Some time ago, I’ve spent 2 years of my life living in Fuerteventura.
A lot if nice memories are popping up when flying over the island 😎.
Here are images taken on my last flight.
I’m really pleased to be the winner of the National Geographic Spain’s Christmas photography competition, which took place last month on instagram.
All you had to do was a take Christmas picture, post it on instagram, follow National Geographic Spain, use hashtag #NatGeoXmasCollection18 and sit and wait… 😀
In total approximately 1800 images have been posted and mine was selected as winner. Obviously I’m happy as on the top of that I’ve won a new action cam from National Geographic… So the hasthatgs can sometimes be very useful… 🙂
And however it’s already after Christmas, I’m going to share this image with you. It’s called “Santa’s arrival into Tenerife”
Hope you’ll like it!
Santa’s arrival into Tenerife
National Geographic Spain’s Xmas Collection 18
Well, this is my method how to lean the mixture:
Advantage? You will get more power from your engine, more RPMs, you will fly faster and will burn less fuel and have more endurance. Thus the overall efficiency will increase :-).
You can see the same process in this 47 seconds short video in a Piper PA28.
Safe landings! 🙂
leaning the mixture using egt indicator
Looks like this is the best image I’ve ever made…
More than 1.050 shares in 4 days on Facebook, and still sharing… 😀 The strange thing is even when you don’t expect the image is going to be liked, and the audience loves it!
I didn’t get any richer with this, but it’s simply nice that the image had such a huge success 😀
So, I think this would be the best shot ever taken by myself, at least it’s what the audience thinks 😉
Tazacorte, La Palma
Yes! This was my second helicopter flight ever… The first one was back in 2001 in Fuerteventura, the second one (and hopefully not the last one 🙂 ) now in Tenerife.
I was wishing to repeat this experience since a long time and finaly, now in the summer time, the right moment came to take off up into the skies as a passenger and to enjoy the views and the ride.
The only company offering helicopter scenic flights in Tenerife is Helidream, from their heliport in Costa Adeje (ICAO code GCAD), operating a Bell 206 Ranger (reg. EC-LYP). There are different routes available; from 15 minutes local flight up to 1 hour island trip, or charter flights and much more…
I chose the longest option; to do it right, sit back, not to fly, look around, enjoy the views and to take pictures.
After a short passenger safety briefing we were ready to go.
Helidream’s Bell 206 Ranger
We had again (as on all my helicopter flights till now, lol) good weather conditions and the wind was calm, so we had a very nice ride with no turbulence.
I’ve flown a lots of times around Tenerife, but none of those flight were identical, and so was it also in this case.
Pilot’s views from the helicopter
The helicopter was maintaining lower altitude, which offers a closer look on what’s going under us. I’ve seen places that I haven’t seen before. Just because my PA28 has wings and you can’t look under the plane. When I was flying the Cessna, I could also see much better below us.
I definitely enjoyed the heli experience and I think at some point I should try to take a flight lesson in the future to taste how it flies….
Enjoy some of the pictures taken during the flight; as always it’s hard to choose only a few of them.
Safe flights! 🙂
Los Cristianos as seen from the helicopter
Flying above the north part of the island
Selfie with Pico del Teide 🙂
Pico del Teide & the sea of clouds
Playa del Duque, Costa Adeje
Pico del Teide…
Flying westbound
Playa de Fañabé, Tenerife
Santiago del Teide
This landing strip was built during the 2nd World War by Gustav Winter, and it was the first landing strip on Fuerteventura. It is situated in the south of the island, at Punta de Jandía. So far the information I’ve found on Google.
“Don Fuerte”, one of the readers suggested in his comments on this article another story behind this trip: “This strip was NOT built during the 2nd World War by Gustav Winter (also YouTube description is wrong, as are many other websites). The strip was built later in 60s/70s for military and possibly later tourism, but was never really used.
The southwest to northeast strip built by Gustav Winter is located east of Puerto de la Cruz village and barely visible, the road crosses the strip today, see here: https://goo.gl/maps/vxsGtwo2eMs”
I don’t know which one of these is the correct one, but to perform a low pass on it’s is always a huge fun! 😀
Hope you’ll enjoy the video as we enjoyed the low pass!
Safe flying 🙂
Punta de Jandía landing strip
View at Arenas Negras ( last eruption 1706).
Behind it, you can see volcano Chinyero. At this place, in 1909 the last registered eruption in Tenerife took place. 🌋 Now it’s a very nice place for walking in the nature 😅
Volcan Chinyero Tenerife
Recently I got asked by Air Navigation Pro to answer a couple of questions for their blog. I use their application for navigation on my Ipad during my fligths…
I got featured on their blog, and you can read the full story here: http://blog.airnavigation.aero/2017/12/air-navigation-pro-pilot-story_18.html
Safe flying! 🙂
About to touch and go at La Palma airport (GCLA)
In this short clip I’ll explain you how to calculate the true airspeed. Knowing the true airspeed and the ground speed, we can determinate whether we have headwind, or tailwind.
It’s very simple:
FL 75 (7.500 ft)
IAS = 90 kts
TAS = 100 kts (TAS inceases with increasing altitude)
GS = 109 kts
if
GS > TAS => have tailwind
GS < TAS => headwind
This means in our case, we have 9 kts TW (tailwind).
Fly safe! 😀
Sharing with you a short video of the approach into La Gomera airport (GMZ/GCGM), RWY 27 with ATC audio in spanish.
Like to fly to La Gomera, you always get a friendly “Welcome to La Gomera” by ATC over the radio. 🙂
Hope you’ll enjoy the views! 🙂
