Golf Hotel Whiskey

14-hour flight with the new Avidyne R9

By Uwe Nitsche. Uwe Nitsche is founder of the software development company Xgenta Ltd. (www.Xgenta.com)

Last week I had the opportunity to fly the Avidyne R9 demonstrator aircraft (a Cirrus SR22 G3) across Europe. The route took us from Oxford to southern Germany, to Vienna then Budapest and back to Gloucester. With a total time of fourteen hours there was plenty of opportunity to get intimate with the Avidyne’s new avionics system.

Having around 500 hours experience with the Entegra 1 system, I was looking forward to see what the improvements would be like in real life. I had seen the table-top demonstrator unit on two occasions before and came away from that experience with doubts about whether the new system would really be that much better.

Let me tell you that there is a huge difference between the demonstration unit –which does not have a GPS- and the actual aircraft. Looking back on it all it is really hard to imagine the impact on your flying when sitting in front of the demonstrator.

Let me run you through our flight across Europe to give you an impression of what it’s like.

The future of lunar landers (Video)

Armadillo Aerospace lunar lander qualification flight.

Duxford Airshow video

My friend Nick made this great video about our visit to the Duxford Airshow on Saturday. Almost like being there in HD!

Duxford Airshow

I flew in to the Duxford Airshow on Saturday. (See our Duxford airport review.) I’ve always wanted to fly into a show since I was a kid and I used to visit the Farnborough Airshow (by road). The museum is tremendous and the air show was fantastic. We saw a Typhoon, various aerobatic displays, a Hunter, the Red Arrows and a mock dogfight with four Spitfires (four!), a Hurricane and an ME109. The best bit was on departure when we were queuing for our turn to take off. ATC said to the plane at the head of the queue “After the landing B17, line up…” How cool is that!

Many Spitfires

A beautiful Beech Staggerwing

Sally B – a still-flying B17

An F86 Sabre after its display

The Red Arrows doing their thing (Ahhh, Concorde)

Geneva to Palma by Piper

It was a clear blue sky over a clear blue sea, and we were cruising at 130kts, Palma de Mallorca beckoning, and all was well with the world.

We had departed from Montpellier Candillargues an hour earlier, our Piper Dakota fully fueled with 72 gallons of Avgas, yellow life vests over us, and a life raft that was somewhat uselessly stored in the luggage compartment. We had been handed over from Marseille Information to Barcelona, and for a while there was only silence on the radio, and we were contemplating the beautiful scenery and how incredibly privileged we were.

Montpellier Candillargues airport

Jeppesen FlightStar and JeppView

I use FlightStar and JeppView to plan my trips. The software is easy to learn, although there are some power user features that take more time and parts of the interface are idiosyncratic. With the optional weather downloads and JeppView software, you can set up an aircraft, plan a route and print out a complete trip kit with approach plates, enroute charts and pilot log.

It can display Jeppesen-style VFR charts and airways. You can also view VFR plates for airports and IFR approach plates. These charts are updated automatically over the internet. It’s powerful stuff and good enough for a corporate flight department. The only downside is the price. For the IFR version with European charts, it costs me around €1700 a year.

Cheaper (possibly free) alternatives include Autoplan IFR for planning airways trips and Tony Griffiths’s Cross-wind, which is a comprehensive VFR flight planning program.

Jeppesen FlightStar airways

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts