. The taxiways are not marked so it is vital that you keep count so that you know where to turn off. Coming in on runway 10, it’s the second right. The follow-me will not appear until you are almost at your parking spot.
4. The nice man who comes out of the follow-me van will offer to “stop you wasting your money on a handling agent” by escorting you to the terminal. He will not mention that that it is a half mile trek in the African mid-afternoon sun to the terminal building and that he has no intention of helping you with your luggage. As you drag your suitcases across the tarmac he will shout at you to watch out as the service agents whiz past in their vans. He’ll expect a hefty tip for doing so (although, to be fair, less than the handling agent would have charged).
5. You need a Shell card to buy fuel on credit in Marrakesh. The fuel man will tell you they take all sorts of different credit cards. He has a stack of paperwork to prove it – photocopies of all the different cards they accept. He will make you look at every one to confirm that you don’t have it. They are all variants of Shell.



6. The old city is only about 15 minutes away by car. Your taxi will stop at random places en route to your hotel. The driver may lean out to speak to friends or even jump out of the car and dash into someone’s house. It’s not a set-up – he’s simply getting directions.
7. Once in the old town of Marrakesh, do not buy orange juice from market stalls that don’t show pricing. The price jumped from 3DH (40 cents) to 50DH (almost seven dollars) at neighbouring shops.
8. Bargaining is expected in the souks and described as a national sport. If you are polite and give reasons why you think the price should be less whilst being flattering about the product, you will generally find you can purchase things for 50% of the price originally demanded.
9. You can not replace your borrowed maps with up-to-date VFR maps in Marrakesh. They will tell you that you need to go to Casablanca to purchase local maps. When you point out that it would be nice to have them here to follow the VFR routing out of Marrakesh, they will agree and explain that they were told they had to stop selling them because they didn’t sell enough.
10. Remember the fuel man who told you that you could purchase your AVGAS with cash? What he meant was “cash with a receipt from the bank” as opposed to the cash you drew out of the ATM specifically to pay him with. He will refuse to sell you gas without a bank receipt. You now can’t get MORE cash because it is illegal to take Dirham out of the country. Bring a Shell card.

I’m hoping to return to Marrakesh this summer – I’m longing for another Dinner in Djeema and I need to restock my stash of spices and Moroccan tea. This time I shall hopefully be a little bit better prepared!

The best thing about going away is the amount of interesting and intriguing articles waiting for me to read once I’m safely back home. This week, join me in catching up on some of the most intriguing aviation pieces to have landed in my in-box.

First of all,a hat tip to Plastic Pilot who linked to this incredible video of a runway incursion (almost two!) at Providence with a lost jet and a controller who can’t see that it has ended up on the active runway :

For thought-provoking discussion on current aviation news, I recommend popping by Aviatrix’s blog for these two posts:
Cockpit Conversation: Choose Your Own Misadventure

Indonesian pilot Marwoto Komar has been sentenced to two years in jail after being found guilty of criminal negligence for attempting to land a Boeing 737 in the wrong configurations and at almost twice the normal speed. The jet overran the end of the runway into a rice field. Twenty-two people were killed and fifty were seriously injured in the crash and ensuing fire.

Cockpit Conversation: Suicide By Cop F-16

My favourite little detail was that Adam reportedly landed with thirty minutes of fuel remaining. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I like to think that his flight instructor drilled air law into him so thoroughly that even while suicidally defying an international boundary and armed jets, he couldn’t disobey the mandate to land with half an hour of gas in his tanks.

I admit that I am easily amused but I did enjoy taking a look at these tributes to poor Captain Sully:
Sully Sullenberger Song Tributes on YouTube: Heartfelt, Yet, uh, Strange – The Middle Seat Terminal – WSJ

In other spots, the song isn’t strictly speaking, accurate.

He was driving that bus that lost its wings and he made it fly
through the clouds up above he saw an eagle and a dove,
And brought peace.

Not to be a stickler, but the Airbus A320 never lost its wings. It lost both engines after a bird strike which was with neither an eagle, nor a dove, but with a flock of Canada Geese – a species that would have rhymed with “peace,” by the way. But hey, that’s poetic license for you.

The pilot in this photo is not from Angola Airlines, the plane is not a 737 and the landing is at the intended destination. How do I know? I took the photograph of Cliff landing the Saratoga at Lisbon. Still, now I can say that I live with a famous pilot who was featured on Wired:
Whoops! 737 Lands At Wrong Airport | Autopia

The Boeing 737 was to land at Lusaka International Airport in Zambia but instead touched down 10 miles away at an airfield used by the country’s air force. The pilot realized he’d screwed up just before landing – the fighter jets had to be the first clue – but worried that lifting off again would panic his oblivious passengers. He proceeded with the landing and the airline loaded everyone onto a bus for the ride to Lusaka International.

And finally, thanks to the many people who sent me this utterly amazing emergency landing on Havendale Boulevard after an engine failure. The pilot’s flight instructor commented: “Watching that video, he was just awesome,” Amundsen said. “I just hope, you know, if I ever have a situation like that I can be as cool as Kyle was.” Don’t we all: