By 10 am the morning grayness
had cleared enough for the elderly Grumman AA5 to leap forth from
the tarmac of the one time Bomber Command airfield of Cranfield.
With Heather as PIC and yours faithfully handling the NAV. and radio we were on our way for a weeks holiday
sampling the recently opened skies of the Czech republic. Heather
and I are both part owners of G-BEZI, the aforesaid Grumman, and
both of us are moderate time PPLs with a UK IMC rating. The IMC
rating lets us fly IFR in some parts of the UK airspace, but is
not recognized in other countries, so once across the Channel
we are 'strictly' VFR. In the back of the plane, apart from the
clothes, tents, sleeping bags etc., were the fruits of our planning
and collecting of the last couple of months. In Europe there is
no single source of flying information for VFR that is both complete
and affordable, so we had assorted flight guides - a Pooleys for
the UK, a French DeLage, a German Flieger-Taschenkalender, and
a British Airways Aerad Europe & Middle East Supplement for
up to date and accurate frequencies and cryptic details of anything
not in the other guides. We also had a cherished Czech VFR Flight
Guide (written in Czech!) which Heather had obtained through a
Czech friend. We had half million VFR maps from the various countries
for the UK, France, Belgium and Germany, all of which use slightly
different symbols and colors just to keep you on your toes. At
the start we had no Czech map, but this was no real problem since
the German Nurnberg map covers Prague and a little beyond. Finally
we had a fresh route forecast from the Met. Office at Bracknell,
an honor only dispensed to UK pilots traveling beyond the UK piece
of sky. As a special honor, it was quite promising as well!
The way out of the UK was a well trodden route for us. Permission to transit Luton's Class D, then under London's TMA below 2500 until across the Thames while getting a traffic advisory service from friendly Thames Radar who operate out of London City airport. We climbed to 3500 to get above broken cumulus but this gradually disappeared as we get over Kent until we were greeted by the magical sight of the aerials at Dover stuck out of a solid carpet of low cumulus stretching from the coast to mid channel. The French side had no cloud at all as if it knew where French airspace started!
The over water stretch passed uneventfully. It's only 25 miles but it always seems a long 15 minutes. We talked to Lille Approach to tell them we had entered French airspace and as the cloud below us started to close up as we passed to the North of Lille we decided to drop below to maintain VFR. Bad news! The bottom was around 1100 feet with very poor vis. so one of our alternates, Kortrijk-Wevelgem only 8 miles north in Belgium, seemed suddenly attractive. Mr. Garmin hung on in there and helped us to their 1900 meter runway and some pricy Belgian 100LL ($5.60 per gallon!). The tower there speak excellent English and got us TAFs and METARs for Liege, Frankfurt and Bonn all of which looked encouraging. So, we had some lunch while the weather slowly improved and watched the formation departure of 3 Sukhois from the Malev sponsored Hungarian aerobatics team.
By 4pm we were back in the air heading past our original first target of Spa in Belgium for Koblenz-Winningen in Germany having filed the obligatory flight plan (since we were crossing an international boundary). Our route took us south and under the large TMA around Brussels, but it did involve crossing some military zones. Indeed the Belgian map at first sight is a nightmare of controlled airspace and restricted military zones. But you learn that the restricted zones are often not active and the controlled zones will let you through if you ask on the radio, so armed with this knowledge a not too tortuous route can usually be found. This fine Saturday Chievres gave no answer so we pushed on through their zone, but Charleroi was alive and cleared us though his CTR. By this time the weather was hard VFR with 20 miles visability. and a few scattered cumulus. This continued all the way across the Ardennes and on into Koblenz.
Koblenz airfield is an impressive sight - a veritable aircraft carrier deck with the steep banks of the Mosel River falling away at either end of its 1000 meters. There is also a TV Tower within the circuit to concentrate the mind. The radio was a mixture of German and English, and we are told that the runway was 25 with a right hand circuit, so we joined downwind. On the first approach I blew it - I was too high, so went around, and made a longer successful approach. After we landed they changed the runway direction and all was revealed, I just landed with a tail wind! We refueled and the man in the tower looked at our passports. The Germans and Belgians operate a very sensible scheme where in many smaller airfields the ATC people act on behalf of customs. This means that you don't have to enter or exit the country via major airfield, generally a financial sound idea. The local village of Winningen awaited with a nice hotel, good food and wine for the night.
