Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Flying Bailleau Contest

This year, I did participate to the 36th Bailleau contest, starting just south of Paris.
The nice thing : it was also a family time, as the airfield is nice and welcoming for children. Then mental preparation was really nice :)


Flying condition were quite incredibly good, with heigh ceiling, and 8 flight days out of 10. I flew the "long flight" category, and indeed we were launched on big tasks (twice 600km-ish circuits...). The objective for me was to progress, and I have indeed exceeded my longest flights, in term of distance as of duration. I also flew 490km at a mean speed of 107km/h, something I had never done before.
The difficulty was not to hit the airspaces that are everywhere in this region...


I also dicovered outlandings in real nice conditions, fields being generally biger then any airfield...


Thanks to all the crews that retrieved me (4 times...) in the fields. I even once had the visit of my daughter.


This was really a nice contest, a lot of km & experience gained, I wish I'll be back next year !