This is the flight where you fly 300 miles between 3 airports. I set off from Jerez to Granada, to Sevilla, and then back to Jerez. This was one of the most enjoyable flights I had done! The weather was perfect, started out with no cloud and great visibility, and hardly any wind, which made things much easier.
I set off from Jerez and navigated to the north-east, avoiding the mountain range and then south east. On my way, I passed the Moron military base and turned south east just before Cordoba, which was clearly visible in the distance.
Moron – the runway is clearly visible:
Just west of Granada:
It took about an hour and 20 minutes to get to Granada, which is pretty fast! It took us just over 3 hours to drive there by car when I went there with my family! ATC were great – initially I was in contact with Seville, then with Malaga Approach, who then handed me over to Granada Tower once I was cleared to the visual reporting point – town just north of the airport. More photos as I was closing in on Granada airport:
As you can see the views were breath-taking! Unfortunately, as much as I would have liked to, I didn’t take many more photos, as my workload in the cockpit soon got too high to safely take even quick snaps as I was doing.
I was soon cleared to proceed to join the circuit pattern, and since I requested “direct base”, I was given clearance to go directly to the base leg and then onto final to land. One thing that I had to keep in mind was that the elevation of Granada was quite high compared to Jerez, so to maintain 1000 feet clearance above ground level, I had to be at 2860 feet above sea level (which was indicated on my altimeter). I landed with 45 minutes to spare, so I reported to the AIS office to gain a security pass and check the latest weather at Sevilla and enroute. After lunch, I made my way back to the aircraft, eager to depart before the two commercials, so I didn’t have to wait around for them. They were still boarding, so I had plenty of time.
Since there was no wind, I was given the choice of direction for take off, I chose to take off in a westerly direction – runway 27, since that was the direction my route was taking me. I hit a bit of turbulence on the way up, but soon reached smoother air at 6500 feet, and away from the mountains. As I got nearer to Sevilla, I could see cloud had began to form just below me, I was still 1000 feet clear, but decided it was best to be 1000 feet below it, in case it built up. So I decended to 4500 feet, into a more turbulent layer of air. This didn’t bother me since I was close to my destination and would soon be descending anyway. Once I was in Sevilla, I refueled and started up again to depart. I managed to take a quick snap of the runway whilst I was waiting to avoid wake turbulence.
Refueling the PA28:
Lined up on runway 27:
The trip back to Jerez seemed very short compared to the large legs I had done to go to Granada and Sevilla. At the end of the trip, as expected, I was quite tired, but it was a very successful cross country flight!