Category Archives: Aerospace & Defence

August 9, 2012 · 8:00 am

Flying to Corsica (3/3)

This post is the third one of a series describing our flight from Toulouse-Lasbordes to Corsica and back. I recommend to read beforehand the first and second posts of the series.

I dedicated a single post to cover each of the 2 flights that took us to Propriano airfield. I will include in this single post some comments and pictures corresponding to the 3 flights that we needed on the way back to Toulouse.

Flight 3 (Asier at the controls): Propriano – Bonifacio – Porto Vecchio – Figari

This first flight had 2 purposes: to go to another airport in Corsica where we could refuel the aircraft (Propriano did not have gas station) and to perform a sight-seeing flight around the island. If the weather had permitted it, Jean Louis would have taken us over the mountains. The weather did not permit so, thus we flew over the coast.

Leaving Propriano.

“Torra di Campomoru” at Calanova.

Quiet beach south of Tralicetu.

Far sight of the commercial airport of Figari.

Approaching Bonifacio.

I have many other beautiful pictures of Bonifacio, but I believe I will soon write a post entirely dedicated to it. So I can give you a view of the city from the land, air and sea.

Southernmost point of Corsica.

Villas at Sperono.

Flight 4 (Asier at the controls): Figari – Propriano – Ajaccio – Saint Tropez – Avignon – Alès

Having refueled the aircraft at Figari, we commenced our return flight to mainland France, by first bordering again Corsican coast.

Propriano airfield.

Ajaccio port.

Some hours later…

Pope’s palace in Avignon.

Rhone river at Avignon.

Alès.

Flight 5 (Javier at the controls): Alès – … Millau… – Montpellier – Béziers – Carcassone – Toulouse Lasbordes

Our original plan was to fly over Millau to see its viaduct (you may see a picture of it in this post about the 100km of Millau). However the weather was quite bad in the mountains between Alès and Millau and we had to change on the spot our plans. Luckily I was flying with Jean Louis who helped me in the preparation of the new route and in buying some time while he was taking the controls.

Change of plans due to the bad weather in the mountains, heading south to the coastline, re-calculating the route.

Avoiding further problems ahead (close to Sète).

Mission accomplished :-).

I guess that after seeing these 3 posts you may appreciate the beauty of learning to fly.

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August 7, 2012 · 8:00 am

Flying to Corsica (2/3)

This post is a continuation to a previous post in which I described the first leg of our flight from Toulouse-Lasbordes to Corsica. If you haven’t yet taken a look at that one, I would recommend you to do so, as you would miss basic information and dozens of beautiful pictures of the French Mediterranean coast.

In the previous post I included images up until Cuers. There we refueled the aircraft and I took the controls of the aircraft, with Jean Louis (Asier‘s flight instructor) always by our side. This time Asier took the pictures.

Flight 2 (Javier at the controls): Cuers – Saint Tropez – Corsica – Sanguinary islands – Ajaccio – Propriano

Some curiosities about flying over the sea:

  • the distinction in the horizon between “land” and sky wasn’t very clear thus it was very important to pay attention to the instruments in order not to lose references and keep a horizontal straight trajectory;
  • as we progressed we always tried to spot ships down in the sea so in case of accident we would try to reach as close as possible to them, Jean Louis would do a water landing and we could be easily rescued;
  • we needed to increase altitude up to flight level FL55 (5,500 feet -~1,700m- vs. about 700ft that we held at some times of the first flight along the coast) so we could keep receiving the signals from VOR on ground at the coasts.

First sight of Corsica: Piana.

Flying around the Corsican coastline: Cargèse.

Notice Jean Louis (the instructor) with the life vest on.

Cemetery of Ajaccio, looking like a village.

Jean Louis & me, at Propriano airfield.

The aircraft, a DR-44, put to rest for the weekend at the airfield.

Since we are normally flying within continental France we are not required to produce a flight plan for the air traffic control. This time as we wanted to cross over the sea to Corsica it was required to do so. Thus, this was the first time we prepared one (another learning point!).

“Olivia”, French site where to file a flight plan.

