Even after a few days, I am still entirely drenched from the impressions of last weekend’s flying adventure with my friend Thomas Leiber, to be precise Dr Thomas Leiber and his old youth- and tennis friend Achim Salomon. Thomas’ father Heinz invented the Anti-Breaking-System (ABS) and his son Thomas has inherited his father’s ingenuity with claiming to date more than 100 patent in the automotive space to his name. Besides, Thomas has been a private pilot for the last 15 years and owns a stunning plane Diamond DA-40. A few weeks ago we crafted the plan to fly from Augsburg to Croatia along the coast with a few selected landings. And so us three comrades did with Thomas as intrument-rated pilot-in-command:
We had the best weather and the most stunning views one can imagine, all the 234 pictures here on my Flickr-set. Our first leg went from Augsburg through Eastern Austria to Ljubljana …
… with our first land on the Island of Brac.
Here we passed immigration, re-fueled and landed after just 7 minutes of flight on this brown dust strip on the opposite Island of Hvar.
Hvar is emerging from an insider tip to a notable destination in line with Ibiza and St. Tropez – in a any dimension: style, chic, beautiful people and, well, also the prices. (Still trying to forget that we had to pay for us three at an indisputably yummy fish-dinner EUR 300 …)
The next morning we took off, and wouldn’t miss to fly past Hvar City from the seaside.
The flight overhead my motherland’s islands at a low altitude of 2,000 feet made a dream come true I had for the last 10 years, the Kornates, Dugi Otok and Losinj “up there” in the Kvarner Bay …
… and onwards to the east coast of Istra across the peninsula where Thomas landed with precision on Runway 36 of Vrsar airport
My friends seemed to enjoy their first trip to my Croatian home base Rovinj where we spent one night in my house and got rewarded with the most colourful sunset (I swear, I did not touch Photoshop)
Next day meant departure from Vrsar to Pula for re-fueling, take-off where air traffic control sent us on Flight Level 150 (15,000 feet) across the Adriatic Sea across Venice, then north towards Bolzano where we faced the first clouds which got – as expected from the weather forecast – denser and denser. Hence, we had to circumnavigate a few cumulonimbus clouds with thunderstorms in visible distance
30 miles ahead of Innsbruck is got quite nasty in terms of turbulence, flying in the cloud watching the screen and the wings getting iced at -7 degrees Celsius. Thankfully, the controller in Innsbruck was extremely helpful in advising us to pass behind the thunderstorm-cell till we broke the cloud and left the bad weather behind us. The rest towards Maisach, then into the ILS of Augsburg Airport was an easy routine for Thomas where we landed even in some rays of sun during dusk.
For me who has been flying in the last 7 years only under visual flight rules (“VFR”) having such an experience in instrument conditions (“IFR”) meant getting addicted. Thomas was the dealer and this flight was the crack-cocain he served me.
I will have to do my IFR-license soon. I just have to.
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