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LEMG - LFBD
The alarm on my $15 Walgreen's
Drugstore special dual-time watch, bought as a cheapie especially
for this trip, woke me out of a sound sleep at 7:00 a.m. Packed
and called room service for some breakfast (since they forgot
to leave any doorknob-hanging ordering forms while turning
down our beds last night) and were on our way to the lobby
by about 8:45 for our scheduled 9:00 a.m. pickup by the airport
driver. We are dressing in our uniforms for flying so it is
easy to decide what to wear on the flying days.
Last night our meal at the Grill
restaurant here in the hotel was superb. We both had lamb,
but prepared in different ways, and it couldn't have been
better.
The weather was again wonderful
and the fax package from Universal, along with the weather
reports on CNN, showed no problems on our way today from Malaga,
Spain, to Bordeaux, France.
We felt a little overkill by
the fact that the van could hold about sixteen people or so,
but there was just the driver and the two of us. The traffic
was at a medium level as we drove back East on the main route,
paralleling the Mediterranean back to Malaga's Aeropuerto.
We wanted to stop in a liquor store to restock 982GA's supply
of Crown Royal, but the driver indicated that none were open
at this time. (Later, at the airport, Pam went with Marlene
Borstlap, our handling agent, to the main terminal to make
another attempt, only to find that blended whiskeys were virtually
unavailable in all of Spain. Scotch? Bourbon? No problem.
But Crown Royal? Canadian Club? Not a chance! We'll make another
try in France.)
The General Aviation terminal
at Malaga is a cute little building that was the original
airport's only terminal way back when. It is right across
from the San Miguel beer brewery, that is on the airport property…now
that's good planning! There was a metal detector and luggage
scanner we had to pass through, with no problems. Marlene
drove us down the ramp to where 982GA was found, right in
the spot where we had left her. The normal preflight routine
ensued, including filling the outboard tanks. Thus far, our
Universal "UVair" fuel credit card has been accepted everywhere.
Now we are in the land of Eurocontrol,
the central air route processing center for Europe's airspace,
and they had sent a notice to Marlene that she passed on to
us advising that the nearest approved slot time to our requested
0930Z (11:30 a.m. local) departure time was not until 29 minutes
later at 0959. However, she indicated that if our passengers
showed up early she would let ATC know and request an earlier
time.
I spoke briefly with a nice young
Scandinavian pilot of an air ambulance Cessna Citation II
parked next to us. They were preparing for a premature baby's
transport to (or from, I wasn't really clear on that) north
Africa. They also operate a Super King Air 350 he said, that
they would normally have been using for this short flight,
but I believe it was undergoing a scheduled inspection. When
conducting the preflight, I found that both of our pitot tube
covers were gone. They fit rather poorly and to keep them
on tighter I had tied them together across the nose gear strut,
but now both were gone. Since I had quite a bit of time while
the fueling was taking place and Pam was looking for the booze,
I decided to search the grass along the edges of the large
ramp, thinking that if they had blown off during the stormy
weather that existed during our first couple of days here,
maybe they would have got hung up when they hit the grass.
Hey! What's that little red splotch in the distance? Hallelujah!
Found 'em! Thought that was pretty darn lucky.
Pat and Ashley arrived well before
the scheduled 11:30 a.m. departure - Bless them! - so Marlene
asked for an earlier slot and was told to expect our original
request of 0930Z. We called for clearance and approval to
start engines - which you should do when flying abroad in
most cases - and were taxiing at 0928, and airborne at 0934.
Universal had adjusted the filed true airspeeds much more
to our liking but they had also filed us for FL310, which
would have worked, and would have saved a touch of fuel, but
was unnecessarily high on this relatively short leg. The clearance
was virtually identical, via airways, to what had been filed,
and took us north northeast covering virtually all of Spain
from south to north and then entering France near Biaritz
right on the Atlantic shoreline: 518 nautical miles total.
