Vlieg met me mee..!

Back in Montreal in October 2005 I met flying buddy G. Since that time we have been willing to fly together but for the right occasion we had to wait until this week. Wx is looking pretty good and with the help of http://www.eddh.de we are able to select some nice airfields with nice scenery and good food. Since EHTE (Teuge) will be our starting point we take with us the nice Diesel C172TDI which is based there. Filled up it has an endurance of 6 hours.. means you can fly to Monaco non-stop if you want to.. For us, EDRK (Koblenz) will be the first destination. Our routing goes via direct EDDL (Düsseldorf) and via direct EDDK (Köln-Bonn).

Luckily we have 2 gps devices with us (1 fixed, 1 mobile) since the PH-PRO is not equiped with VOR or ADF instruments. Weather turns out to be a bit hazy once airborne so GPS was a very welcome addition. Right before crossing the German border we contact 129.87 Langen Info and inform them of our intentions: crossing the CTRs of EDDL and EDDK with destination EDRK. A few phone-calls are made by Langen and some 10 miles before entering the CTR of EDDL we have to contact them. Excellent cooperation from them, due to inbound traffic we have to climb 2,500 ft and are being routed via the treshold of the concerned runway. Nice view to see big ones take off beneath us! Shortly after this crossing, maintaining 2,500 ft, we contact Köln-Bonn, a large but not too busy airport. After we become visual with the runways we are routed to leave via reporting point Sierra, to pick up the Rhine-route to Koblenz. Mind you, do not climb after leaving the CTR since there is a terminal above you.. short reminder of Langen but we are maintaing 2,500ft anyways, no problem, although I actually forget a bit about the terminal..

Köln-Bonn, cleared to cross the CTR at 2,500 ft. Big airport with a very nice lay-out and kind controllers :)

Towards Koblenz weather is a bit more hazy than over the Ruhr-area (strange..) but the scenery is amazingly nice. We fly through a kind of Rhine-valley, a lot of traffic in the area with every time traffic advisory from Langen Info, these guys and girls do a great job, excellent. We say goodbye to them and contact Koblenz, the marks in the landscape are quite clear although we need a bit of effort to find the right route at once. We do an excellent job I must say (good navigator next to me) and our reward is one of the most stunning views in the 06 lefthand circuit of Koblenz. After a big hill within the circuit, turning a lefthand-baseleg, one faces the enormous bridge that carries the motorway 61. Pictures will come soon. Landing on the slightly upsloping runway feels good and we park near the (only) 3 parked airplanes on the airfield. Let us check out the Greek restaurant next to the tower..

On to our next airfield: Dahlemer-Binz, some 40 NM to the west, situated in the Eifel area. Due to time restrictions (daylighttime stops after 17:59 UTC today) we allready file a flightplan EDKV-EHTE at EDRK , so that we do not need to do that anymore at Dahlemer-Binz. We take off and exchange the hills from the Koblenz area for the Eifel hills. Right after take off we are carefull not to "touch" the military CTRs of Mendig and Büchel. Always be prepared that gps equipment sometimes needs a few minutes to fully accomodate before displaying the desired course. A good awareness of the area combined with the map is actualy always necessary. Thats VFR flying.. On our westbound route we meet a nice and cousy castle somewhere on a hill. As we fly towards it to capture it with the cam, we spot -unexpectedly- the Nürnburgring to our left. Wow.. nice! We take pictures and after a while we see the circuit is enormous: the Nordschleife (if I am correct..) extends to our right, we can spot some fences along the road. Pictures coming up.

A nice little castle somewhere North of our route it the vicinty of the Nürnburgring, looks worth a visit..

Time to prepare for joining the lefthand circuit runway 24 of EDKV. The hazy air makes it difficult to distinguish areas and railtracks that we are looking for, which river is on the map, that one, or the bigger one just next to it.. difficult sometimes, even with a gps. We are close by and discover we now best enter the baseleg allready, report that to the tower, fine. A nice rather high approach resulting in a fine landing, and we can backtrack since cars are doing tests on the airport for AUTO Magazine. Right now they were testing/comparing/photo-shooting the C-Max. On the airport we meet some very enthousiastic aviation spotters, but we give ourselves 30 minutes since our flight plan starts at 16:00 UTC. Pay the landing fee, check the weather, a short stop in the smallest room and off we go again.

On the way to Teuge our track goes via ETUR. ETUR is the old RAF airport. I have been there once as a young boy watching Tornado´s land and take-off. A cut-off through the forrest and you found yourselves very close to the head of the runway. Ofcourse it was my father who took us there, maybe I can find some old pics of that. Now, the RAF has long gonebut I wanted to see it to check if the runway etc. is still there. And yes, still there!

Happy fellas sharing a plane. Buddy G. and Sierra Mike Delta above German territories..!

On our way to ETUR we engaged several airplanes, quite busy over there. When we cross the area near the CTR of Geilenkirchen, Langen Info tells us we can expect an AWACS on approach from right to left. A pitty that it passes behind us, but still impressive to see. We plan to cross the CTR of Niederrhein (the old Lahrbruch) and as expected, no problem. Crossing is approved and we only have to report when leaving the CTR. Ok.. Weather is getting worse, visibilty is mostly affected, no more than 8-10 km. We follow the Ijssel till Zutphen and from there we fly to Sierra, for a lefthand circuit 27 at Teuge. Great flight it was! We had fun, learned things, buddy G. imroved his German, we had a good meal, a fine ride it was..!

Hope the picture of the map is clear enough to show our route, by means of the blue coloured triangle.