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discover the world of general aviation
On Sunday, Sep 6, 2015, weather was still fine. After a short night sleep, it was time to fly again to Belgium and end our journey. We were finally able to get my gopro camera Hero3 to work properly and control from the Ipad. I’m quite surprised from all the options and possibilities it offers, amazing. It provides a different kind of pictures.
At lunchtime, we landed at the airfield of Verdun for a short break prior to co,tinue our journey to Belgium. Flying with a headache is not obvious 🙂
Landing and taking off from Altiports is spectacular and thrilling, but our French instructor Dominique took us now to two altisurfaces.
First, we’ve been visiting and landing on the altisurface of St Jean d’Arves. Code name is LF7331. It is located high in the Alps nearby Pra Sauge and Pré Vernay Saint. Approaching this place isn’t like anything I’ve seen in my 35 year life as a pilot. Here we have a slop/gradient of some 15% and a length of only 330m (width some 50m). All of this at an altitude of 5950 feet.
Both Ludo and Kristof have been landing on these altisurfaces. The second one we visited was even more spectacular, it felt as we were part of some kind of James Bond movie. The second altisurface is called Vallare/Bonnenuit (good night) and has the code LF7332. It is located at 5600 feet.
We never felt insecure although these places are definitively the most dangerous ones in the world, but also the most spectacular ones.
The three of us were so happy we have been able to experience these altiports and altisurface experiences, it is something I can recommend to every pilot.
If you like to do so, please join for the 29th edition during the first weekend of September 2016.
After enjoying these altiports and altisurface experiences, we headed back to Grenoble Le Vesoud and from there we flew back in our Cessna to Annecy. What an absolutely exciting day.
In the evening, we enjoyed a group dinner with the other pilots and from there we went discovering the nightlife of Annecy…and ended up only at 5am in our beds
Today, we enter a new and rather spectacular world. It is all about Altiports and even more thrilling: “Alti surfaces” (there’s no English translation for this). I must admit I never even heard the name of “Alti surface” before.
An altiport is a mountain airfield in the Alps, where landing requires great experience. I landed on Courchevel some years ago, this year, we’re heading for Alpe D’Huez.
Where an Altiport is considered “for experiended mountain pilots to land on”, an altisurface is 5 times is for daredevils and living legends only. It is the most challenging landing for a private pilot.
We can’t fly to these places with our own Cessna 172 (club rules of Limburgse Vleugels). Nope, you need a special plane for this with a tail wheel. Jean Birgen has been organizing we could rent such SAN Jodel D.140 Mousquetaire (en:Musketeer), which is a French five-seat light touring monoplane.
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| picture made by Tom Manderscheid |
We left our Cessna behind on the Grenoble Le Vesoud airfield and after having dealt with the paperwork, we got briefed by a local instructor, called Dominique.
We decided to leave for the Altiport of Alpe D’Huez. For this first leg, I was the pilot. So we took off in a Musketeer airplane into the high Alps direction of Alpe D’huez.
Our instructor Dominique tells me whilst we are flying that every year, some 5 Musketeer planes are getting out of service, of which some are crashing. But not today.
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| Ludo and Kristof in the back of the Mousquetaire |
Alpe d’Huez, here we come. This time we really climbed out quite high in the Alps. In less than an hour we reached the Alpe d’Huez region. We’ve been overflying the area a couple of times and decided to proceed with the landing. Everything went just fine, it was spectacular.
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| Melting glaciers |
