CS Aviation

Now that I’ve got my route and marked it onto my charts lightly and in pencil (the Jeppessen and French 1:1,000,000 charts aren’t laminated!), it’s time to take a close look at the airspace through which I’ll be flying. Those who have looked at a French chart will know that the country is littered with restricted zones for low-level military flying. Negotiating these was, by far, my biggest apprehension before my first trip through France. However, once you look closely at the details of these zones, you will quickly realise that they needn’t worry you. Each zone is numbered (shown below), and it’s details can be looked up in the suppliment booklet which comes with the Documents VFR.

You will find, firstly, that most of the restricted zones are very low level and flying over them isn’t a problem and secondly, that they are only open for a few hours of a few days per week, not including weekends.

If your French isn’t brilliant, an online translator might come in handy now as, although much of the information included in the Documents VFR is not translated into English. However, once you’ve translated the details for one zone, you’ll find that you can work out the others fairly easily.

I tend to think that, here in the UK, we’re spoilt with having fairly good charts (well you’d hope so at nearly £15 for a piece of paper). When flying abroad, one thing which I’ve found a lot of people have trouble with is getting to grips with foreign charts. They can be poorly laid out, in a foreign language or not display the level of detail to which you’ve become accustomed.

For longer trips which cover a number of different countries, I’d suggest using the Jeppessen charts as they’ll often allow you to conduct your entire flight without having to change chart formats. As far as France goes, you can take your choice between the Jepp charts and those published by the French CAA. I prefer the Jepp charts but that’s just a personal preference. It is, however, extremely important that you understand and familiarise yourself with the format before you even start planning your flight. For example, the official French 1:500,000 charts do not show any airspace above 5000 ft. Certainly not something you’d want to find out in the air.

Along with which ever set of half mil charts you end up using, I’d seriously consider buying the Documents VFR, pictured below, which is a collation by the French of everything you need to fly in their airspace.

The pack includes two 1:1,000,000 charts, one for northern France and one for the South, it also includes two booklets which give full information of all controlled airspace, restricted areas, danger areas and other such things you need to be aware of. It also contains information regarding filing flight plans and VFR rules. The charts don’t have a huge amount of detail at that scale but they show all navaids and also show airways routes (which are Class E and can be flown VFR in France). As I’ll cover later in greater detail, France is riddled with low-level military flow flying areas whose details you need to be fully aware of before you fly through them. The Documents VFR will give you these.

My personal preference is to plan on the 1:1,000,000 charts check the route on the 1:500,000 Jepp charts and amend the route if necessary. I’ll then fly the route on the 1:1000,000 while I keep the half mil on the floor, just in case i need it.

Very early on in my flying career I was told that the best route you can take is a straight line between your starting point and your destination. This is, after all, one of the fundamental advantages of traveling by air. From there you can refine your route for various reasons. For example, if you can’t reasonably get high enough to avoid class A airspace, avoiding danger areas and restricted areas and avoiding water crossings which you wouldn’t be comfortable with.

With this in mind, I can select my preliminary route of Elstree - La Rochelle. This has a few flaws in it, the first being the need to go round Heathrow’s class A airspace. The most sensible option would be to route round to the West. However, this would mean crossing the Channel at one of its wider points which I’m not comfortable with, as I mentioned before, so I’ll elect to route via the East of London and cross the Channel near Dover. This puts the first kink in the route and I’d probably route to the Dover VOR (DVR) using the Lambourne VOR (LAM) at Stapleford as a turning point. I’ll also plan a turning point DEVAL into the route. This is an arbitrary point at the FIR boundary between Dover and Cap Gris-Nez which I tend to include as it is convenient for use in the flight plan. From there I’ll route to the Boulogne VOR (BNE) as my turning point for the French side of the water crossing. This gives us the following route:

Many of you, by now, will be thinking that flying in straight lines is all good and well but flying visually isn’t so practical without regular turning points. The flight will be VFR although I’m blessed with a good GPS which really helps to make this sort of flying easier. I’ve tended to use VORs as turning points as they are abundant in this part of the word and also reliably programmed into most GPS units so that entering your route remains relatively trivial. More importantly, should the GPS fail, flying navaid to navaid will mean your route doesn’t need to be altered in the air to make navigation easier. Of course coupled with this, there will be plenty of points along the route at which you will be able to fix your position visually so the chances of getting lost are minimised.

