August 2011

01.08.2011: I just had to go flying today, even if it was only for half an hour.

05.08.2011: Another short flight today, just what I managed to squeeze into one of the short dry periods. .

One reason why I wanted to go flying, even if for only half an hour, was that our new headsets arrived today. Until now I had a David Clark H20-10, which has a great carrying comfort, but has a fairly thick headband.

The second headset I have is a cheap model, with a really poor carrying comfort on long flights. In addition the two headsets don't match in loudness, so the radio / music is either too loud on one side or not loud enough on the other side.

With the US$ at around 0.80 Swiss francs we decided to order two Bose A20 ANR headsets. They cost around 1250 CHF here but only 995 US$ at Aircraft Spruce, which is around two thirds the price.

I already have a Bose QC15 Noise Cancelling headset for my iPod, which helped me survive my record business travelling last year, so I always wanted to have a noise cancelling headset for the plane too. My wife and I have tried various models and decided that the carrying comfort of the Bose is the best, on top of that it can be folded into a small package and it also gives me around 3-4 cm more headroom due to the low profile headband.

The result from my test flight is spectacular. The noise cancelling effect is as good as with the QC15, and the quality of the sound is superb. In addition also the radio is much clearer and better understandable, highly, highly recommended.

Just a note: If the battery is empty it still acts as a passive headset for safety reasons, and in passive mode it is just about as good as the David Clark.

07.08.2011: My wife started taking flying lessons a few weeks ago after having passed both her theoretical exam and the radio licence test at her first try. Impressive. I really don't want to interfere with her flight training (on a Robin DR400, not the SportCruiser), so when we go flying together as today I do all the flying. Today we did however some familiarisation with the area around the airport, as this will help her knowing where she is.

11.08.2011: This morning I went flying with a member of our flying club and prospective SportCruiser buyer. He really enjoyed it, and with both the € and the US$ as low as never before this is definitely the time to buy a plane.

Just before lunch two Zenith CH701 kitplanes arrived in Lommis for a quick visit. Even with a nice paint job they aren't elegant planes, but a takeoff run of less than 100 m requires some compromises.

The visit reminded me that we have the annual fly-in of the homebuilders in Yverdon from the 19th to the 21st August.

In the afternoon I went flying with a friend I studied with 25 years ago. We had the choice of either going sailing with his sailing boat or flying with my plane, and the lack of any significant wind made it an easy choice. Again he really enjoyed it, especially flying along the steep walls in the mountains.

12.08.2011: Yesterday I realised that I can't wait until I have reached 100 hours to make the first 100 hours check, as the annual is due, so I did the first 100 hours check at 74:23 hours. It tool me most of the day, as it was the first time I did a 100 hours check, but there weren't any problems. Everything looks fine, the oil was still clean and there weren't any traces of chips in both the oil filter and on the magnetic plug. According to our mechanic the spark plugs also looked really nice, so nothing to worry.

The only problem we found was that the front wheel tire would not deflate. After quite some effort we managed to take the front wheel apart. We noticed that the wheel was not assembled correctly ,

13.08.2011: My wife and I decided to attend the Fly-In at La Côte Aerodrome this weekend. It is located just outside the city of Nyon in the village of Prangins, around 25 km northeast of Geneva close to the shore of Lake Geneva. La Côte Aerodrome is more or less at the opposite end of Switzerland from Lommis Airfield, where my plane is stationed. My wife grew up in that area of Nyon, and her brother still lives there, so two good reasons to go there.

The weather was for once very nice, something rare this summer, so we first flew south from Lommis to Lucerne, then along the alps over the Lake of the four cantons, the lakes of Saanen and Brienz (below),

then along Lake of Thun to Spiez. From there we continued via Gstaad and over the mountains do Montreux (luckily without "smoke on the water") on the easterly end Lake Geneva (below).

There we also had a nice view onto the Château de Chillon, nearly 5'500 ft below us..

From there it was all along the lake to a Côte Aerodrome. This if for once an aerodrome that is easy to find, as there is a large short wave transmitting station behind it with two tall towers, that can be seen from far away. The picture below shows the runway with the lake behind, as well as the towers in the foreground right. Arrival is via the lake, then overhead past the towers, then an the downwind which is just over the highway, again very easy to follow.

Here a picture when turning onto the final of runway 22. One can see a line of planes parked on the left side, all in all there were more than 70 attending.

My wife was taking the pictures, which allowed me to give all my attention to flying. There is a forest not far in front of the runway, so one passes quite low over the trees.

After landing they sent a Follow Me, in the form of a bicycle!

Here a picture of my plane, parked between a variety of other planes. There were quite a few planes from France, which is not far away (5 km across the lake or 10 km to the west).

Between all the planes parked there I also saw this innovative use of a defunct helicopter. They put the fuselage onto a trailer and installed a bar in it, serving customers through the two sliding doors. Cool.

In the afternoon we tied town the plane, threw the cover on and went to Nyon.

14.08.2011: We had initially planned to fly home later in the afternoon, but the weather was back to what seems to be normal for this summer, with some heavy gusts and rain announced from early in the afternoon to later in the evening (35 kts gusts from 12 to 20 UTC in Zurich). We therefore decided to leave early, to be back in Lommis before noon (there are no landings permitted between 12 and 13:30).

