After two years of pandemic mismanagement, we can travel around rather freely again in Europe. So I am just in the course towards the East with my Taifun about which I will report. I have started in Biberach/Riss (EDMB) yesterday and arrived in Bad Vöslau (LOAV) which is located near Vienna. Today I'll visit Vienna, and tomorrow I want to continue my trip towards Budaörs (LHBS, near Budapest).
Attached are two pictures of the TN after landing in Vöslau.
I am a little late, because I did have a lot to do in the last week, but here is an update of my journey.
Bad Vöslau is a nice town, but mostly for recreation, so I traveled on Thursday, 25.8, to Wien, did some sightseeing like the palace and had only a bath and dinner in the thermal bath in Bad Vöslau.
On Friday, 26.8, I then traveled from Bad Vöslau to Budaörs (LHBS). It was an unproblematic flight in perfect weather. Budaörs is a nice old airport with a very good and long grass runway a bit away from Budapest.
On the next day (Saturday, 27.8), I traveled to Budapest visiting an old friend who is a diplomat at the Mexican embassy. We had a nice day walking around in Budapest and could even see enormous fireworks in honour of Hungary's national day which were postponed for one week because of bad weather. Here are people waiting for the fireworks distributed all along on both sides of the Danube (there were also several simultaneous copies of the fireworks along the Danube)
On Sunday, 28th August, I then traveled via Debrecen to Sibiu/LRSB. [I had to go there because of custom services on the controlled airport Debrecen (since Romania is not in the Schengen zone, this is necessary). Maybe customs could have been done also at Budaörs with earlier notice, but I did not receive an answer to my request on Saturday early afternoon.] I then commited an error by not refueling in Debrecen/LHDC (you will see why later). The flight through Hungary was only flat terrain and not very interesting, but in Romania the West Carpathian mountain range provided a nice landscape which allowed even for some thermal support for my flight.
Here is a picture of the TN in Sibiu, already "clothed".
(18.9.2022) Even more time has passed and, in fact, I have already returned from my journey with the TN to my hometown Erlangen one week ago. Nevertheless, this report covers only the next part of my trip and a report on the final part will follow.
This city Sibiu/Hermannstadt was founded by German settlers during the Austro-Hungarian empire around 1200 and is a really nice city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibiu). We stayed in the city centre for two days at the "Casa Luxemburg", then we visited the family of my wife (her mother and brother) who live in the village Axente Sever which is located about 50 km north of Sibiu, and stayed with them for another two days. On Thursday, 1.9, the departure from Sibiu back to Germany was scheduled for my wife and daughter and I wanted to travel back to Germany as well, because there was a family celebration honouring the 60th anniversary of my parent's wedding taking place on Saturday, 3.9. I brought my family to the airport around midday and went to prepare my Taifun. Then the problem I mentioned in my previous mail turned up. Although it is written in the Romanian AIP that Sibiu has AVGAS, I was told that there was also an active NOTAM which said the opposite (in fact, this NOTAM is active since several years!). So it was rather clear that I could not risk traveling to Balaton/LHSM airport directly (as I had planned), but that I would have to make a further stop somewhere in between. Unpleasant, but still not a show-stopper. Unfortunately, I made another error then and underestimated the influence of a bad weather region moving from south to north over the Carpathian mountains west from Sibiu. Indeed, heading west from Sibiu I was stopped by really bad weather after about 50 NM over Deva/LRDV, see Picture 1.
I tried to fly around the rain zone in southern direction, but gave up after another 10 NM and returned to Sibiu, since this is a well-known place for me and I could stay with my relatives. Looking again at the weather chart (especially a rain radar which I had not studied before my flight - stupid me) I saw that (since the bad weather was arriving from the south) it probably would have been possible to fly north to Cluj-Napoca/LRCL first and then west to Debrecen/LHDC where I had already been. But now it was too late.
