Leg 23: Midden-Zeeland (EHMZ) – Hoogeveen (EHHO)
PIC: Etienne
Flying time: 1h36
Landing fee: EUR 42
After arriving at Midden-Zeeland at 1700hours, we needed maintenance. The Cessna needs a maintenance check every 50hours. With a 5 hour extension (what you can do yourself in the logbook) on the plane, we could fly 55 hours instead. And we had 1h06 left after our trip to Morocco, pretty efficient. One more diversion or more headwinds and we would have had maintenance in e.g. France. Since this aircraft has a Thielert/Centurion engine, the 50-hours check only takes 15 minutes or so.
We called Hoogeveen, which closes at 1900 hours but they called us back 15minutes later that 20:00 o’clock was possible today, they would wait for us (for an additional fee). What a service!
So, we unloaded the plane very quickly, got on board, fuelled up and took off at 18:23 hours. The only things we carried with us were our headset, a map and our GPS.
To be honest, we left a bit too much in a hurry and didn’t have a look at the latest weather reports :). In the morning in France we saw the satellite images for the Low Countries and they looked good. But you never know with the weather, it can change really quickly. We were flying south of Rotterdam and we saw that the weather wasn’t that great in front of us. Ofcourse we also forgot our information with visual approach charts, frequencies, etc. But we did remember the ATIS frequency of Rotterdam, just to get a feeling for the weather conditions. The ATIS is a broadcast, updated every 30minutes, with the weather conditions at that moment at a specific airport. Though the sky was not clear, it was good weather to continue.
It really would have been something, if we would have had to divert on this last leg due to bad weather :). North of Rotterdam the weather only got better but we were having some headwinds (15kts), and we really wanted to be there before 20:00 hours as agreed with Hoogeveen airport. Under the Amsterdam area, we saw a lot of big boys flying over our head :)
At Meppel, 15 miles out, we called the tower, just to make sure if it was still open, and fortunately it was. The sky was clear we could clearly see reporting point Victor (VAM for the locals :)). We joined downwind runway 10. Just before, the tower warned us of a lawn mower which was busy on this grass airfield. Well we didn’t want to crash into this one, do we, especially not when they are cutting the field just for you :) (at least that was our wishful thinking).
After a smooth touchdown, we could feel a major ditch in the field (due to the composition of the grounds). Since the aircraft still has a speed of approx 80km hour, it is pretty bumpy :).
Anyway, we were happy that we could deliver the plane tonight, so we could sleep and dream about our adventure the next day.
Frans and Ilona were there too, and helped to park it in the hangar. We thanked Frans and Ilona for renting us their plane for the last weeks And we took a train back to Rotterdam. A bit of an anti-climax :), after flying 5 ½ hours today, we had a 2 ¼ hours to go by train. Sometimes it is just nice to get home and sleep in your own bed.
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