The next day dawned hot and windless with a mist hanging in the valleys but burning off fast. We phoned Koln-Bonn and the man there gave us an on the spot route forecast in English. Basically a little hazy but good VFR. So we filed a flight plan, again by phone from the tower, to route north of Frankfurt to Bayreuth and then across the border at Cheb into to Czech republic and on into Karlovy Vary, this being an approved entry point. By 2 in the afternoon we were talking to the very good English of Karlovy Vary ATC, and at 4 miles we saw the 2000 meter runway perched high above the valleys of the town. As we parked the fuel truck came zooming out to us with a friendly fellow who spoke no English or German, so we got organized with a few words of Czech and hand waving, and G-BEZI got its first taste of 95 octane. 100LL is basically not available in the Czech republic except in Prague, so we used 95 and tried to keep a 100LL/95 mixture in one tank for take-offs. After this the customs men were looking restive outside their office, so we sauntered over to the terminal and had our passports scrutinized. You have to be 'handled' at Karlovy Vary, but the girl there was very nice, changed some German Dm into Czech Krowns and called a taxi for us. They also had Czech VFR maps for sale, so bolstered with maps for where we wanted to go, we headed off into town to find a hotel and 'sample the waters' of the spa.
Back to the airfield and the handling agents office the next day
to pay the bill (in US $ and they took Visa!) which was quite
reasonable. As we packed up the plane the Customs man walked over
but lost interest when we said where we were going. Our target
was grass field in the foothills of the Krkonose mountains called
Vrchlabi. Heather's Czech friend had arranged for us to rent a
holiday flat at the aeroclub there for a few days. The morning
was hot and windless again but ZI got off OK, if a little sluggish
in the climb. After heading for an NDB called Rakovnik to avoid
an active military area, Ruzyne Info (Prague International) cleared
us through his class C at not above 2000 feet. Welcome to Czech
VFR - you basically fly everywhere at 1000 feet AGL. This keeps
you just above the low level fighter jet corridors and the approach
airspace which starts above this. Flying along between the two
is apparently quite all right and no flight plans are required
for internal VFR flights.
Ruzyne Info was very quiet. He was handling just one other flight (in Czech) while we were with him and he cleared us on route long before the edge of his zone. As we neared the Polish border we called up Vrchlabi on the radio and after a long pause got an English voice saying to use runway 11 and that the wind was 360 at 8 meters per sec. This lost something in translation as it was more like 050, but 15 knots wind it might have been. So went overhead for a look and then joined downwind. The runway sits on a hill above the town with a rise at one end. There is also a hill on short finals that you almost touch and then pass into the lee of another hill where I got lots of sink and landed 'positively', stopping about half way down the 800 meters of smooth grass. The friendly folk there met us with one of the ubiquitous Skodas and drove us and our luggage over to the flat.
Vrchlabi was an active little field with a couple of Cessna 172s doing pleasure trips for (mainly German) tourists. For really big parties they rolled out the big AN-2 biplane single, which could take up parties of 11 or 12. It sounded great, with the big single radial up the front and a huge 4 bladed propeller. It lifted off in about 400 meters at what must have been something like 45 mph! Other planes on the field were a few Zlin 142s, Zlin 60s, an L-200 Morava (sort of bug eyed twin with two Walter in-line 4 engines), and others. There was a lovely Vivat motor glider, again Walter powered, and several gliders.
Over the next few days we used Vrchlabi as a base to visit other Czech airfields. Jicin was a 1000 meter grass field with a Dutch gliding club having taken over the R/T for the day, so our radio calls were well understood. Jindrichuv Hradec was 700 meters hard and almost completely deserted when we arrived, but we managed to find a local engineer who spoke a bit of German and he got us a lift into town. All of these trips had large parts at the 1000 feet AGL rule. This is quite tricky on Czech maps because they have no height contours and spot heights in meters. So, 1000 feet tends to be by guesswork coupled with frantic mental arithmetic.