Interestingly, many airways that run close to north-south
in Europe are one-way routes that have altitude assignments
that don't always agree with the normal hemispherical cruising
altitude rules: Easterly, odd; westerly even. We had noted
that this routing required an even altitude, so requested
and were assigned FL260. (The FL310 that Universal had chosen
is, strangely enough, considered an even altitude also, because
above FL290, in most places, traffic is separated by 2,000,
not 1,000 feet. Thus, 290, 330, 370, 410, etc. are eastbound
(odd) altitudes whereas 310, 350, 390, 430, etc. and westbound
(even) ones.)
Had great views of the Mediterranean
coast of Spain, saw Granada and Cordoba far below, and were
intrigued by the lovely little white towns gracing the tops
of the hills of southern Spain. Were in high clouds off and
on a little, but generally it was clear. Tailwinds caused
our groundspeed to be 280 or more most of the time, and the
speed hit 354 in the descent. More than once, the controllers,
without request, cleared us direct to a down-the-route waypoint,
cutting some distance and time off of our routing. The old
adage that "You'll never get direct in Europe" seems to be
less a truism than it once was.
Carlos, our driver for the tours
of Granada and Cordoba had, at my request, bought us some
CDs of Spanish classical guitar and flamenco dance music.
A part of the avionics package in N982GA is a CD player, primarily
designed for updating the Avidyne Flightmax database, but
it doubles as an audio CD player. Coupled with the superb
Garmin GMA 340 audio panel and the Bose-X headsets, the music
comes through very, very, well, muting whenever either ATC
or the intercom talks, fading back in when the talking stops.
This is living! Cruising high above the lovely plains of Espana
with classical Spanish guitar filling the air!
The recorded ATIS at Bordeaux
was given twice, once in French and once in English, since
English - Thank God! - is the universal language of aviation,
spoken at all major airports, even those in China and Russia
(and Afghanistan?). Still, it took careful listening more
than once before we were sure that we had heard it all correctly:
Runway 23 in use with an ILS approach, transition level is
FL050, wind 290 degrees at 13 knots, CAVOK (pronounced like
it looks, Cav-Ock, standing for "Ceiling and Visibility Okay"),
QNH 1017 hectopascals.
I am sure we could have requested
and been granted a visual approach but we opted to go ahead
and fly the routing to the ILS since it wasn't far out of
the way and it gave us some nice views as we flew over the
city. As I've said before, the Garmin 530s are awesome. With
the worldwide database, they had all of the approaches at
Bordeaux and we merely programmed them and watched it all
happen.
Touchdown came at 1144Z, for
a flight time of 2.2 hours. We shut down at 1148Z with 1200
pounds of fuel remaining. There was no time difference between
Spain and France, so the local time was still two hours ahead,
as it will be next weekend in Italy.
A young man, Daniel, met us in
his van as we parked and got P & A, then later Pam and me,
to the GA terminal and into a couple of cabs. This was the
first time that we felt less than 100% confident in the handling
service. A little more of a language barrier existed than
before and also the cabs/cars were supposed to have been waiting,
yet P & A probably had to wait over 40 minutes before they
finally left the airport.
At this stop we are going our
separate ways, to reconnect on Friday for the flight to Florence.
Our drive was about a 30 minute one into the heart of Bordeaux
to the Hotel Burdigala…and, No, I don't yet know how to pronounce
it! Our room, number 207, is very comfortable, complete with
minibar, but not nearly as fancy as the one we were spoiled
with at the Marbella Club. Horror of horrors, I haven't yet
been able to log onto the internet using the room's phone
line, and the front desk personnel say that it is best to
come downstairs to connect! Well, perhaps that's what must
be done. We'll see.
The hotel's restaurant was closed,
being too late for the lunch hour, so we ordered some soup
and an omelet from room service and just crashed in the room
all afternoon and evening, napping, reading about the area,
writing this journal, etc. Not sure if we'll venture out for
dinner or merely call it a day soon.
Burdigala Window View |
Runway at Bordeaux |
White town in Spain |
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