An IFR/VFR trip to Locarno LSZL, Switzerland

[peterh337]

They are probably well under MTOW, and non AOC ops. Same with the jets going into Shoreham and other places.

Can anybody explain what looks like a walkway along the ridge here
http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/loc ... p4-big.jpg

It could be just snow but it does seem very even.

[Geraint Pinches]

Fantastic and informative write-up as ever, Peter!

[Adrian]

The picture looks like a cornice of overhanging snow, caused by wind blowing over the ridge. When they collapse they frequently cause avalanches on the slopes below, and they are a major hazard that cause a lot of deaths.

[stabilator]

Quote from your report:

"And the infamous Swiss "ICAO" chart mixes elevations in feet and metres on the same chart (their military use metres) which has probably killed a few visiting pilots... I flew with that chart on my 2004 Crete trip and wondered why all the hills were so much bigger than they should be"

Incorrect. The official Swiss ICAO 1:500,000 chart (latest edition No. 39, 10th March 2011) never has, does, or will show any elevations in metres. All elevations and contour lines are in feet and airspace vertical limits are in feet or flight level.

Glider pilots use metres but have their own dedicated chart.

The military use feet.

[peterh337]

Shall I send you a copy of the Swiss ICAO chart I used in 2004?

Email me your address and I will mail you the scan on a CD (if I can find it). I scanned all the charts on that 2004 trip and georeferenced them for Oziexplorer so I had a GPS moving map all the way.

It was a well known feature.

Good to know they fixed it.

[peterh337]

I've uploaded a departure video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDToTYZh_E4

It was 850MB so too big on host on my web space, which I don't want to push the bandwidth limits on. However, Youtube is a right PITA because big uploads crash most of the time, so their "2GB" limit is a bit of a joke. They have a java upload option which supports interrupted uploads, supposedly, but I could not get it to work despite installing the latest java umpteen times.

It shows the usual radio problems, with Locarno tower giving an unreadable station name to call (twice), and it shows the usual confusion about picking up the IFR clearance on a Z flight plan, with the station (Zurich) being quite unbothered about what you do so long as a) you are on a flight plan in their system and b) they have you on radar.

[Iceman]

Nice writeup. Lugano's missed approach certainly does appear to be a leap of faith in real IMC, especially the southerly DR track until you pick up the VOR.

Iceman

[peterh337]

A lot of the IFR climb gradients at these Swiss airports are right on the limit of the most powerful IFR tourer aeroplanes, and quite a few are beyond that if you consider engine temperature management. One cannot climb at Vy never mind Vx for say 5-10 minutes, in most types, without the CHT going through the roof.

[Iceman]

I was chatting to a Citation / Challenger biz jet driver friend yesterday who is checked out for the Lugano approach. He said that it's decidedly scary in VMC, nevermind IMC . Mind you, this is is the same chap who was cleared to do the City ILSs on his very first AOC biz jet flight, having gone straight into the left-hand seat for that flight, so he knows what he's doing.

Iceman

[Xoxon]

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one to fail to be able to upload You Tube videos well within their stated size limit.

Peter, what would you recommend as an in plane digital video recording system. The files from our HD handycam are too large for me to edit and upload while touring so shooting a few minutes at a time on my automatic camera is about the best I can do otherwise.

I'd fix a web cam with software to grab a still every 30 seconds to make a nice time lapse, but I'm worried that the laptop HDD won't like the altitude. Do you use a solid state device for this?

I'd be interested to hear what you've had success with.

[peterh337]

I've tried various things.

There is no doubt at all that any half decent £200 camcorder, mounted firmly so it doesn't shake around, positioned close to a nice clean scratch-free window, and arranged so that reflections from objects in the cockpit are not visible to it, is going to be the best "consumer cost" thing you will get.

That Locarno video was done with a £1500 (3 years ago) Sony HD cam which is way OTT quality-wise, and it would have been better had it been mounted more solidly. Instead I had it hanging upside down off a huge (4" diameter) suction cup camera mount (Ebay I think; about £30) stuck to the very uppermost windscreen portion. I then used Premiere Elements to flip it L-R and flip it vertically, to get the pic the right way up. Then I saved it in (IIRC) SVCD to get some half reasonable filesize for the Youtube upload.

A better mount would have used 2 more suction cups to stabilise the mounting. The single one wobbles too much.

To get the sound I used a miniature mike tucked in the headset, feeding (via a little preamp) the cam's external mike input. Not withstanding the often crap sound quality in this particular video, this tends to work very well, but one needs a cam with a manual audio level control, which you don't get on most of the sub-£1000 ones.

I have also played around with the "bullet cameras" e.g. the Sony HQ1 (crap quality - see my Tempelhof trip video - and very very hard to do anything about the prop effect) and also some top-end (which basically means not as crappy as most of them are) webcams around the £50 mark. I had a play with a Microsoft "HD" webcam which was actually pretty reasonable, taped to the visor so as to point forward, in much the same way as the Sony HD cam referred to above, but it suffered from the same nasty prop effect. With all the bullet cameras you can slow the shutter down (to reduce the prop effect) by using neutral density filters and one could try that.

The best quality would be obtained by using a top class miniature camera mounted outside the cockpit (which avoids the loss of contrast due to the cockpit window, especially if flying into the sun) but apart from being illegal that is potentially messy. I can think of a way to do it (on the TB20) which would be safe, involving locating a miniature camera at the very top of the door, close to the front hinge, but I haven't yet found a waterproof (it has to be, in case you pass through any IMC) miniature camera of decent quality on which one can stick some ND filters. One does need to be really careful with this stuff; the last thing you want is a camera dangling like crazy on the end of a cable, in the airflow, and eventually coming off and hitting the elevator. I am not interested in doing that.

Youtube is a crap system for uploading large videos, but I haven't spent a lot of time trying to make it work. Maybe that java upload feature is what's needed but I can't get it to work.

You can't easily upload videos while travelling. Even a short one (like the others on my website, none of which is on Youtube but all of which are Mpeg) is ~ 50MB which will take for ever to upload on a wifi connection and that assumes the (hotel, etc) connection is not being throttled on the uplink speed, as many are.

[BlackheathBloke]

Youtube appear to have given up on user content, they're more interested in hosting professionally produced content and I notice they're trying out live streaming events as of this week. Much more advertising revenue that way.

Trying to stream even a 360 quality video has been nigh on impossible over the last few weeks, I don't even bother trying to watch HD on there anymore.

A cynic would say they've made u/l difficult to discourage too much user content.

I, for one, am switching to Vimeo.

[peterh337]

A much better quality video is at the end of the writeup now.

I agree about Youtube. Ebay has gone the same way; they don't want private sellers.