Now I lived through two days of very bad weather in Sibiu. I used the time to fuel my Taifun with gasoline from the gas station which was a bit tricky but the personnel (especially the chief operator) was very helpful. Only on Saturday, 3.9, it was possible to fly again and then also only starting from midday. At this late time, it was clear that flying back to Germany would not make much sense, because even under the best circumstances I would have arrived at that family celebration only quite late in the evening. And on the next day, Sunday, my wife and I had planned to travel already to Brijuni in Croatia, where a conference on mathematics was about to start on Monday. Thus, I decided to fly directly from Sibiu to Pula/LDPL which is the airport nearest to Brijuni.
At the beginning this flight was tricky. The clouds were at 3000 AMSL which was about as high as the Carpathian mountain range is in that region (see Picture 2,3). I did not dare to climb over the clouds, because the mountain tops were quite mixed with a 7/8 cloud layer which is not a comfortable thing to have below an aircraft, and also because the tops of the clouds were, at least partially, quite high. Fortunately, after the West Carpathians the weather rapidly got better. Over Hungary, it even developped into a nice gliding weather and I could economise on fuel by flying below Cumulus streets and using thermal updrafts.
I made only a short stop in Balaton/LHSM (Picture 4) for refueling (the remaining fuel would have been quite sufficient for reaching Pula safely, but after my experience in Sibiu I was a burnt child in that respect). The remaining flight to Pula/LDPL was again unproblematic (see Pictures 5,6), however, it was only a quarter before sunset when I landed in Pula/LDPL.
Then I had an unpleasant surprise, because the Pula operators told me that I was not allowed to stay in Pula because of missing parking space and I should fly to a neighboring small airport Medulin/LDPM immediately after passport control (Croatia is not yet part of the Schengen zone, same as Romania, which implies custom and passport control when entering or leaving both the Schengen zone and Croatia/Romania). Considering that it was almost night, it was not a particularly friendly act to have a foreign pilot search for an airport unknown to him even if it is lying nearby. However, I succeeded in finding Medulin (fortunately, it had a blinking light on the tower) and landed there at about 20:00 LT (equivalent to SS+20). The TN got its clothes, then I booked an appartement in Medulin town and also called a taxi for taking me there because I did not have the nerves anymore to find my way through the darkness on my bicycle.
(24.9.2022) Here is the report about the last part of my journey.
Medulin is a tourist town. I spent the largest part of the following Sunday (4.9) there, with breakfast, lunch, reading, writing. I also tried to swim in the afternoon, but noticed that I had only little time left and that it was a long way to walk until the water got deeper. Then I made a bicycle tour from Medulin to Pula airport (during which I got wet in a heavy rain shower) for meeting my wife who arrived with Lufthansa at 18:30. I called a Taxi for taking us to Fazana (a small town opposite to Brijuni), and from there a ferry took us to the Brijuni island. I was a bit annoyed when they told me that I had to leave my bicycle at the station in Fazana, because they lease bicycles on Brijuni and do not want concurrence. If I had known that I would have tried to enter the ferry with my bike folded and packed. I doubt that the ward would have recognized it as a bicycle...
Brijuni is a really nice place. It was once a residence of Tito, the former leader of Yugoslavia, who apparently had a quite luxurious lifestyle and also invited a lot of glamorous persons there. Nowadays it is a national park. Tourists who are not staying overnight on the island will usually visit only one day because the tickets for the ferry are quite expensive. We, however, had our conference taking place in Hotel Istria on the island and therefore had booked a room in the same hotel. So we could walk and swim during the lunch break or in the evening. Here are some pictures taken there. Even Roman ruins are there.
Friday, 9.9, was the last day of our conference which finished at 12 o'clock. After a last walk, we boarded our ferry and were soon in Fazana again. We had a lunch together, then a taxi took us to Pula airport from where Maria traveled home to Germany. For me it was too late to leave on this day, and furthermore the Alpes where stored up with clouds from the north. So I booked an appartement in Pula city and stayed there overnight. A night walk through Pula led me also to their spectacular Roman amphitheatre. As you can see, as in former times there are sports event taking place there also nowadays:-)
On Saturday morning, I checked the weather and also got meteorological advice by telephone from the German Met Service DWD. Unfortunately, the north of the Alpes was still in clouds, with the weather slowly getting better from the west. Therefore, I made a plan to travel only to some airport in Northern Italy lying more to the west, for having a good start on Sunday. Then I went to fetch my Taifun from LDPM and to start my journey home. Here are some pictures of the airport Medulin which has a spectacular windsock.
