During the 3rd week of April I plan to ferry a Greek reg' Socata TB20 from Athens Greece to Bournemouth UK for a midlife upgrade on avionics and a nice paintwork
I can fly both VFR & IFR, will have Oxygen if needed and the aircraft does not have anti/de ice gear on board.
Except of the IFR conventional instruments (incl. ADF & DME) there is a KLN94B GPS on board and a portable Garmin 296 for back up.
I am on the initial stages of planning the flight checking E(LO) low level IFR charts but have not purchased any VFR charts for the route of flight yet.
I am looking for some advise from "Eurotourers" herein since this will be my first long cross country after 17 yrs of GA flying
I a considering stop overs for refuel at Kerkyra LGKR, Bastia LFKB and Montpellier LFMT (probable overnight) and then off to Bournemouth.
A first query I did on some IFR FPLs from Eurocontrol validator got these without errors:
(FPL-SXATK-ZG
-01TRIN/L-SDR/C
-LGMG1200
-N0145F100 EGN KOR/N0145F100 IFR R193 GARTA
-LGKR0130 LGKF
- )
(FPL-SXATK-IG
-01TRIN/L-SDR/C
-LGKR1200
-N0145F120 TIGRA A14 BRD L995 PEMAR L5 OST P160 MEDAL A1 ELB
-LFKB0330 LFKJ
- )
(FPL-SXATK-IG
-01TRIN/L-SDR/C
-LFKB1200
-N0145F060 SODRI A3 RUBIT G7 MTG G6 RHONE
-LFMT0150 LFMU
- )
(FPL-SXATK-IG
-01TRIN/L-SDR/C
-LFMT1200
-N0145F100 MEN A27 MOU B373 TRO G40 VATRI B3 BILGO H20 XORBI G40 ABB T27 GURLU Y8 SAM
-EGHH0430 EGHI
- )
I would like to avoid flying over the Alps with anything except CAVOK so for now I am looking into routes SW of the Alps without ruling out an over the Alps eventual decision if this proves to be the best choise.
Also for the same reason I prefer from to fly off from Kerkyra towards Italy instead of a route via the Adriatic sea's East coast.
I will fly night IFR as long as I will have no terrain below or serious IMC.
I was amazed to find out that there are so few Low airways to lead me IFR into Bournemouth flying west of Paris (none actually).
Seeing that IFR will make me do some considerable left's & right's off my "best" course, I am thinking wether it'd be more wise to go VFR over France (provided the good weather).
So still it's too early to decide but I just wanted to bring in some food for thought
I have read
IO540's writeup's but will read them again for a refresh
I would happily stop over at "interesting" GA airfields / cities for refuel along the way instead of midsized airports.
I can use Oxygen en route but would prefer FL080 to FL120 if not necessary to fly higher. Still I may use O2 for a more relaxed head
upon arrival after 3~5 hours in the 10k+ levels.