One remark: it is incredible how much eases the communication with air traffic controllers having sent the flight plan beforehand, as they expect you and they know beforehand more or less the information you are going to provide.

And so we made it! We flew from Toulouse to Corsica 🙂

It took us about 4h30′ of flying time (both flights combined). You may check the Garmin records of the first and second flights by clicking on the links, and the route we followed in this second flight in the picture below:

Even though I have mentioned above that we had planned for the contingency of having to water-land in the sea, the fact that the trajectory in the Garmin records stops at half way through Corsica in the middle of the sea does not mean that we indeed carried out such maneuver. Explanation: since we flew so many kilometers as compared to running (the normal use I give to the device), the memory of the GPS reached its maximum as it recorded one “lap” for every kilometer…

(to be continued…)

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August 5, 2012 · 11:00 am

Flying to Corsica (1/3)

About 3 months ago, my colleague Asier and I went together with his instructor, Jean Louis, to Corsica for a weekend fly out, an activity of our club the Airbus’ Aviation Society.

The experience was terrific in several ways. I learnt a lot about flying and navigation the days prior to the fly out and during the trip. The views along the way by southern coastal France were superb. We enjoyed good weather despite of what had been announced and even found time to do some tourism and trekking in the island. But let’s go back to the flight.

On the way to Corsica, we made one stop at Cuers to refuel the aircraft and change pilot. Asier would start from Toulouse and I would continue to Corsica. On the way back, Asier would fly over the sea all the way to Alès and I would fly over Millau on the way to Toulouse.

I’ll try to be brief with the explanations and generous with the pictures to give you a flavour of how the French Mediterranean coast looks like. Because of the number of pitures I want to share, I will distribute them in 3 different blog posts, starting with this one dedicated to the first flight.

Flight 1 (Asier at the controls): Toulouse Lasbordes – Carcassone – Narbonne – Sète – Montpellier – Saintes Maries de la Mer – Fos-sur-Mer – Marseille – Cassis – Le Castellet – Toulon – Cuers

I encourage you to take a look at a map of France coast at the same time you are watching the pictures and try to identify the places (you may see the route at the bottom of the post as recorded by my Garmin).

See the life vests (yellow bags) at hand in case of emergency ready at hand. Jean Louis would have his vest always on. In case of emergency he would take the control buying us time to get ours on.

Carcassone from the North.

Narbonne from the North.

Coastline at Cape de Adge.

Peninsula at Étand de Thau.

Seafood plantation at Étand de Thau.

Ville de Sète.

Frontignan.

The touristic village “La grande Motte” built in the ‘60s and ‘70s with its characteristic architecture with forms resembling pyramids.

The intricate Port-Camargue, one of the first “pleasure ports” in Europe, also from the ‘60s.

Closed ponds at the mouth of the Rhone.

Bull fighting arena at Saintes Maries de la Mer.

Sands at Lagunes de Beauduc (with its non-paved driveway).

Lighthouse at Lagunes de Beauduc.

Colourful salt flats at Salins du Giraud.

Ships departing from the industrial hub Fos-sur-Mer.

Marseille and “Les Îles”.

Les Goudes and “Les Îles” (past Marseille).

Natural reservation of the “Île de Riou“.

Ideal and quiet spot at Calanque de Sormiu.

Former F1 “Paul Ricard” racing circuit and aerodrome at Le Castellet.

Military port at Toulon (an aircraft carrier can be seen).

Asier after having flown 2h30′ hours posing side by side our Robin DR-44.

You may check the Garmin records of this first flight by clicking on the link and the route we followed in the picture below:

(to be continued…)

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July 27, 2012 · 8:00 am

Sorry, we missed the runway

I am sure that you have lived awkward situations in a flight. Miscommunications between the crew and passengers or funny messages received from the cockpit. That is precisely the topic of a book I read some months ago.

Sorry, we missed the runway

The book originated after a collection of anecdotes posted by readers of the online version of Der Spiegel. Seeing the success of the initiative, the authors, Stephan Orth and Antje Blinda, decided to launch the book with the original German title “Sorry, wir haben die Landebahn verfehlt” (in French “Désolé, nous avons raté la piste”, which is the version I read).

