Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Day 5 Croatia to Hungary



As promised I was met at the hotel and given a lift to the airport. Not quite such a gift as it turned out when I was given my bill for landing, overnight parking and transportation. I then had to go through the customs post and the police checkpoint, all in a room about the size of an average living room but with all the decorative charm of an old farm building. I had filed the flightplan before I left the hotel using the UK AFPEX system. It worked perfectly and saved me the hour that I would have spent waiting, except of course they found other ways of keepng me waiting. I launched off into the wide blue yonder taking this photo of the airfield as I left, and switched to Zadar radar. Whilst I enjoyed the views.That was fine until the 6500ft mountain got between me and him "GTREX I kept hearing faintly if I turned off the squelch. The turbulence was foul. I was getting a 30 knt stream straight off the mountains to the side and the rotor was horrible. I ignored my clearance and climbed up to 5500ft It was better but still not good. I switched to Zagreb information and once again was given a first class service. There were only two aircraft operating in Croatia below flight level 115, a german and myself. As the mountains gave way to flatter land the turbulence subsided a little and just became the normal thermal stuff. The switch over to Hungary 10 minutes before approaching the air defence zone went well and wasn't anything like as difficult as I feared.
I landed at Balaton to discover a wonderful terminal building, lots of staff including the inevitable customs and police. I had three pages of forms to fill in before i was allowed into the office to pay the landing fee. I wanted fuel but they had none, nor an open cafe, no filled water or coke machines. The landing fee was a shock €2879.50. I was right, I was going to pay for the whole airport for the day (I was the only plane in or out). Fortunately the layout of the invoice was at fault and they had the wrong heading over the amount. It was actually 10 Euro. With no choice, i continued to Gyor where a phone call had confirmed they really did have fuel. There was almost no traffic in the whole of Hungary, a single military flight, a helicopter and myself. The flight was bumpy and the headwind of 30 knots noticeable, but at last I got there. The wind was at 27 knots when I landed. He advised that I landed long. I realised why as when I did touch down it was almost a hover landing. A 2.5km taxi would have been necessary and perhaps more important the follow me van was waiting at other end. I got out refuelled and checked the weather . This showed my next two stops as havinga 40% chance of a 26knot crosswind, so I elected to stay. One of the airport staff ran me to a motel. This time after paying the landing fee so we shall see.
Total distance today 319 with 1673 so far

No comments:

Post a Comment