Early last year, I realised that I had a slight problem. I needed to do 12 hours of fixed-wing flying before the end of the summer if I was to keep my PPL (A), and so far I had flown….none.
It wasn’t that I was completely out of practice—I had over 300 fixed-wing hours in total but helicopter instructing and aviation writing were now taking up a huge amount of my time.
I had also given-up my share in a C150 following a recent house move and 12 hours of local flying, in a hired club aircraft, didn’t really enthral me.
What was I to do?
The answer suddenly came to me in the form of Sue Virr who I first met back in 2005 while flying in France
Sue is an ex-jockey who had held a PPL for several years and decided to study for her CPL and FI rating while laid up after a serious riding accident.
When she finally recovered, with no job and nowhere to keep her thoroughbred horses, Sue decided to sell up and move to France where she hoped to find a large property, with the land she needed, at an affordable price.
She also wanted to be within commuting distance of a flying school in the hope of earning her living as a flying instructor which was, perhaps, a tall order for a new FI who spoke not a word of French.
But eventually Sue found La Chataigneraie, an old French farmhouse in the Limousin. It was in beautiful open countryside, had several outbuildings, and five hectares of land for the horses. Best of all, it was quite close to Limoges Airport which has two flying schools.
During my first visit to La Chataigneraie in 2005, I met a British pilot who was staying there and doing some flying with Sue who was now established as the English-language Flying Instructor with the Aéro-club de Limoges.
He explained to me that he had wanted to fly in France but didn’t speak the language and wasn’t confident about French aviation procedures.
As flying in France was significantly cheaper than in the UK, paying for an instructor to sit with him seemed like money well spent. It certainly sounded to me like a good idea, and I filed the information away in my head for future use….
So early in 2007 I contacted Sue, asking if I could I stay with her and do 12 hours flying in a week.
As one of the outbuildings had now been converted into a small self-catering ‘gite’, I booked it, found a ridiculously cheap Ryanair flight to Limoges, and prayed for good weather at the end of April.
Fortunately, we were in luck. I arrived at Limoges on Monday morning to find a forecast of good weather for the whole week.
In view of my early morning start, I decided to do the Robin DR400 conversion and then take the rest of the day off. Flying in earnest—or rather, touring and having fun—could start the next day.
Sue also introduced me to everyone at the Limoges Flying Club where she now seemed very much at home. Indeed, everyone now accepted her though it had not been easy to start with. She had been a very new (female) flying instructor in a foreign country and had wanted to instruct in English, which had never been done before. But now, with a growing number of students from amongst the large British community in the Limousin, she was bringing business to the flying club—and it had no objections to that.
Introductions over, Sue introduced me to F-GYDD, our aircraft for the day. I was tired and mildly apprehensive but Sue’s relaxed and confident attitude reassured me. In any case, the Robin is not a difficult aircraft to fly.
After little more than an hour, I knew my way round the local area fairly well and could land satisfactorily though Limoges’ long runway definitely helped.
Sue would have been happy to let me fly solo, but that had never been my plan. I wanted flying company, someone who was familiar with France, who could take the pressure of dealing with French aviation procedures and, above all, who knew the good places to stop off for lunch and sightseeing.
Officially, I would fly as P1, but Sue was coming with me as a passenger.
I spent the rest of the day relaxing, and reacquainting myself with Sue’s horses, and the Hungarian Vizsla dogs which she shows in her non-existent spare time. My accommodation was comfortable—and spacious for one person. And it was costing me less than a week’s B & B would have done.
We also planned the next day’s flying. When flying to France in a slow C150, it was impossible to get very far south in a few days. But we were now starting from Limoges in a faster aircraft, so anywhere in France was within easy reach.
We finally decided to go to Carcassonne for lunch. Neither of us had ever been there, and it looked like a lovely flight over the wooded and hilly area to the south of Limoges. Plus, there was an interesting medieval city to see on our arrival and, no doubt, plenty of places to eat.
We set out early, with Sue doing the navigation and radio so that I could concentrate on flying the Robin. However, I found it easy to fly with loads more power than the C150 and fantastic visibility through the bubble canopy.
A bonus for me, being short, was that I didn’t need a cushion—the seats move both forward and up so I could adjust them to reach all of the controls and see comfortably out of the front. What a great touring aircraft!
I soon had it trimmed so that I could look at the view and chat to Sue. In this way I learned a lot about French navigation and radio use which, despite several visits to France and muddling through quite adequately, I had never completely understood.
As I’m probably not unique in this, I’ll pass on the hints I picked up:
France is divided into several flight information regions. The chart tells you exactly who you should be talking to, unlike the UK, where you frequently have to decide for yourself whether to contact London Information or the nearest regional airport.
When you make your initial call, you don’t have to give your position, altitude, and almost your whole life history—or that’s what it can feel like.
You simply tell them who you are and where you’re going, and ask for an FIS. They give you a squawk—and that’s it.
They will also tell you about the activity status of those confusing military areas that seem to crisscross France, if any of them appear to be close to your track. And they’ll tell you anything else you need to know, like whether airfields on your route are open or not—you just have to ask.
