Hi Europa friends,
I finally was able to convince my wife to jump in the plane and go on a longer
trip with our Europa. Weather during the flights was good but required a bit of
planning. We had to go around some systems than made our trip a little longer
than planned but worked out well. We did avoid an airport we were planning to
go to and spend a couple of days and that airport was destroyed by a tornado
the day we planned to be there so we made the right call not going there. In
total we spend two weeks out, flew 2020 NM (3740 KM) and landed in about 7 airports.
Came to about a couple of miles from Canada!
Our Europa performed flawlessly. No issues at all and it was quite fun to do a
long trip in it.
One notable note is that I was wondering how to deal with minimizing the use of
100LL Avgas. Jim told me about his collapsible tanks. Although it is a good idea
they are a bit spendy and I just didn't order in time. The day before the
trip I got the idea of using my removable auxiliary tank, which I have equipped
with a small electric fuel pump. I rigged a small LiPo battery I use on my model
airplanes and would just take the tank to the hotel at night and fill it
on the way to the airport in the morning. Since the tank is too heavy to place
in the airplane full of gas, I would then transfer the fuel to the main tank
and then place it in the airplane when empty. this worked well except for a couple
of long legs where I would load a few gallos of 100LL in the aux tank once
in the airplane. In all I think I only purchased 13 gallons of leaded fuel on
the whole trip.
What a great airplane my little Europa is :)
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