This was a 6 day Kitfox trip from my home base near Vienna to the UK's LAA Rally at Sywell Northampton. The basic stats were:

Total distance 1,731 nm or 3,205 km. Total flight time was 20.35 hours and average ground speed 85 kts. Normal cruise TAS is 88 kts. Average fuel consumption 16.5 ltrs/hour.


The route there was: Stockerau - Erbach - Troyes (overnight) - Lashenden in Kent for customs, then Sywell.


Return route was: Sywell - Calais for customs - Troyes (overnight) - Tannheim (overnight due to delays getting approval to land at Stockerau due to a TRA) - Krems - Stockerau.


It was a great rally with 400 a/c on the Saturday alone. As usual the flying was easy and the bureaucracy bloody awful. On one leg across France there were 9 frequency changes and almost as many transponder code changes, however it was a very satisfying trip.

The Danube does some wonderful loops near the German border.

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Definitely not a mushroom cloud over the cooling tower of this Bavarian atomic power station. An excellent indication of the lack of wind.

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Crossing the Rhine

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The weather for the Channel crossing was marginal. At Lashenden in Kent the instruction was "park behind the Spitfire." There were two Spits and a Harvard operating.

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Crossing the Thames at Gravesend - city of London to port and the estuary to starboard.

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The Lancair parked next to me at the rally also flew from Austria. His cruise speed is more than double mine so a formation flight was out of the question.

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The Rally is probably the largest in Europe with a fantastic variety of aircraft, great organisation and aviator camaraderie.