But what about controlled airspace? Well, you do the same as before, but ask for zone transit.
Ah, but what about the fact that most airfields in France seem to close for lunch, which means that you may not get a reply when you call up?
This can be most disconcerting—in the past I had spent many minutes orbiting and worrying, wondering if I’d had radio failure or if it was legal to carry on.
It’s OK, Sue told me. If the airport is closed, the airspace reverts to being uncontrolled and you simply make blind calls in French.
But how do you know if it’s closed? Well, you listen to the ATIS. If it’s bilingual, they’re open; if it’s in French only, they’re closed, and you can fly through, or even land, at what might ‘officially’ be an airport in Class D airspace. It’s simple—when you know.
After acquiring all this useful knowledge during a very relaxed flight, we arrived at Carcassonne, where my landing was good enough to convince me that I could have done it solo.
We caught a taxi into the old part of town, and had a wonderful time looking round its ancient buildings before stopping for a typically tasty French lunch.
Is it possibly to get bad food in France? I don’t think so.
We both wished we could have stayed longer in Carcassonne, but our aircraft was needed back at Limoges at 5pm—hiring from a flying school is not so flexible as flying your own aeroplane.
Besides, Sue had an interesting detour planned for me on the way back—routing via the famous Millau viaduct.
So we left earlier than we could have wished, flying northeast over spectacular mountains and lakes to the village of Millau, where a staggeringly huge road cuts across a whole valley.
My sister, who has a house in the south of France, had driven across the Millau viaduct, and told me it was spectacular from the ground. But seeing it from the air was quite amazing and made me realise, yet again, just how fortunate we aviators are.
So we admired it, took photos, and then went back to Limoges for a peaceful evening in the Limousin countryside.
Right, then—five hours logged. Where to next?
We had planned to head west on Wednesday but there were thunderstorms along the coast. Limoges was hazy, though flyable, but the weather towards the east looked perfect—so east it would be.
We had been told that Clermont Ferrand, home of Michelin tyres, was a spectacular flight over high mountains, with an interesting approach to the airport, and a fair amount to see when we landed.
We decided that would do just fine, and set off in another club Robin, F-GZYA.
This turned out to be one of the most spectacular flights I have ever done. The Massif Central, to the east of Limoges, rises to well over 6,000ft in parts.
Whereas the C150 climb rate approached zero at around 5,000ft, the Robin coped admirably and Sue re-acquainted me with the long-lost art of leaning the mixture.
The mountains directly to the west of Clermont Ferrand are volcanic and rise sharply from the town.
This meant that one moment we were flying over a high plateau and then the ground suddenly fell away sharply to the town below. And there was the runway—but how on earth were we going to get down to it in time?
Needless to say, we managed it, and did a quick tour of the shops and the lovely old cathedral before settling down at an open-air café for yet another first-rate French lunch (readers may detect a theme developing here).
It was then that I mentioned to Sue that I had visited 95 airfields and that it would be great to make it 100 during this trip.
Always keen to please, Sue worked out a return trip which included landings at a couple of interesting ‘uncontrolled’ airfields (Ussel, Egletons) where she made the radio calls in French, and I accustomed myself to landing the Robin in slightly more challenging situations.
At the end of the day, I still needed another 4.1 hours and three airfields to reach the magic 100.
With good weather still forecast, but high-pressure haze steadily building, we decided to complete all of my required flying the next day in case visibility worsened further.
So next day we set off for Quiberon on the south coast of Brittany which would have been rather a long flight in a DR400-140 so we took the faster DR400-180 (F-GMKT) which only cost an extra €10 per hour.
Flying at around 130kts put Brittany easily within reach.
It should have been a most interesting flight but visibility had decreased considerably by the time we reached the coast—oh well, every flight can’t be perfect.
We followed the coast and found Quiberon, a small airfield at the end of a long peninsula with a runway which ends at the sea.
To add to the landing challenge for me, it was now windy, and quite turbulent at low levels, resulting in a go-around which made it quite comforting to have a high-hours instructor on board.
After yet another gourmet French meal, we set off ‘home’—for Limoges now felt like home to me.
We had planned to re-fuel at Niort, with a touch-and-go at St Junien to log my 100th airfield. However, a strong headwind put paid to that plan and pressing-on to Niort would have clearly been pushing our luck.
As we were getting an FIS from Nantes, Sue checked with them to discover that it wasn’t possible to obtain fuel at two closer airfields along our route.
Much to Sue’s astonishment, they said “You can come into Nantes if you want” which is roughly equivalent to Manchester asking if you would like to drop in.
Having refuelled at Nantes, I did a touch-and-go on Niort’s massive 1,760m runway—my 100th airfield—before returning to Limoges.
It had been a long day—in fact, a long four days. I had learned a huge amount, and enjoyed a wonderful flying holiday—without the stress and difficulty I normally associate with flying in France.
And I had 12.5 hours more in my logbook.
Condensed from an article in the August 2007 edition of 'Today's Pilot'
