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Helicopter in Luxembourg

June is the most popular flying month, simply because of the length of the days. On June 10th, I received early in the morning a call from my french friend Maurice Blajman with a very generous offering to join him for a flight in his helicopter over Luxembourg. Great weather, great idea and we planned to attend the BBQ organized that same weekend at the airfield of Noertrange in the north of Luxembourg. My son is always happy to join, this time was no different. Our friend Valerie Dumas is also joining. I notified Mika Wagner, head of the Young Pilots and that’s how our great helicopter journey started.

Maurice’s Robinson 44 helicopter is located at the Chambley airfield. He picked us up at Luxembourg airport. Here’s the picture report

Maurice Blajman and his helicopter

take off at Luxembourg airport
Cockpit view

Kirchberg Luxembourg

Luxembourg castle

more castles

meander

perfect weather

Luxembourg landscape

arrival at Noertrange airfield
other visitor with great old timer

Luxembourg BBQ starts

more planes flying in 

Luxembourg Young pilots are the BBQ organizers

aviation enthusiast

Mika Wagner plane

skydiving hangar

preparing for action

relaxing

my son is also an aviation enthusiast

Robinson 44
Thank you Maurice for this nice flight

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invitation “going Dutch” fly-out weekend


I am planning a dutch weekend for the Luxembourg pilots, here are the details. It will bring a whole Luxembourg fleet to the Netherlands in July. Air traffic control will be surprised. Here are the details

FLY OUT – GOING DUTCH – JULY 7TH-9TH 2015 – DETAILS  and SCHEDULE

 On Friday morning July 10th, you’ll fly 216 NM to the island of Texel at the Dutch coast, where you’ll check in at your hotel
Sweeping white-sand beaches, wildlife-rich nature reserves, sun-dappled forests and quaint villages are among the highlights of Texel, the largest and most visited of the Wadden Islands. About 3km north of the coast of Noord-Holland, Texel (pronounced “tes-sel”l) is 25km long and 9km wide. You can either enjoy a relaxing day at the beach or discover the island per (electrical) bike
On Saturday morning July 11th after breakfast, you are flying 90 NM to the newly re-opened airfield nearby Enschede airport (Twente), where the Dutch AOPA organizes an international Fly-In.
Because the event is also promoted by AOPA in Belgium, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, it promises to be an international pilots gathering actively supported with host Enschede Airport Twente, will provide a full-fledged program for young and old.
There is a wide variety of delicious food and drinks from local suppliers; there are very interesting and entertaining seminars to attend; there will be various stands of interesting aviation companies, such as aircraft brands, maintenance and training.(seminars about Mobile flite deck, short field landing, etc….)
You’ll end the day with a luxurious barbecue where the Dutch AOPA and the Enschede/Twente airport promised to take special care of you and your family!
UPL- AOPA Members have free access and do not have to pay a landing fee (you have to bring your UPL-AOPA membership card with you however)
The more courageous can jump into the nightlife of Enschede with plenty of bars in the city
On Sunday morning July 12th, you’ll take it very easy and will be flying out to Genk-Zwartberg in Limburg, Belgium (91NM) where we’ll enjoy a relaxing lunch on this vivid airfield where there’s always something going on. From there, we’ll have a short flight to Luxembourg (78NM)
SCHEDULE
Tuesday July 4th at 7pm 
6pm                        Pre tour briefing at the Aéro-Sport clubhouse
Friday July 7thth  
10am                      Flight from Luxembourg to Texel
Check-in at hotel
2pm                        Guided tour of the island per (electrical) bike, covering the island highlights
                                Or simply enjoy the beach
7pm                        Group dinner
Saturday July 8th 
9.00 am                 Take off for Enschede airport (Twente), where we are welcome by AOPA Netherlands
10:45 am               Joining the international pilots fly-in with a full program for pilots and passengers, setup by AOPA Netherlands.
5.30 pm Pilots BBQ at the Enschede/Twente airfield
9 pm                       Discover the bars and exciting nightlife of Enschede
Sunday July 9th 
10.30 am               Take off for Genk Zwartberg , where we’ll enjoy a small lunch prior to fly back home

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Norderney – Teuge

A nephew of me, Franky Coene, started recently taking flying lessons in Kortrijk. I invited him to join me last Sunday to fly to the island of Norderney, which I planned to discover during a one day flight. He and his son are also aviation enthusiasts

Franky en Johan Coene



Franky has been travelling from Oostende to Genk Zwartberg to meet with me, together with his son Johan. The weather outlook was not perfect, but I wanted to give it a try nevertheless.