The day we finally had to leave Vrchlabi was another hot and still morning so, thanks and goodbyes all said, we climbed to the highest point of the runway, held full power against the brakes and then rolled off down most of the grass before getting airborne. The roofs of Vrchlabi slid, thankfully if somewhat closely, beneath us, and we were off to Prague. Having painstakingly put all the VFR reporting points into the GPS, it decided to have an hour off, but this was no problem as the Ruzyne Info controller had nothing much to do and so decided to give us radar vectors to everywhere. He was also the master of the casual - "ZI do you have information Lima", "Negative, ZI", "Well ZI, why not give it a try?". So we did.
Prague's VFR route was easy to find. After the VFR reporting points if Velvary and Bradysek you simple follow the autoroute which brings you on a tight right base to their runway 24. After turning off the active we got a 'follow-me' truck to lead us to stand 30, our parking slot. An Ilyushin IL-76 freighter thundered in behind us on the runway we had just vacated. Prague has 100LL, from a truck marked both Esso and Exxon - whichever face you are familiar with, I guess. But they don't take plastic, other than Esso carnets, only cash or Eurocheque, so we paid with the latter. Flying around Europe needs you to carry a personal bank with you. I usually have several currencies, including US dollars, as well as credit cards and Eurocheques (a widely accepted cheque you can make out in any local currency). Also at Prague, like most large airports in Europe, you have to be 'handled'. The handlers ferry you around the airport, get met reports for you, and collect the money, which in this case was good value for a large airport at $24 for handling, $4 landing fee and 28 cents per hour parking.
We took the bus into Prague centre and did the tourist bit for the afternoon - castle, cathedral, Wenceslas Square, etc., but on return to the airfield the met man had bad news (not totally unexpected, looking at the sky). There was a line of thunderstorms blocking our path to Bayreuth in Germany where we hoped to overnight. So, we decided to stay. CSL Handling were great. They found us a couple of rooms in a delightful pension near the airport and dropped us off there.
The next day was better, if a little on the murky side, so we departed Prague and via a few showers over the high ground around Karlovy Vary, we made it over the border into the German sunshine and Bayreuth. We had had a little rough running at low revs in Prague and it was still doing it as we taxied in. Thus, after topping off the avgas, I set about removing all the plugs for a clean. Some were black and oily, and it certainly ran better after this so we decided to push on. We rang the met man who said that his English was 'schlekt' and that my German was better, so I struggled with the weather briefing in German. Fortunately it was all pretty good with 16 Km visability. and 5000 foot clouds, so off we went retracing our outbound path but this time landing at the pretty airfield of Dahlmer Binz up high in the Eifel. The inn on the airfield had no rooms left, but said we could camp, so the tents got their first outing. We spent the evening enjoying good German beer and food on the inn's terrace watching the evening flyers come and go.
Next morning was seriously misty and my back was reminding me of what sleeping in a tent meant. A walk into the local village and back passed the morning and the met man in Bonn said the weather was serious VFR over Northern Belgium, so we decided to depart for a route via Antwerp to the north of Brussels CTA. Then, as we climbed out of Dahlmer Binz into the murk, the low voltage warning light came on. With promised good weather, lots of batteries for the GPS and portable, we decided to shut down to everything but one COM and push on. On the good side, the engine seemed better that day. After Liege the weather cleared as promised and Antwerp passed us through their zone low level, even without the transponder. From northern Belgium we ran down the coast and on into Calais-Dunkerque for fuel and theoretically, though none were present, customs.
The flaps worked and we could see no shredded bits under the cowling, so we decided to push on for home. The flight plan was duly filed on the French Minitel terminal in the tower and after a coffee to allow the 30 minutes 'in advance' time to run out, we left. Climbing out to 4500 we turned right across the channel with the shining red low voltage light making us uncomfortably aware of the sea below. The Dover cliffs appeared out of the haze at around 7 miles out. These cliffs passed, thankfully, below us and apart from a little low cloud over the Thames, the weather behaved on the way back home. Luton had arriving traffic and so declined to let us through his zone, so our final flight had a little detour up the low level corridor between Luton and Stanstead, but before long ZI was back at its tie down.
Turned out the alternator had trashed its brushes and the rough
running was eventually traced to a split in the induction coupling.
I was impressed since we had managed 3 hours on one radio, two
cycles of the flaps and an engine start, all on the battery. We
had done around 18 hours total flying on the trip and the whole
thing cost us around $700 each including the flying costs (for
which we charge ourselves $60 per hour). Flying in the Czech republic
was fun and we were made very welcome. I recommend it. Get there
while it's still cheap! 
