The Surprise!
As I wrote yesterday Isabelle of the La Roche glider club had a surprise for us. For breakfast she made us a very good coffee and invited us to show us her other hangar. So we drove around to the south side of the airfield to a company named TOP GUN Voltige were Isabelle, her brothers and many helpers fly and maintain all sorts of vintage, aerobatics, jet and so on aircraft.
Isabelle, thank you for showing this to me!
Cessna 170
L-39 Front Cockpit
T-34
Boing Stearman
T28 Project
The Perils of getting Fuel
After we said goodbye to Isabelle and everybody else, we taxied 90B over the fuel pump. But there we discovered that our credit card was not accepted and the TOTAL carnet neither. Unfortunately the fuel wouldn’t last until Vichy and so we flew half an hour to Nior.
But after landing the AFIS operator told us the fuel pump was broken and hadn’t have time to put up a NOTAM. Well, as we were the only thing on the whole airport, I think that must be southern french interpretation of workload. At least the operator was kind enough to phone to Le Blanc if we could get fuel over there and if we could pay with TOTAL carnet which was assured despite another entry in the AIP.
So up in the air again and we landed in Le Blanc another 45 minutes later. But the fuel pump had no terminal for any card. And nobody was around to help us! So already running on fumes, we replanned again when a young lady approached us and we finally got fuel!
Next on the List: Thunderstorms
We new that there would be thunderstorms in the Massive Centrale but they would be far enough south of our route be be no concern. But because of the delays with the fuel the had begun moving into our path. When I asked Limogue Controle if on cell would be sitting over Vichy he just responded that that was not his sector anymore. So we switch over to Clermont Ferrant Approach and this controller was a great help finally! He helped us to fly around the thunderstorm cell and in the end to land in Vichy. By the way, this is the Vichy were the collaborative regime was sitting during World War 2.
Since the weather worsens by the day in terms of thunderstorms, tomorrow will be the first day we will be heading north again. Stay tuned!