However, being a VFR pilot proved once again to have its limits. The weather reports for Kleine Brogel, Maastricht and Liège were alternating from IFR to MVFR to VFR as the cloud basis was quite low and visibility poor. However, north of Groningen, the weather seemed fine.

We arrived in the morning at the airfield and prepared the airplane. We hoped that the cloud basis would lift around noon, but I had to wait until early afternoon to take off with the Cessna 172 (OO-LVA) of my flying club in Genk.

Our flight did not last very long, visibility and ceiling were too poor to make a comfortable flight to Norderney. Further, a weathermap showed that fog was rapidly coming in from the North Sea in Norderney. An alternative was to fly to Teuge in the Netherlands and attend a visit to an internet pilot pal Mark Perlot, but flying at 1500 feet with poor visibility is no fun.

So we turned back and landed again in Genk-Zwartberg, opting to stay at the safe side. 
this is the island of Norderney, which we finally did not manage to reach

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Stop the closing of the Helsinki-Malmi airport !

Helsink-Malmi airport to be closed ??? 
Dear fellow pilot,

We got the sad news that there are advanced plans to close the Helsinki-Malmi airport (EFHF), which is a catastrophy  for general aviation in Finland and Europe.

Hereunder is a petition which needs to be sent to the Finnish members of parliament. It aims to support our initiative to keep the airport of Helsinki-Malmi open.

Don’t think that you are not concerned, every airport faces their problems and that is when pilots come together and support each other.

Please copy paste the text below, fill it out and email it to kirjaamo@eduskunta.fi

Thanks

Peter Sodermans & Marco Felten
private pilots

*****

Subject: Legislative initiative Lex Malmi
To: All Members of Parliament of Finland
Distinguished Member of Parliament of Finland
Helsinki-Malmi Airport is a world-class historic and cultural treasure. It is a beautifully preserved 1930’s international airport, of which very few have survived to present day in their original use. Such a proud, living monument of an independent nation’s history deserves the respect of the present and future generations.

It is all the more important to save the living historic aviation milieu of Helsinki-Malmi Airport as it is the backbone of general aviation and pilot training in Finland.

The planned destruction of this unique historic environment to make room for a suburb cannot serve the greater good of society, especially when considerable areas of unused land exist elsewhere in the city and its surroundings.

We, the undersigned, wish to see Helsinki-Malmi Airport preserved as an active airfield of great historic, architectural and functional value. 

Please support legislative initiative, Lex Malmi, to preserve Helsinki-Malmi Airport, listed among the 7 Most Endangered heritage sites in Europe in 2016 by Europa Nostra and the European Investment Bank Institute. 
Keeping Malmi Airport in operation does not pose a problem to residential construction in the area. Aviation and residential construction are not mutually exclusive. Both are a part of the prosperous future of the whole capital region and especially all of Finland.
By decision to save Malmi Airport, Parliament of Finland would lead the country of 100 years independence into a new century with courage and determination.
Signature:
Title:

Organisation if applicable
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LX-AIO was visible on Flight Radar 24

I upgraded to the gold version of the app called Flightradar 24. They call themselves the facebook of aviation 🙂 

FR24 uses the ADS-B out (called extended squitter) of commercial airplanes. Here one FR24 station receiving the signal is enought to track an airplane as it constantly sends its GPS location, speed, altitude, etc…
The  airplanes of Aéro Sport are capable of doing the same but is is not activated on LX-AIO and LX-AIE. For the other club airplanes our transponder is not capable of ADS-B(ES).