Between BNE and La Rochelle there isn’t really anything to avoid, just plenty to be aware of. However, due to wanting to fly VOR to VOR, I’ll add a few more kinks into my route. They don’t change it drastically. In fact, they probably only add on about 5 minutes to the total flying time. This gives us the route shown below:

Now that I have a rough idea of the route, I can start to look closely at the charts and see what I’ll have to be aware of. This includes things such as controlled airspace, military flying zones, danger areas and restricted areas.

Following my last (and first) major trip in 2006 to Barcelona, I’m very eager to get back in the touring saddle and make a flight of a similar scale. That said, looking at my options, although I would like to fly to as far away a place as Barcelona, I think it’ll have to be a little later in the year. For the moment, I’m setting my sights on a destination closer to home. I’ve settled on La Rochelle purely because it’s somewhere I’ve been wanting to visit and the terrain between here and there is relatively benign.

I’d like to take this opportunity to provide a plug for a website called http://fly.dsc.net. This is essentially a flight planning website which, for your average VFR flight, can easily cater for your flight planning needs and then some. It’s all online and free. It comes with the disclaimer that any information provided is unofficial and should be checked against official sources. That said, I’ve found it an invaluable tool for coming up with preliminary routes and getting estimates of distances, times and fuel required.

Having chosen my destination, I think the next thing one must consider is what the scale of the flight is. I mean this irrespective of distance so I’m thinking about aspects such as length of water crossings, whether mountains need to be crossed and whether large, uninhabited areas need to be crossed. The provisions needed for a flight to Iceland are very different from those for a flight to Casablanca!

Firstly let’s look at water crossings. The most direct route to La Rochelle would take me over a fairly wide part of the English Channel which, although a perfectly valid route to take, lies outside my comfort boundaries, so I will cross the Channel between Dover and Cap Gris Nez. Due to the shortness of the water crossing, I’m comfortable making it with only life jackets and not bothering with a life raft or immersion suits. Again, this is a personal opinion based on what I’m comfortable with and I’m sure other pilots will take different views.

Next the issue of terrain. There are no significant hills, mountains or largely uninhabited areas between Elstree and La Rochelle so I’ll be happy not carrying a PLB and relying on the aircraft radio and the fitted ELT should the worst happen.

Thinking about these, apart from the greater distance, there isn’t actually that much difference between this flight and your average local bimble. Unless you’re planning to fly to one of the hand full of French Only aerodromes, the journey can be conducted entirely in English so the language barrier needn’t be an issue either. Apart from life jackets, the only other thing I would suggest carrying is a decent supply of water. Just don’t drink it all at the beginning of the flight! Of course, you’ll also need to carry a number of documents which you wouldn’t usually need. It is worth noting that of these, one is the insurance certificate which a number of countries will require translated into their language, Spain is one of these. It is worth checking with your insurer before you set off as they’ll be able to advise you of any such requirements.

Hello and welcome to my new blog. I’ve got the subject matter of my first series of posts ready and full of exciting facts for the pedants amongst you to tear to bits. I’m going to keep it under wraps for the moment whilst I get to grips with my new blogging software and instead, I’ll tell you a bit about myself.

I’m a 20 year old civil engineering undergraduate in London. I’m in the forunate position that, having started to learn to fly at the tender age of 14, I now hold a private pilots license and own a share in my lovely aircraft, G-LEAM, a 1979 Piper Dakota (236hp version). I’ve been flying G-LEAM since last summer and although I can’t help but miss my old Grumman Tiger, I’ve enjoyed every hour in the air and can’t wait for the next. I’ll post pictures in due course although I’m sure that the seasoned professionals amongst you will probably have tracked down photos from the internet before you finish reading this post.

I hope you enjoy the posts to come and look forward to writing them.