Scillies

On april 14th 2006 Manfred Garben and Urs Gerigk and the Taifun D-KKGG arrived at Geilenkirchen NATO-base to meet Henk Dumont and Erich Döbler with the Taifun D-KFDI. Their goal: The Scilly Islands.
D-KKGG started that morning from Oehna (EDBO) near Berlin (Germany), made a short stop at Bielenfeld and arrived around 14.30 local time at Geilenkrchen.

Because weather conditions at the English Channel were not good enough to enjoy a crossing of what the French call "la manche", the two Taifuns set course for airport "Midden Zeeland" (EHMZ) in the Western part of the Netherlands..
In 6 days they will have returned and in some weeks we hope to bring you a nice flight report from this trip.
For now we leave you with some pictorial impressions of the start of the trip.

See you soon!

What shall we do? Go for the English coast today, or stay on this side of the Channel?
From left to right: Manfred, Urs, Erich and Henk.

April 15th 2006 (Sat)

EHMZ webcam image on Saturday morning, April 15th (Source: Osair website)
No sunshine on the Dutch coast !

Radar image made on the same morning.
No sunshine above the English Channel !

The weather at Lydd airport, Kent England (Source: Lydd Aeroclub website)
Dry but again no sunshine, sniff !
We have to visit Lydd because of customs, but our destination today is Compton Abbas airfield (EGHA),
where our English Taifun-friend is waiting.

After checking the weather forecasts, we decide to fly to Calais (France) and stay there, hoping that tomorrow the weather will be better so we can cross the Channel.

April 16th 2006 (Sun)

Though today is SUNday, there's no sun available at all!
We decide to cross the Channel and skip the landing at Compton because of the wet grassy landing strip.
Since our Taifuns are fully loaded we're afraid it will get very difficult to depart from this airfield.
Instead we cross the Channel (and during this crossing we have seen no sun above, but no water below either!) and fly to Shoreham to meet our friend Bob Kent on the airport (EGKA).

In case our wives won't believe we only reached Shoreham so far, here's the evidence.
It's the list of visiting aircrafts on Sunday April 15th 2006.
This list (and other info) can be found on Bob's website.

Of course our wives could think Bob is on our side, so, we present another testimony of our landing, as shown on the official EGKA website.

See! We landed at 11:29 and 11:32 local time.

Above: images of D-KKGG and D-KFDI departing from Shoreham airport.
Images shot by our English friend Bob Kent (Thanks Bob!).

Because today is Easter Sunday, and the airport at the Scilly Isles is closed, we flew to Exeter airport (EGTE) to spend the night over there.
Tomorrow we hope to see the sun and the Scillies of course !

As the weatherforecasts are now, it should stay dry with a little bit of sun.
Maybe we can see Cornwall's pride and joy out of the air: the Merry Maidens stone circle.

Merry Maidens as we hope to see.
It's a 24 meter wide circle of stones some 4 miles Southwest of the town of Penzance.
There's a legend that says that 19 maidens were turned into stone because they were dancing on a Sunday.

April 17th 2006 (Mon)

Can you believe this?
There's sun on the Scilly Islands !!!
Let's go for it.

Departed from Exeter at 11 o'clock local time, with beautiful skies (CAVOK), we flew over Land's End with good views and arrived at St. Mary's airport (EGHE) on the Scillies at 12.40 local time.
It's beautiful around here and the weather is nice too, as you can see on the webcamimage (below) of scillywebcam.com

Official flag of the Scillies
also called the "Old Smiley".

The motto on the flag is the motto of the Council of the Islands: "Semper Eadem" which means 'always the same'.
The logo on the flag has the Bishop Lighthouse in the centre, with Star Castle, an old listed building on the Islands, in the top left of the elipse and a daffodil in the top right, one of the most synomonous flowers to the Islands.
The logo is based on the chain worn by the Chairman of the Council.

The flag is nicknamed "Old Smiley" because of it's similarities to a smiling face when observed from a distance.

Because weatherforecasts for the end of the week are not very good, we are thinking about flying to France tomorrow.
The Scilly Islands resemble the Pacific very much, the only difference is that there's a lot more Guinness around here!

See, your webmaster can spot you everywhere. This is the trace you left behind some minutes ago in your website's statistics.

Isles of Scilly and Guernsey with the Southwestern part of England.
When flown in a straight line, the total distance St. Mary's-Guernsey covers about 300 kilometers.

Unlike many countries Guernsey has not delegated money-creation to the central bank and has instead issued interest-free money since 1816. As a result the government has not had to use increasing amounts of tax revenue to repay debt to the central bank, which has lead to low income tax rates, no goods and services tax and no capital gains tax.
Guernsey issues its own coinage and banknotes. The Guernsey Pound is at par with the British pound. Jersey currency, UK coinage and English and Scottish banknotes also circulate freely and are accepted interchangeably.
Both the Guernsey Post post boxes and the telephone boxes are painted blue, but otherwise are identical to their British counterparts, the red pillar box and red telephone box.

For more info on Guernsey, please visit the official Guernsey Channel Islands Tourist Board website.
Their site is available in English, French and German language!

Tomorrow we will fly from Guernsey (upper right corner of the map) to
Belle-Ile France (down in the middle). In a straight line a little less than 250 km.

Belle-Ile (full name Belle-Ile-en-Mer) has got as small airfield (LFEA, bitumen 660 m x 25 m).
It's got its own aeroclub called "Charles Robin" which has its own website (available in French language only).

Tommorow we will let you know more on our flight, but don't expect any info before 18.30 UTC, because our webmaster's short easter-holiday will have terminated by then. Poor guy!

