With the ASHTAM still valid, but due to more favourable tropospheric conditions, the Belgium government released an updated NOTAM today, allowing VFR traffic to operate from controlled (and non-controlled) airfields provided that an airborne plane would not fly higher than 4 500 feet in VFR conditions. A perfect match with my flightplan, including some stall & incipient spin manoeuvers @ 3 500 feet as well as level navigation & dead reckoning cruising @ 2 000 feet.
With a GAMET forecasting a 5kts variable wind up to 3000 feet and the vast "blocking high" still "overhead" Europe it promised to be a very relaxing flight. And indeed: the Diamond performed as cutting through soft butter, very easy flying after trimout.
... although the slant visibility was very poor. Let's say the volcanic ashes may have been part of the cause... but I guess the major source will always be us, human polluters down there, pumping a lot of rubbish into the skies!
And about my flight: well, I had proposed the instructor that I would prepare a flight via the Poeke castle (a very beautifull castle in the neighbourhood of Aalter, East-Flanders, to Sint-Laureins, which is a small village near Eeklo, also located in East-Flanders (Belgium) near the Dutch border. With a request to surprise me en route with a dead reckoning navigation to a destination kept secret ("as real as it gets", you know... I keep remember how that was printed on the Microsoft Flight Simulator box that I used to open a lot during my younger years, yet a while ago :-p). And so he did... making a 360 overhead the Poeke castle, my instructor asked me to fly us to Langemark and pass overhead the WOI statute located on a roundabout in Poelkapelle. Langemark - Poelkapelle, that sounded West-Flemish to me so I asked my instructor to take controls and keep us level in a constant bank angle 360. That allowed me to comfortably "unfold" West-Flanders on my huge low air chart and start to look for the mark. Connecting present position & destination I decided to fly heading 250, corrected indeed for... exceptionally... no wind, using my prepared & plotted leg "Torhout-Poeke" as a time reference ruler. And off I went after informing Brussels about our diversion excercise. Passing overhead Roeselare, taking the ring & railway crossing north of Roeselare as a reference, the crosscheck showed we were perfectly on track. As I discovered that we were a little ahead of EET I decreased the engine load a little to speed down to a slightly-less-than-cruising-speed 108 knots. And finally the 360 over Langemark, next overhead the Poelkapelle statute, 11 minutes after start of diversion excercise. 11 minutes from Poeke to Poelkapelle, eat that! ;-)
Last things on my 1h30 VFR-flight wishlist were a few practices of incipient spin (the excercise where you slow the plane down untill it starts its stall-boogiewoogie and force it into a wing drop by stepping on the rudder... off course followed by the ailerons-neutral-rudder-opposite-turn recovery within 300 feet altitude dropping... unless you wanted it to end on the graveyard ;-)). Next there was a simulated engine failure above 1 500 feet, so while slowing the plane down to its 73kts best glide speed I had to recall the engine restart procedure... which I simulated to fail ;) as I definitely wanted to practice my in-the-field-landing-skills. I couldn't resist to a rectangle-darkish-green-freshly-grown-cattle-free field on my front righthand side. The approach was a success and we would certainly have made it if flight rules hadn't been there forbidding a pilot to descend to lower than 500 feet, unless in case of emergency. So, at 550 feet, throttle forward... engines first mumbling then roaring, off we went. To Torhout this time, direction EBOS CTR with a request for landing to Ostend Approach.
With the field in sight they let us switch over to the tower where I requested 1 touch and go and 1 full stop landing. The touch & go in flapless conditions, the full stop on short circuit... and since we were approaching on te 08, of which the holding is very close to the GA Apron... I requested my instructor to perform a simulated engine failure below 300 feet... landing just over threshold & saving fuel and hobbs time... you gotta be smart ;-).
Instructor was happy, student pilot was happy, flight was fantastic. Looking forward to the next mission... which will be a solo flight allowing to prepare for the real stuff coming very near now: the PPL examination! To be continued...
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