Hi guys.
Just want to tell you a little "gas-mileage" story from yesterday: Cecilia and me flew up to the lake Strandefjorden by the community Fagernes (try a search on Google Map) for lunch.
Every winter, they clear a strech for snow on the ice-covered fjord and last week, the runway opened for the season.
The winds where from the north, so the trip up there took us 1 hour. Home again, we used 40 (!) minutes.
Homebound, flying at 55% power (21"/2100) at 6500', Wilco had a FF of 21 litres/hr with 135 KIAS and that's pretty good.
Due to the northern winds, we had a GS of 175-185 KTS all the way home.
Thus; we had a gas-mileage at cruise which was about 33% BETTER than the mileage Cecilia gets with her Toyota Prius hybrid car...! (normally that's around 0.55 litres/10 km during winter)
PS: Normally, the Wilco-numbers are pretty good as they are: 55% power gives us around 0,8 litres/10 km (equals a normal-size car) but yesterday the numbers where 0,38/10 km... Tailwinds and low OAT's did the trick... (The AFS-3500 showed approx 14,0 - 14,5 NM/liter)
Soooo..... who ever said that airplanes wasn't energy-efficient??
Next time, someone argues with me about that subject, I'll use the above numbers!
Anyway; Fagernes is a small community; we found 5 (!) places to eat within 150-200 metres (that was the whole length of their "main street"), a very nice hotelbuilding (we didn't go in), a police station, (nope; we didn't go in there either) a bus station (didn't need no bus to go home) and that was it....
The last time I was there, was in the mid -70's. That time I was there during Easter, flying sailplanes off the ice. Strange to be back again after so many years... not to mention that I this time flew in with an airplane me and some friends have built ourselves....
Here's a few pics:
Here we are at 4500' northbound:
Here we've just landed and parked:
Note the trusty old Mercedes truck with the snowplow in the backgroud. It's been a while since I saw one of these. They just don't make trucks like these anymore...
Here's "main street":
Here's the nice old hotel-building:
They just don't make buildings like these anymore either. Too costly to build, too costly to maintain and that's just too bad...
Here we are ready to go home again:
Here, we are at 6500' homebound enjoying the fading light as the sun approaches the horizon:
We're smiling because.... well.... life with a flying RV is gooood...!
As usual, Cecilia was doing the flying while I was toying around with the camera:
PS: I know that the above numbers aren't that special. It's just a matter of knowing where the favorable winds are and slow down in tailwinds.
It was just a little lunch-trip. As a bonus, we got to enjoy the nice numbers when we played along with "Mother Nature"...
Hope I did my math right too... ;-)
Anyway; hope you enjoyed this little story from winter-Norway...
Just want to tell you a little "gas-mileage" story from yesterday: Cecilia and me flew up to the lake Strandefjorden by the community Fagernes (try a search on Google Map) for lunch.
Every winter, they clear a strech for snow on the ice-covered fjord and last week, the runway opened for the season.
The winds where from the north, so the trip up there took us 1 hour. Home again, we used 40 (!) minutes.
Homebound, flying at 55% power (21"/2100) at 6500', Wilco had a FF of 21 litres/hr with 135 KIAS and that's pretty good.
Due to the northern winds, we had a GS of 175-185 KTS all the way home.
Thus; we had a gas-mileage at cruise which was about 33% BETTER than the mileage Cecilia gets with her Toyota Prius hybrid car...! (normally that's around 0.55 litres/10 km during winter)
PS: Normally, the Wilco-numbers are pretty good as they are: 55% power gives us around 0,8 litres/10 km (equals a normal-size car) but yesterday the numbers where 0,38/10 km... Tailwinds and low OAT's did the trick... (The AFS-3500 showed approx 14,0 - 14,5 NM/liter)
Soooo..... who ever said that airplanes wasn't energy-efficient??
Next time, someone argues with me about that subject, I'll use the above numbers!
Anyway; Fagernes is a small community; we found 5 (!) places to eat within 150-200 metres (that was the whole length of their "main street"), a very nice hotelbuilding (we didn't go in), a police station, (nope; we didn't go in there either) a bus station (didn't need no bus to go home) and that was it....
The last time I was there, was in the mid -70's. That time I was there during Easter, flying sailplanes off the ice. Strange to be back again after so many years... not to mention that I this time flew in with an airplane me and some friends have built ourselves....
Here's a few pics:
Here we are at 4500' northbound:
Here we've just landed and parked:
Note the trusty old Mercedes truck with the snowplow in the backgroud. It's been a while since I saw one of these. They just don't make trucks like these anymore...
Here's "main street":
Here's the nice old hotel-building:
They just don't make buildings like these anymore either. Too costly to build, too costly to maintain and that's just too bad...
Here we are ready to go home again:
Here, we are at 6500' homebound enjoying the fading light as the sun approaches the horizon:
We're smiling because.... well.... life with a flying RV is gooood...!
As usual, Cecilia was doing the flying while I was toying around with the camera:
PS: I know that the above numbers aren't that special. It's just a matter of knowing where the favorable winds are and slow down in tailwinds.
It was just a little lunch-trip. As a bonus, we got to enjoy the nice numbers when we played along with "Mother Nature"...
Hope I did my math right too... ;-)
Anyway; hope you enjoyed this little story from winter-Norway...
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