Today I got a bit of video footage which was taken approximately one month ago when I was flying with a my good old school-friend Guido. Him, his wife and their little daughter whom I had visited last year in Luzern (Switzerland) moved back to Munich. And when I happened to be there briefly in February, too, we went for a ride with a Grob 115 which I charted from Augsburg Airport's Schwabenflug, an excellent flight-school and highly recommendable service-company. Guido luckily took his high-end video camera with him, my role that day was to act as "pilot in command".
The best to come are certainly the video-takes from within the cockpit, yet first due to legal regulations, I had to fly three take-offs and landings on my own because I hadn't done so within the required limit of the preceding three months. Hence, Guido was confined to the visitor's terrace from where he filmed the last of my three landings of that beautiful low-wing aircraft. One can see quite well that flaps fully extracted and coming in at a relatively steep gliding angle. This was due to an unexpected instruction from ATC to cut short the downwind and enter earlier as planned into the base and final. Hence at least some sort of excuse for the brakes which I hit a bit too hard as one can easily hear ;-)
Our route took us on a direct way from Augsburg to the little picturesque airstrip of Leutkirch-Unterzeil within 40 minutes. We were taxiing to the holding point, and upon entering Runway 07, throttle on maximum power, soft push on the right pedal to counter the torque-effect, rotation speed at 65 knots and there we go. Climb up with 75 knots.
After reaching our cruising altitude at 4,500 feet we had a relaxed and calm flight where Guido switched on the camera once again west of Memmingen with a quite nice view on the Alpes.
I can't deny that it always has a very particular charm land on a small airstrip compared to a big airport. For one, the workload on the pilot is way less in terms of rigid procedures, communication with the tower etc. which overall provides this unique sense of freedom which flying in its essence is meant to be. Here, we are turning from the base into the final approach of Runway 24. In order to not appear complacent, one can see that I slightly "overshot" to the right which I had to bring back on track for the entry, yet there was ample time and space to do so in a gentle manner.
After having a coffee in the world-legendary "Propellerstüble" on the airport, we took our seats, fastened the harnessed, closed the canopy and after taxiing to the point where we had touched down 20 minutes before we took-off back towards Augsburg.
Homing towards our departure point of the day which was equally our destination, one can tell well the difference in size of the two airports. Augsburg with it 1,200 meter runway looks really like a big airport which one can easily spot from the distance and have a good alignment into a long-final till the safe touch-down.
All in all, it was a fantastic flight, especially as we were so lucky with the weather and the visibility. And even more we were blessed that Guido had his camera with him so that we are able to share that memorable experience here.
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Hey, nice videos. I’m learning on the Grob myself at the minute, and they give me something to show to the folks so they have an understanding of what flying’s like.