First, I had to fly to Pula (outside Schengen) again for customs. Briefly after noon, I started my flight from there towards Venice-Lido/LIPV (lying inside Schengen) which also has custom service with prior notice. Unfortunately, immediately after take-off I noticed a problem, namely that the propeller pitch control did not work and remained in start position. It would not have made much sense trying to cross the Adria without working pitch control (too slow, too bad for the motor), so I landed again and tried to remove the problem. Luckily(?) the issue had turned up before and I knew what to do (namely moving the block for the speed sensor closer to the nuts of the propeller flange) and had all tools necessary for the job with me. After 1-2 hours work in hot sun, everything was ok again. Maybe there was a bit of luck in this problem appearing, because in the meantime I was told that my camera had remained in Medulin! Therefore I flew again to Medulin, and then again to Pula for customs (and, this time, also for refueling), and only around 14 UTC I took off for Venice. Everything went well as you can see from my happy face flying over the Adria.
Arriving in Lido I decided to stay there because it was already late. Looking for a room I noticed that only a few rather expensive rooms were available, because it was the last day of the Venice film festival. Thus, I only got one for 155 EUR. However, I think that it does not make much sense trying to save money at such points. There are a lot of things summing up to considerable higher amounts when flying an own aircraft, and because of the uncertainty of the weather it is not very reasonable to book cheap hotels weeks before a trip. Anyway, the location of my hotel was very central, and of a very high standard. In the evening I made bicycle tour around Lido, tried to swim at the public beach (bad idea, I got very fast stinged by jellyfish), and then had a good dinner in an almost empty restaurant (most people were in the cinema).
In the next morning (Sunday, 11.9), I had a wonderful breakfast in the garden of my hotel. It felt almost like paradise. Then I went for the airport. First, I had planned to make another stop now at Como (LILY) or at Alzate Brianza (LILB), but somehow both airports are not really for public use and I did not get permission to land there (what the precise problem was with Como I still do not know, but Alzate-Brianza is apparently an airport which is mostly for gliding). So I decided to fly directly to Biberach/EDMB. This flight was again really interesting: Take-off time was 1050 UTC, and then I flew over Northern Italy until Lake Garda. I had intended to fly west to Lake Como and only from there north to the Spluegenpass, but over Lake Garda I got the impression that the cloud bases were rising with the mountains and that a shortcut should be possible. Indeed that turned out to be a good decision. The cloud bases rose and rose (I could again use some very strong thermal upwinds to follow them) and were over the main chain of the Alpes at FL100-FL110. At these heights there is no problem in crossing the Alpes which I did north of Sondrio (LILO).
After the main chain, I flew over Chur and Bad Ragaz to Lake Constance (losing height in sync with the cloud base), and finally arrived in Biberach/EDMB at 13:34 UTC. In Biberach, there was a "Flugplatzfest" this day, and a very good photographer from the Sportfliegerclub Stuttgart, Wolfgang Kizler, was visiting it. He made a nice photo of the Taifun and me during our landing which you can see here. He gave me permission to share it and I attach it here in a bit higher resolution than the rest of my pictures, because I find the sharpness and quality impressive (although I could not use the highest resolution because of the size limit of the mailing list server):
What is my resume and outlook? It was a memorable experience, the memories will surely help keeping my spirits up during the winter. I hope that the stupidity of our politicians is not so large that they turn this winter into a war winter also for us in the EU. If they do not and the situation remains under control here, then starting from spring 2023 Croatia will also be in the Schengen zone and direct flights to Medulin and also airports in South Croatia will become possible. It might even happen, that Romania and Bulgaria enter Schengen as well, which would open up comfortable possibilities for flights still further to the east. It is quite sure that I will then make use of both these opportunities in the following years.