Belle-Ile-en-Mer , our destination today.
Our webmaster received a short message at 19.00 hours MEST from Henk's wife, confirming that we have landed on Belle-Ile-en-Mer aeroport (LFEA). The weather is still fine, but predictions for tomorrow don't sound superb.
There is a large possibility that the flight will go North from here.

The airport we landed is situated about 1.5 km Northwest of Bangor, so we will probably have to take a taxi to get to Le Palais, the isle's main town. However, also in Bangor there are several hotels to go to by foot from the airport.
If you like to visit the island and want to find a place to sleep in advance, or you want to see some pictures and can't wait until you've seen ours, please check out this website.
Of course they have got a Tourist Information Center too.

Belle-Ile-en-Mer (which can be translated as "beautiful island in the sea") and its 4 communes Sauzon (pop. 870), Le Palais (pop. 2540), Bangor (pop. 750) and Locmaria (pop. 720) form the canton of Belle-Ile, situated in the département of Morbihan.
The name of the island in local (breton) language "Enez ar Gerveur" can be translated as "the island of the citadelle", meaning the citadelle of Vauban, which you can see on one of the pictures below.
During the summer the island's population increases dramatically, with many people owning a second home on the island, because of its secluded location and beaches.

Situated in Bangor, Le Grand Phare is one of the finest lighthouses on the coast of France. It was built in 1935. Its Granite base rises to 47 m and the total height is some 84 m above the sea. The light is emitted every 3 seconds and every 7 seconds and can be seen up to 28 miles out to sea.

Harbour of Sauzon, image taken during high tide.

Unfortunately our webmaster doesn't have a picture of Locmaria (breton for "a place devoted to Maria")
but if you have a broadband connection, we surely advise you to look at this 6 minute movie (2,49 Mb),
as can be found on the site of the commune of Locmaria.

Le Palais, the largest town of the island.

On the left you can see a part of the citadelle Vauban, situated near the harbour of Le Palais.
Vauban (1633-1707) was the foremost military engineer of his time.
He upgraded the existing fortifications of around 300 cities and directed the building of 37 new ones.

If you're an art lover and think: "Belle-Ile, where did I hear that name before", you probably are right.
Belle-Ile is the island of which the famous French impressionist painter Claude Monet painted several cliffs and rocks.

Claude Monet Cliffs at Belle-Ile. 1886. Oil on canvas.
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia.
In the lower right corner a picture of the cliffs anno 2006.
The cliffs are named "Les aiguilles de Port Coton" (see map above), Monet painted them 36 times!

Weather prediction for this evening.
Belle Ile is just in between bad and good flying weather.

Update 22.00 hours MEST. We received a phonecall from our webmaster, just as we were enjoying a delicious dinner at the Hotel du Phare at the Quay Guerveur in Sauzon, the most Northern town on the island.
It's a very charming, small and acceptably priced hotel with some 14 rooms. They have even got their on weblog!
Today we departed from Guernsey around 11 o'clock towards the French mainland and after that Southward along the coast. We've seen the famous island of Mont Saint Michel and made a fuel-stop at Dinard airport (LFRD) some miles west of St. Malo. After that we crossed the mainland of Bretagne and around 16.00 hrs local time we landed at Belle-Ile airport.
Tomorrow we will try to fly back home to Geilenkirchen (ETNG) because the weather here will be deteriorating quickly. It will be a long flight, somewhere about 700 kilometers.

Hotel restaurant du Phare in Sauzon.
"Phare" means "lighthouse" and on the picture you can see why it's called this way.

In the next weeks we will prepare a detailed flight report with several pictures we made during the trip.

Today we will attempt to reach Henk's homebase Geilenkirchen.

The weather this morning at 8.30 local time.
It seems that about the only part of France were the weather is bad is the Western Bretagne region.
It's raining cats and dogs here at Belle-Ile.

Because of the bad weather we had to postpone our start until 10.30.
Because of the same bad weather we couldn't fly straight homeward and instead flew via the Loire valley.
We made a short fuel-stop and will make another short stop at Dahlemer Binz in the German Eifel.
After that Henk and Erich will fly to Geilenkirchen with the D-KFDI and Manfred and Urs will fly further into Germany with the D-KKGG. At this moment (18.10 local time) we haven't reached Dahlemer Binz yet.

20.15 hours
Just made a final phonecall to our webmaster.
We're back home again!
After waiting until the rain had gone we departed at 10.20 from Belle-Ile and flew via Ste. Nazaire along the Loire valley towards Blois-Le Breuil airport (LFOQ) were we refuelled.
Just before reaching Blois we crossed a military CTR were some crazy jet-pilots scared the shit out of us, but we're brave old men and kept our pants dry!
If you want to get an impression of the feeling we had, take a look at the picture below!

This is an actual fly-by during deployment of the Nuclear Aircraft Carrier USS Stennis.
The pilot was grounded for 30 days, but he likes the picture and thinks it was worth it. Yikes!

In Blois, because tower and fuel-station are not manned during lunch-break, we had 2 hours to look around and have lunch. At 14.45, after refuelling and lunch we were back in the air again and in 3 hours and 11 minutes, via Orleans, Troyes, Vitry, Verdun, Thionville and Trier we landed at Dahlemer Binz.
At 18.15 we departed from Dahlemer Binz and at 18.45 we (Henk and Erich with the D-KFDI) were welcomed by Henk's wife on Geilenkirchen airport.
Manfred and Urs, with the D-KKGG flew along for Leverkusen, on their way home.

Within some weeks you can expect a detailed report of our journey with several pictures we made.

For now, hope you experienced a little bit of the joy we had flying this trip to the Scillies, and we say:
"bye bye", but we will return!

Greetz, Erich, Henk, Manfred, Urs.

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