10 November 2018. First two legs. Locaro-Budel 411 Nm. Budel-Belfast 564 Nm, totalling 975 Nm.

November 10, 2018

Today we could finally start. Pilatypus was already in Locarno since the beginning of this week, so Urs had to fly her from Locarno to pick us up in Budel. He arrived punctually at 11:00 LT and we loaded our belongings in the luggage compartment. We departed 13:00 LT sharp.

EHBD: ready for departure

The weather was not fantastic and at FL260 [26.000’] we were still in clouds and had to ask permission to climb to FL280 to avoid icing problems. At an outside temperature of -45 degrees Celcius our de-icing boots cannot be used. They would moreover be completely destroyed.

Sophie was sitting comfortably in her first class seat (she took the photograph herself).

A good approach and landing completed our first day on a trip which may last 37 days altogether.

EGAA – Belfast – refueling

We stayed in a nice hotel called Titanic (pronounced by Sophie as Tíetaniek) built on the previous shipyard of Tíetaniek.

There was not much to see or enjoy for us here in Belfast, except for the extremely nice people, without exception.

The weather does not look very good tomorrow. Looking at a weather forecast for sailors (PredictWind) we are happy not to be in a sailing boat. If we are lucky we will stay part of our flight close to  the eye of the depression and get some good tailwind out of it.

Ps if you would like to look at our tracker, scroll down in this webpage until you cannot continue (unless you are asking to see OLD blogs) and there you will see our tracker in 2018.