As announced there were already quite some turbulences at lower altitude, but once we had climbed to around 7'500 ft it got all calm, with a steady tail wind of around 30 kts (thanks Dynon for that little wind vector on the screen). The result was a ground speed of around 130 kts in cruise, or an average speed from takeoff to landing counting the straight line of around 106 kts. Maybe I can announce that as a record.

20.08.2011: The second weekend in a row with perfect flying weather, and we were off again for a fly-in. This time it was the annual EAS Experimental Aviation of Switzerland Fly-In, which took place in Yverdon. We decided to for the first time try to take our camping gear, meaning tent, mattresses and sleeping bags, just to see whether the SportCruiser qualifies as a travelling machine.

We quickly discovered that space is no issue, thanks to the wing lockers, and weight was ok too:

empty weight: 369 kg
crew:              150 kg
camping gear    19 kg (no special lightweight stuff, just what we have)
personal bags   10 kg
full fuel              82 kg

Total 630 kg

So that's exactly what is possible with full fuel. We can probably still save quite a few kg by getting lighter weight camping gear, and maybe reduce crew weight a bit, or not use full fuel if we want heavier bags.

Here now some pictures from the trip and the fly-in.

We started the day by flying south over the lake of Zurich, then Lake of Zug (below) and then due west to the VOR Willisau to do some intercept training..

On the way we passed the old medium wave transmitter of Beromünster with it's 215 m tall main antenna tower, which operated at 531 kHz from 1931 to 1998.

I realised that I had read the day before in the newspaper that the second, only 125 m tall tower has been demolished by blowing it up. Below the article from the Thurgauer Zeitung, showing the tower as it fell.

We of course wanted to see the tower, and indeed it was still laying there. The main tower is protected as historical landmark.

We then continued towards Thun, trying to find the village where the family of my wife originally comes from. We tried to find it once on the road many years ago, but it was so foggy that we got lost. I got the coordinates from a map and programmed them into my GPS to be sure it would be the right village.

And here it is, the to the world completely unknown Horrenbach-Buchen.

After that success we continues via Thun,...

...past some impressive bridges towards Fribourg...

with it's old historical centre. My wife lived there when we got to know each other, left of the cathedral near the edge of the picture.

We then continued south toward Yverdon, or rather Yverdon-les-bains as it is officially called, which lies at the southern end of Lake Neuchatel.

There was already quite some traffic in the circuit, but landing was no problem.

After landing we parked the plane and went straight to drink something, as the temperature was already approaching 30 degrees C. Afterwards we went to see the planes that had already arrived. Later in the afternoon I checked the arrival board, and there were 75 planes, including around 15 from abroad. According to the website of the FOCA there are 186 aircraft registered with a HB-Y registration, so attendance was around 1/3 of all registered experimental aircraft, which is not bad.

Below pictures of a few nice and/or special examples.

One of them was the other experimental SportCruiser in Switzerland from Sandro, who flew in from Locarno.

There were a few Europas from the UK, and as they can pick their callsign at random some try to get one with a special meaning.

There was also that strange delta wing that I had already seen at Aero in Friedrichshafen, information about it can be found under http://www.verheesengineering.com/gb/delta.html.

There was also the replica of the first aircraft fully designed and built in Switzerland, a Grandjean 3. The original first flew in 2013, and the replica is built to fly.

Even the engine is a copy of the original, which still exists in the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.

There were also four (!) kit helicopters, I have never before seen as many.

Thomas, the Europa builder I studies with thirty years ago, and I had to take a break in the shadow as it was so hot in the afternoon.

A funny coincidence was that HB-YLN was parked just behind my HB-YNL, which nearly lookes like a mirror image.

There also arrived an Archopterix, a 56 kg (!) foot launched glider. It has a glide angle of 28, which is better than the gliders I flew 35 years ago, and can be flow with the same licence as paragliders.

Here two more pictures of the strange delta wing, just to prove that if indeed flies.

Below my wife on the left together with two other judges. They had to decide which plane is the most elegant, but unfortunately they were not allowed to vote for their own planes...

Here another view of the Archopterix. Even though it is often foot lauched it usually lands on it's wheels (yes, there are even two wheels included in the 56 kg).

It was really hot, and Thomas's Europa has the wings very low, so I offered him one of my wings for shadow...

The field filled more and more, till there was an impressive array of all kinds of kitplanes. There was kind of an open-air feeling, just with engine sound as music.

As nearly everybody else we put up the tent right next to our plane, which meant we did not have to carry the stuff very far.

After tying the plane down we went for the joint evening dinner, which was served in front of one of the hangars. The option to move in due to rain was not taken...

21.08.2011: On Sunday morning I discovered that some guys had decided to sleep on a taxiway not to get the sleeping bags wet...

I preferred the tent. As always the light in the morning was very nice, at least for those who got up early.

The guys from Austria decided at 8 that they want to gas up, so they taxied to the gas station just to realize that they would not open before 9. At least everybody was awake after that exercise....

We went to have breakfast and then decided to fly home early, to be in Lommis before noon. We flew along the Lake of Neuchatel and then more or less along the Jura mountains, passing Zurich CTR on the north side.

This brought us over the Rhine fall, which had quite a lot of water for the time of the year thanks to the rainy weeks of July.

As a summary this was a really nice and relaxing weekend, and the SportCruiser passed the test as a travelling machine.

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