July 2009

05.07.2009: I did a lot of small things today, nothing worth taking pictures.

30.07.2009: I am back from my holidays in Germany and Denmark. The only progress I made during these three weeks is writing the Airplane Flight Manual AFM, a draft of which has to be produced before the first flight. I basically got a draft AFM with the kit, even in electronic form (MS Word), but of course the Swiss regulations require a slightly different document structure... It took me around 10 hours to rewrite it accordingly. At least I know now exactly what it contains... The AFM will be updated once all the flight test have been done with the exact performance data, and will then be approved by the EAS (Experimental Aviation of Switzerland) and the FOCA (Federal Office of Civil Aviation).

The only aviation related highlight during my holidays happened during a boat tour (!) of the harbour of Hamburg. While looking at a large container vessel the guy next to me suddenly pointed upwards and asked what kind of plane that was.

It was an Airbus Beluga on final approach to the airport Hamburg Finkenwerder, where the Airbus plant in Hamburg is located. The Beluga is basically an Airbus A300 with a blown up fuselage, which provides more loading volume than even the Lockheed Galaxy or the Antonov A-124. Only five of them exist, and they are mostly used to deliver large sections of Airbus airliners, such as wings or fuselage sections, from the manufacturing sites to the final assembly lines.

I also received the items I had ordered from Aircraft Spruce Europe (circuit breakers, compass and camlocks). I ordered them on the 8th and they arrived on the 17th, not bad considering that I chose normal mail delivery.

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