On the other hand FR24 uses a process called multilateration (a bit like triangulation used for navigation). In order to figure out where the Aéro Sport airplanes are, the system needs at least 4 stations receiving the signal simultaneously. Multilateration position is calculated based on the time difference the signal needs to get to the different stations. Station time stamp quality differs widely based on the quality of the type of station. Coverage differs widely throughout Europe and station density is quite sparse in eastern Europe.

In order to maximize the chances of tracking me (at least partially) on our journeys on FR24, one tries try to fly as high as possible in order to maximize the range of our signal, effectively improving the chances that a larger number of stations can send data to the servers.

Here’s a screenshot I retrieved from our flight from Montpellier towards Fayence some days ago in the LX-AIO

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The outcome

We finally agreed that I handed over our Cessna 172 to Guido Peterzelka and his wife as he needs to be back in Luxembourg on Tuesday morning at latest.

We have some spare tickets left for a regulair airline flight to Luxembourg, so the decision is taken that Guido and his family fly the Cessna back on Eastern Sunday towards Luxembourg. The weather was a bith rough in Avignon ( 2!5 kts of headwind with gusts to 40 kts) , but Guido managed to land the Cessna safely in Luxembourg at sunset. 
Next weekend, he returns to Fayence with a regular airline together with a technician in order to fix his plane and fly it back to Luxembourg. Let’s cross fingers it all works out for Guido. 
My Eastern 2017 journey ends somewhat different than what we planned, but it was a memorable vacation which I’ll never forget.

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Changing plans !

It is no option that Guido Peterzelka continues his flight to Luxembourg in his Beech Bonanza. If the engines heats up again without the oil pump seal issue being properly adressed, he could eventually in the worst case get fire on board as oil can ignite because of the heat. He made several calls with his co-owners and technical support. His plane stays grounded in Fayence till next weekend, that’s for sure.

So our stay in Fayence takes a different turn, the Eastern bells nevertheless passed on Sunday bringing eggs ro the kids. In the mean time, we enjoyed some good moments together visiting the Saturday morning fresh market in Fayence. Wonderful place, I like it a lot.

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Problem in Fayence

We’ve landed yesterday in Fayence coming from Sabadell and our friends travelling with us on this journey through France and Spain, the Peterzelka family, planned to fly this afternoon from Fayence to Leverkusento celebrate Eastern with their family..

However whilst preparing to take off with their plane, something happened. Whilst they were lining up, smoke came into their canopy and they had to evacuate the plane. Very bad ! They’re making some calls now to see how this is gonna to be fixed. Seems a problem seal with the oil pump at first glance. It will change the rest of our journey
They already had some kind of higher oil consumption as usual throughout our journey because of a small leak nearby a seal at the oil pump, maybe this is linked to what happened today. Very bad, likely no big thing, but it needs to be reviewed and fixed by a technician.

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Flight from Sabadell to Fayence along the coastline. Stunning views

Our next stop is Fayence in the Var nearby Cannes. I don’t dare to fly on a direct course over the sea. We have swimming vests, but no dinghy’s in case the motot of our plane stops working. Of course, the plane does not know it is flying over the sea, but I’m not taking the risk and that’s why I planned a road along the costline to Fayence. There are many restrcited zones in France, but if one flies high enough, I’m often above these zones. Plenty of wind today, but that’s not of a concern. We refuel our plane in Sabadell and take off at 2pm sharp for a flight of a couple of hours in our Cessna 172

Even before crossing the French border, I’m already in touch with a very friendly air traffic controller of Montpeller. He’s very helpfull and guides us whilst overflying many airports allowing the need in me to take many pictures.

The weather worsened when we approached Fayence, Cannes was already fully covered with clouds. I know this area quite well, so we flew under the cloud base and landed with a long final appraoch in Fayence. Our friends, the Peterzelka’s landed just behind us.

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Barcelona and Gaudi

Never tried this before, but it proves to be a convenient way to explore the city of Barcelona…and different from a Cessna

We stayed in the Catalonia Ramblas hotel, which proved to be an excellent choice. Perfect location in the center of Barcelona and excellent beds. We strolled the whole day through the town
Our son does not miss any opportunity to eat the Pimientos del Padron, hoping he will get a spicy one. I fear that one he got his spicy one, his quest for Piementos will be over for a longtime..’