To be honest, what I was looking for it was more a book about serious incidents or accidents, in order to learn about things not to do as a learning activity towards my private pilot licence. Once I started and saw what it was really about I went on for the fun of it (plus the French learning component).

Among the anecdotes, curiosities and messages accounted:

  • the 747 City of Edinburgh which temporarily lost all 4 engines over Indonesia due to volcano smoke (“We have a small problem. The 4 engines of our aircraft have stopped. We’ll do everything possible to regain control. We hope you’re not very nervous” – they recovered control of 3 engines),
  • “if you forget anything aboard the airplane you’ll be able to find it tomorrow on eBay” (on a flight Orlando-Sacramento),
  • despite intuition: chances of surviving an aircraft accident are 70% (in fact, my economy and business administration teacher at the aerospace engineering school had survived 2 accidents!),
  • (after a heavy landing) “dear Sirs and Madams, please be seated until the captain finishes bringing what is left from the airplane to parking position”,
  • the following near crash of a A320 in Hamburg due to heavy cross wind and a sudden gust,

I guess that you can get a grasp of the book, though you can read the same stories in the link of Der Spiegel above. Finally, the book includes several sources and proposal further readings, among them: 1001crash.com, which I guess it is more the kind of reading I was originally looking for.

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July 21, 2012 · 8:00 am

A380 & Patrouille de France in Blagnac for the Tour de France

Yesterday (July 20th 2012) the Tour de France departed from Blagnac, the village close to Toulouse which hosts Airbus HQ. In a place wich such an aeronautical tradition what better way to start the race than with an aerial exhibition: the A380 in formation flight with the Patrouille de France (Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet).

This post is just to share the short video I took from the office (comments in French by my colleague Sylvain):

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May 26, 2012 · 9:00 am

Flight destination: Corsica

I often use a version of Eleanor Rooselvet‘s famous quote “do one thing that scares you everyday“. It’s not that I try to do something that scares me, but something which either brings me out of the comfort zone or that I simply would tend to procrastinate.

Today’s scary thing is flying together with my friend Asier and his flight instructor, Jean-Louis, to Corsica. Prior to taking the decision of joining this “adventure” about 2 months ago, I had barely made 10 flights amounting to less than 8 flight hours… in the last week I was learning with my instructor, Thierry, the basics of flight navigation, the use of charts in flight, the use of VOR, etc., in order to profit the most from this experience. It definitely feels less scary now. And then, I’ll always have Jean-Louis by my side at the time of piloting the airplane. I’m happy to be stretching the comfort zone.

In the previous days I also learnt a lot with Asier on how to plan the route, noting headings, altitudes, radio frequencies, air spaces, aerodromes, etc.

Planning the flight to Corsica.

The head of the MBA I studied in Seville used to describe it as a “experiences accelerator”; in the context of flying this trip to Corsica (a group activity of the Airbus Aviation Society I belong to) really feels like such an experience accelerator.

If everything goes well, we’ll be in Propriano (LFKO) before 15:00. Then we could have one or two days of visiting the island, either by car… or by plane. Ajaccio, where Napoleon was born; Bonifacio; the dolmens close to Ajaccio… I’ll keep you updated when we’re back :-).

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April 24, 2012 · 8:00 am

Aerogeek dentist

Some time ago I wrote about the impact of Airbus in the employment in the Toulouse area. Some weeks ago I went to a dentist in Blagnac, a village close to Toulouse (where Airbus is in fact based). There I could see how Airbus is impacting Toulouse area in other ways. I then tweeted the following with the picture below attached:

https://twitter.com/#!/javierirastorza/status/185795207676182530

Waiting room seats.

What I missed in that first visit was the geek details of the cloth covers of the seats. Take a closer look in the pictures below…

"Briteeth" Airways.

"Lufthanzahn".

Definitely, my dentist must be another aerogeek.

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March 29, 2012 · 8:00 am

Radial engine

I found myself thinking back in the National Air & Space Museum recently. Firstly, because a friend announced that she had just visited it and secondly because yesterday we oversaw  reciprocating engines at the class of the theoretical course for the private pilot licence.

