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This time above the clouds in the sunshine (EDFC - EDAZ)

As before I departed this morning from Aschaffenburg to Berlin. This time the flight was in the sunshine above the clouds instead of in or under the clouds in the rain. The flight plan was:

AD EDGGZFZX EDWWZFZX EDDZZPLP
(FPL-N747TG-ZG
-SR22/L-SDGRY/S
-EDFC0715
-N0160F090 GED/N0160F090 IFR DCT FULNO N858 MITRU DCT OSKAT T200
LELMA VFR DCT
-EDAZ0130 EDDB
-PBN/B2C2D2S1 NAV/SBAS DOF/140512 EET/GED0010 RMK/CI312485 IFPSRA)

At 8:23 am the weather at Aschaffenburg looked quite nice:

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 08 23 55

After the IFR pickup climbing through 5,900ft at an outside air temperature of negative 3 degrees Celsius towards ERSIL.

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 09 23 23

Level and direct destination EDAZ at FL90. The temperature outside was now -6C.

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 09 26 00

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 09 37 04

Looking through some holes in the clouds to the ground from FL90:

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 09 39 55

The cloud layer disappeared some where at about the midway point of the flight.

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 09 50 07

In the distance there was a thick looking cloud. I thought it might contain a lot of water and requested a descend to FL70.

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 09 54 00

About 50 NM from the destination the clouds reappeared and got a bit thicker.

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 10 13 03

After the landing the weather looked like this:

2014 05 12 Edfc Edaz 10 49 27

All in all it was a pleasant commute to work. The only challenge appeared when shortly before commencing the descend into the destination the dual GPS failure showed up again. Somehow there must be something on board the aircraft that interferes with the GPS receivers of the Avidyne R9. Interestingly the GPS on my iPad worked all the time without trouble.

So when the message “Dual GPS failure” appeared on both screens I turned them off, one after the other, and after the reboot and quick realignment the GPS worked again.

Until a few minutes later the problem appeared again. This time I was descending through the clouds and that is really not a good time for such troubles. Luckily I became VMC shortly after the event and as the visiblity beneath the clouds was quite good it was not something to be concerned about.

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