Where have you been? What have you seen?
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By DarrenL
#1536444
So I've not posted a trip report in here before as I tend not to go anywhere too out of the ordinary normally, but a two week work trip to São Paulo had me investigating local flying opportunities.

A brief search on here and some googling found me Aeroclube de São Paulo. They're based at Campo de Marte Airport (ICAO: SBMT) which is pretty much smack bang in the middle of São Paulo. You can find their website here. They have quite a broad fleet, everything from Decathlons to Senecas. A great looking clubhouse, restaurant and museum too, which I didn't get a chance to check out today, but I will be going back!

Portuguese isn't my strong point so I had one of the nice ladies in the office here contact them for me and I was linked up with Brogine who's English is actually pretty decent and who takes care of bookings. I arranged to pop in on Saturday to see what might be possible.

I arrived at the airport in the early afternoon and having spent a little while trying to work out how to get into the place finally got to meet Brogine. He was a very friendly guy and gave me a tour of the aircraft and hangar. Quite a few interesting types in there including a beautiful Christen Eagle II amongst other exotics.

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The forecast wasn't looking great previously, but the weather had improved significantly (seems Brazil has it's sporadic medium range forecasts in common with us in the UK) and it was quite flyable. Brogine introduced me to Wilson who is one of their instructors and we agreed to take a P28A Tupi out. The Tupi essentially being an Embraer licence built Cherokee. I would have preferred the Decathlon I think, but sadly no tailwheel instructors were available. They also had several full glass DA20s (to them a DV20?) on the fleet, but I opted for something more familiar to me. And still, it's another type in the log-book - and the first time I've flown an aeroplane with curtains!

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I'd obviously taken a look at the airport on google maps before hand and must admit to being a bit nervous about it's significant lack of available options in the event it all went quiet - São Paulo being a city of 22 million people with Campo de Marte pretty much at it's heart. This is the satellite view:

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I pondered the question with Brogine and Wilson and it was answered with what I can only imagine is the Brazilian equivalent of a Gallic shrug. In simple terms, it's the river or the highway. I figured it was easier to just let Wilson worry about it as the instructor on the flight. And fair play to him, he let me be the pilot flying from brakes off to brakes on (albeit from the RHS), only taking control briefly for me to take a photo or two. Wish I'd taken more, but it's hard to pass over control when you're flying somewhere completely alien! SBMT being in Class C and all ATC being in Portuguese (though the ATIS is also in English) I was very grateful for Wilson taking care of all the flight plan and RT and let me get on with flying the aeroplane.

We taxied out behind one of the club DV20s and departed on runway 12 which is a good 2300m of tarmac. You have to climb out to 1600' QFE for the circuit due to the huge amount of heli traffic buzzing around over São Paulo (they have a helicopter option on Uber - I kid you not) then flying downwind (keeping an eye on the river!) we took a right turn and headed out to the north along their corridors to head for Atibaia Airport (ICAO: SDTB) for a couple of touch and goes.

Now when they say airport, I guess they mean that in the loosest sense. It's just a strip of dirt in the middle of a town which nestles amongst the hills on the edge of the rainforest. Here's how it's looking on the map:

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I'm OK with grass and tarmac, but dirt was something new to me but ultimately the same. The circuit is pretty breathtaking with the base leg skimming some of the lower hills (they seem to join overhead/crosswind in Brazil too). I fluffed the first landing a bit with the P28A floating down the runway even with the VAT pegged at 65 knots - still not sure what that's about really, but I managed a couple of reasonable touch and goes either way. It was then time to head back to Sao Paulo where I took the opportunity to finally grab a few photos on the phone.

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The landscape around there is really quite stunning but again mindful of the lack of flat looking bits!

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We were cleared for a straight in approach back onto runway 12 and turning final was still a bit daunting with one of the worlds largest metropolitan sprawls laid out in front of you, but spectacular nonetheless.

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It was probably something like a 5 mile final and I didn't grab a picture close in unfortunately as I was too busy keeping an eye out for birds or prey (of which there are many!) but the little green splodge below the horizon is the airport with the river running nearly parallel to the approach on the right.

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Pulled off a decent landing and taxied back in as an obscure light amphibian taxied out - never seen something like it!

Cost wise the trip was pretty much equivalent to hiring a Warrior with an instructor for an hour in the UK, but 1.5 in the log-book and some very long lasting memories. Suffice to say I have booked another slot for later this week to go and explore the coast as the forecast is looking a lot better!

If ever you find yourself in São Paulo, I couldn't recommend these guys enough - drop me a message if you'd like any info!
Flyin'Dutch', mick w, Morten and 3 others liked this
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By akg1486
#1537192
I used to work very close to this airfield, but that was before my flying days. In fact, the money I saved from two years in "Sampa" financed the bulk of my flight school hours when I moved back to Europe. I'm really envious right now! :mrgreen: I'd really like to go back and do a flight or two.

As for helicopters being common: a 10 mile drive can easily take two to three hours, and there's a lot of seriously rich people in Brazil. No wonder they take a chopper. I remember reading in a Brazilian magazine that Sao Paulo was the biggest civilian helicopter market outside the US.

/Peter