The class itself was not telling nothing completely new, but it reminded me that I had a video of a demo of a radial engine recorded last year at the NASM in Dulles. I filmed it in order to upload it at some point… here it is:

For those not initiated, you may find how reciprocating engines work here, and more specifically how radial reciprocating engines work here.

I’ll never get tired of praising the Smithsonian institution.

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March 19, 2012 · 8:00 am

Landing at a car racing circuit

Albi is small city close to Toulouse. It is mainly famous for its UNESCO World Heritage Site Cathedral Sainte Cécile and the museum of the painter Toulouse-Lautrec. I had been there twice, but I hadn’t yet written a post about the city. Today I’ll write about another special feature it has.

In Albi there is a car racing circuit. I have a colleague who likes cars, motor-bikes and has been already using that circuit in one of its open days.

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the stall exercises we performed in last Saturday’s flight lesson.

Let me connect the dots. On Saturday, while having lunch, our colleague told us that the circuit in Albi was having an open day that precise day. He encouraged us to propose to our instructor to fly to Albi. And here comes the catch: “Why?” Because the aerodrome of Albi, our colleague explained to us, is embedded in the car racing circuit!

We gave it a try, demanded our instructor to go to Albi and succeeded. See below the flight path recorded with my Garmin:

Flight route Toulouse Lasbordes (LFCL) - Albi (LFCI).

In the following screenshot of the Visual Approach Chart (carte VAC) you may see how when the circuit IS active the runway of the aerodrome is shortened as the circuit crosses the runway! (You may download the chart here, PDF, 360KB).

Visual Approach Chart (VAC) for Albi aerodrome when the car racing circuit is active.

You may see it better below, in the Google maps view, how the circuit intersects the runway:

Albi car racing circuit and aerdrome.

Finally, enjoy the video of the final approach of our flight. If you pay attention to it, you’ll notice the cars racing in the circuit while we are approaching and how we are in fact touching down only within the allowable space when the circuit is active:

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March 18, 2012 · 12:00 pm

Stall exercise

Yesterday, I wrote about a documentary on the AF447 accident. Within the video, a flight instructor performs a real stall exercises and he mentions that this is taught in the first lectures of flight instruction.

As I mentioned in the post, I learnt about the documentary while having lunch with 2 colleagues. I was telling them “I’d like to perform those stall exercises to see what feeling does your body have and how you instinctively react to it and how you have to consciously correct that reaction”.  As the old adage goes “be careful what you wish for ’cause you might get it”.

After lunch, we headed to the aeroclub to have our class. Thierry, our instructor, opened by asking whether we had seen that documentary we had been talking about. Then, he mentioned “let’s do today stall exercises!” 🙂

Shortly, from the Wikipedia:

[…] a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded. […]
Stalls in fixed-wing flight are often experienced as a sudden reduction in lift as the pilot increases angle of attack and exceeds the critical angle of attack […].

The theory of the exercise was easy: fly up to 3,000 ft, reduce the power of the engine down to idle, try to keep the altitude by pulling the stick backwards (nosing up), keep pulling the stick backwards when the stall alarm sounds off, wait until the aircraft starts buffeting, cannot maintain altitude and falls off… then push a little the stick (nose down), recover speed (above stall speed), start nosing up again while increasing power up to max rpm, get to 3,000 ft again. Easy.

The practice… well, my colleague was doing his exercises first while I was sitting at the back. I went from being warm due to the sunny weather to feeling uneasy to experiencing this cold sweat…

You may see the video below with one of the stall exercises performed by my colleague. You’ll notice the stall alarm (in this case it is just an alarm, not a voice saying “stall”):

Apologies for 1) bad quality of the video performed by my not-so-smartphone and 2) for not having recorded a video of my own stall exercises… I was too stressed with them 🙂

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Note: For the record, in the documentary it is mentioned that pupils get to practice stall in their first lessons. Yesterday’s was my 10th flight in order to obtain the PPL (private pilot licence), up to then I had completed just slightly above 6 flight hours.

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