Excellent Nicolas,
Looks like you had a great time.
Best !
Daryl
From: "Nicolas Neuss" <neuss@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: taifun17e@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2022 10:33:58 AM
Subject: [taifun17e] Re: Traveling with the D-KJTN (4-2)
[...]
Arriving in Lido I decided to stay there because it was already late. Looking
for a room I noticed that only a few rather expensive rooms were available,
because it was the last day of the Venice film festival. Thus, I only got one
for 155 EUR. However, I think that it does not make much sense trying to save
money at such points. There are a lot of things summing up to considerable
higher amounts when flying an own aircraft, and because of the uncertainty of
the weather it is not very reasonable to book cheap hotels weeks before a trip.
Anyway, the location of my hotel was very central, and of a very high standard.
In the evening I made bicycle tour around Lido, tried to swim at the public
beach (bad idea, I got very fast stinged by jellyfish), and then had a good
dinner in an almost empty restaurant (most people were in the cinema).
[image/jpeg:IMG_20220910_203647418-small.jpg]
In the next morning (Sunday, 11.9), I had a wonderful breakfast in the garden
of my hotel. It felt almost like paradise. Then I went for the airport. First,
I had planned to make another stop now at Como (LILY) or at Alzate Brianza
(LILB), but somehow both airports are not really for public use and I did not
get permission to land there (what the precise problem was with Como I still do
not know, but Alzate-Brianza is apparently an airport which is mostly for
gliding). So I decided to fly directly to Biberach/EDMB. This flight was again
really interesting: Take-off time was 1050 UTC, and then I flew over Northern
Italy until Lake Garda. I had intended to fly west to Lake Como and only from
there north to the Spluegenpass, but over Lake Garda I got the impression that
the cloud bases were rising with the mountains and that a shortcut should be
possible. Indeed that turned out to be a good decision. The cloud bases rose
and rose (I could again use some very strong thermal upwinds to follow them)
and were over the main chain of the Alpes at FL100-FL110. At these heights
there is no problem in crossing the Alpes which I did north of Sondrio (LILO).
[image/jpeg:DSC03315-small.JPG]
[image/jpeg:DSC03318-small.JPG]
[image/jpeg:DSC03319-small.JPG]
[image/jpeg:DSC03320-small.JPG]
[image/jpeg:DSC03322-small.JPG]
After the main chain, I flew over Chur and Bad Ragaz to Lake Constance (losing
height in sync with the cloud base), and finally arrived in Biberach/EDMB at
13:34 UTC. In Biberach, there was a "Flugplatzfest" this day, and a very good
photographer from the Sportfliegerclub Stuttgart, Wolfgang Kizler, was visiting
it. He made a nice photo of the Taifun and me during our landing which you can
see here. He gave me permission to share it and I attach it here in a bit
higher resolution than the rest of my pictures, because I find the sharpness
and quality impressive (although I could not use the highest resolution because
of the size limit of the mailing list server):
[image/jpeg:_MGL2791-small.JPG]
What is my resume and outlook? It was a memorable experience, the memories will
surely help keeping my spirits up during the winter. I hope that the stupidity
of our politicians is not so large that they turn this winter into a war winter
also for us in the EU. If they do not and the situation remains under control
here, then starting from spring 2023 Croatia will also be in the Schengen zone
and direct flights to Medulin and also airports in South Croatia will become
possible. It might even happen, that Romania and Bulgaria enter Schengen as
well, which would open up comfortable possibilities for flights still further
to the east. It is quite sure that I will then make use of both these
opportunities in the following years.
I hope you enjoyed this report.
Best regards,
Nicolas
