The mild autumn weather seems not to end in 2015, temperatures keep flirting with 20° celcius although we’re mid November. Weather is also fine with clear skies.

Reason enough to plan a nice Sunday flight with two friends from the Hasselt region.

This time, I planned a flight with a Cessna 172SP (OO-LVA) from Genk-Zwartberg (EBZW) to Mönchengladbach (EDLN) in Germany. Sounds remote, but it isn’t, it is only 40 nautical miles.

But it is a complex flying area and two borders to cross, so I had to file a flight plan. We’ve taken off shortly after noon. First I had to call Brussels info to activate the flight plan. We’re reaching the dutch border after only a couple of minutes, so I had to let Brussels know I’m changing frequencies to Maastricht approach asking to pass the TMA. That goes fine and shortly afterwards, I had to ask them for leaving the frequency as we entered the German airspace. Here I had to call German Langen info. Something I don’t understand very well, is that all the radio communication is not in English (in Belgium and Luxembourg it always is) with flight information services. With Langen info, I noticed a lot of pilots where chatting in German. Approaching Mönchengladbach, I left the Langen info frequency in order to ask Mönchengladbach tower (Class C airspace) to enter their area via the Whiskey waypoint. Quite easy, I just had to follow the canal and was able to land here around 1pm. Not much going on here. After having paid the local taxes, we went by taxi to a nice Brasserie- restaurant (GERO) in the center of town which I found earlier on Tripadvisor. Nice place and excellent food, but not much going on either. After lunch, we had a little walk into town and headed back to the airport.

The return flight to Belgium went smooth and fast although the visibility started to drop. All by all, it was a highly enjoyable Sunday afternoon with my friends