The flying season of 2015 is arriving rapidly. I hope to be able to partcipate at many fly outs this year on the Cessna 172 S (marketing name SP) equipped with G1000. Last weekend, I drove to my Belgian flying club in Zwartberg-Genk (EBZW) for some additional training with instructor Kristof Goossens as I like to get a deeper understanding of the G1000.

As an exercise, I have been preparing a flight from EBZW to the nearest airfield in Germany, being Aachen (EDKA). With some 500 metres of length and some high voltage tension lines in the vicinity, one has to fly quite precise.

We have been flying to the CTR of Maastricht. There was some confusion as I asked to cross the CTR via Maastricht (as described on my flight plan), meaning the VOR called Maastricht. The controller authorized me to cross his CTR via Maastricht. Kristof noticed that the controller was rather thinking of the city of Maastricht, hereby giving me the shortest route to fly to Aachen. So we called the tower again and explained we asked to pass via Mike Alpha Sierra. That was ok as well. Understood, next time, I’ll make sure that I directly ask to pass via the letter code. One has to be as precise as possible.

Arriving in Aachen proved to be a great exercise, with a Cessna 172S Skyhawk, one can land on very short terrains. The restaurant next to the airfield seemed nice as well, but was fully booked…so we flew back to our home base in Genk Zwartberg

Next morning, sunday, the weather was really windy. More than30 kts steady with some heavy gusts but in the axis of the airfield (runway 21). We have been taking off in bumpy weather exercising all kind of emergency procedures for this plane including engine failures, stolls, very steep turns, etc… all of that went well as well…and big fun ofocurse