Dear Taifun pilots,
here is the report about the last part of my journey.
Medulin is a tourist town. I spent the largest part of the following Sunday (4.9) there, with breakfast, lunch, reading, writing. I also tried to swim in the afternoon, but noticed that I had only little time left and that it was a long way to walk until the water got deeper. Then I made a bicycle tour from Medulin to Pula airport (during which I got wet in a heavy rain shower) for meeting my wife who arrived with Lufthansa at 18:30. I called a Taxi for taking us to Fazana (a small town opposite to Brijuni), and from there a ferry took us to the Brijuni island. I was a bit annoyed when they told me that I had to leave my bicycle at the station in Fazana, because they lease bicycles on Brijuni and do not want concurrence. If I had known that I would have tried to enter the ferry with my bike folded and packed. I doubt that the ward would have recognized it as a bicycle...
Brijuni is a really nice place. It was once a residence of Tito, the former leader of Yugoslavia, who apparently had a quite luxurious lifestyle and also invited a lot of glamorous persons there. Nowadays it is a national park. Tourists who are not staying overnight on the island will usually visit only one day because the tickets for the ferry are quite expensive. We, however, had our conference taking place in Hotel Istria on the island and therefore had booked a room in the same hotel. So we could walk and swim during the lunch break or in the evening. Here are some pictures taken there. Even Roman ruins are there.
Friday, 9.9, was the last day of our conference which finished at 12 o'clock. After a last walk, we boarded our ferry and were soon in Fazana again. We had a lunch together, then a taxi took us to Pula airport from where Maria traveled home to Germany. For me it was too late to leave on this day, and furthermore the Alpes where stored up with clouds from the north. So I booked an appartement in Pula city and stayed there overnight. A night walk through Pula led me also to their spectacular Roman amphitheatre. As you can see, as in former times there are sports event taking place there also nowadays:-)
On Saturday morning, I checked the weather and also got meteorological advice by telephone from the German Met Service DWD. Unfortunately, the north of the Alpes was still in clouds, with the weather slowly getting better from the west. Therefore, I made a plan to travel only to some airport in Northern Italy lying more to the west, for having a good start on Sunday. Then I went to fetch my Taifun from LDPM and to start my journey home. Here are some pictures of the airport Medulin which has a spectacular windsock.
First, I had to fly to Pula (outside Schengen) again for customs. Briefly after noon, I started my flight from there towards Venice-Lido/LIPV (lying inside Schengen) which also has custom service with prior notice. Unfortunately, immediately after take-off I noticed a problem, namely that the propeller pitch control did not work and remained in start position. It would not have made much sense trying to cross the Adria without working pitch control (too slow, too bad for the motor), so I landed again and tried to remove the problem. Luckily(?) the issue had turned up before and I knew what to do (namely moving the block for the speed sensor closer to the nuts of the propeller flange) and had all tools necessary for the job with me. After 1-2 hours work in hot sun, everything was ok again. Maybe there was a bit of luck in this problem appearing, because in the meantime I was told that my camera had remained in Medulin! Therefore I flew again to Medulin, and then again to Pula for customs (and, this time, also for refueling), and only around 14 UTC I took off for Venice. Everything went well as you can see from my happy face flying over the Adria.
Arriving in Lido I decided to stay there because it was already late. Looking for a room I noticed that only a few rather expensive rooms were available, because it was the last day of the Venice film festival. Thus, I only got one for 155 EUR. However, I think that it does not make much sense trying to save money at such points. There are a lot of things summing up to considerable higher amounts when flying an own aircraft, and because of the uncertainty of the weather it is not very reasonable to book cheap hotels weeks before a trip. Anyway, the location of my hotel was very central, and of a very high standard. In the evening I made bicycle tour around Lido, tried to swim at the public beach (bad idea, I got very fast stinged by jellyfish), and then had a good dinner in an almost empty restaurant (most people were in the cinema).
In the next morning (Sunday, 11.9), I had a wonderful breakfast in the garden of my hotel. It felt almost like paradise. Then I went for the airport. First, I had planned to make another stop now at Como (LILY) or at Alzate Brianza (LILB), but somehow both airports are not really for public use and I did not get permission to land there (what the precise problem was with Como I still do not know, but Alzate-Brianza is apparently an airport which is mostly for gliding). So I decided to fly directly to Biberach/EDMB. This flight was again really interesting: Take-off time was 1050 UTC, and then I flew over Northern Italy until Lake Garda. I had intended to fly west to Lake Como and only from there north to the Spluegenpass, but over Lake Garda I got the impression that the cloud bases were rising with the mountains and that a shortcut should be possible. Indeed that turned out to be a good decision. The cloud bases rose and rose (I could again use some very strong thermal upwinds to follow them) and were over the main chain of the Alpes at FL100-FL110. At these heights there is no problem in crossing the Alpes which I did north of Sondrio (LILO).
After the main chain, I flew over Chur and Bad Ragaz to Lake Constance (losing height in sync with the cloud base), and finally arrived in Biberach/EDMB at 13:34 UTC. In Biberach, there was a "Flugplatzfest" this day, and a very good photographer from the Sportfliegerclub Stuttgart, Wolfgang Kizler, was visiting it. He made a nice photo of the Taifun and me during our landing which you can see here. He gave me permission to share it and I attach it here in higher resolution than the rest of my pictures, because I find the sharpness and quality impressive:
What is my resume and outlook? It was a memorable experience, the memories will surely help keeping my spirits up during the winter. I hope that the stupidity of our politicians is not so large that they turn this winter into a war winter also for us in the EU. If they do not and the situation remains under control here, then starting from spring 2023 Croatia will also be in the Schengen zone and direct flights to Medulin and also airports in South Croatia will become possible. It might even happen, that Romania and Bulgaria enter Schengen as well, which would open up comfortable possibilities for flights still further to the east. It is quite sure that I will then make use of both these opportunities in the following years.
I hope you enjoyed this report.
Best regards,
Nicolas
