Flight 56 : Innsbruck to Sumbaugh, Shetland Islands

This leg will be much easier to just do in narrative fashion - I have a story to tell!

I had spent just a couple of days in Romania, then flew across eastern Europe to Austria. After a week in and around Innsbruck I was ready to head across the Atlantic Ocean. I figured I'd head up north and see how far I could get. So Wednesday afternoon, May 13th, I climbed aboard the British Airways Q400 and set in a 1,022-mile route leaving mainland near the Belgium/Dutch boarder and following the east coast of the UK up over Edinburgh (a past FOTM on http://www.toomuchfs.com/) to Sumbaugh in the Shetland Islands (another past destination at http://www.toomuchfs.com/).

I left Innsbruck at 18:00 local time figuring I'd get into Sumbaugh in time for a hot cup of tea before rolling into bed at the same B&B I had used just a few months ago for our Flight of the Month. I departed westbound and climbed to an initial 12,000 feet, planning to drop lower as I flew along. I crossed over the Bodensee area (yep, another past Feature Flight on http://www.toomuchfs.com/) and headed for Luxemburg. Well, this is where the story gets interesting. I ran into a front of real-weather thunderstorms! (I tried, but never did get a good photo of the lightning)So rather than dropping I climbed, eventually ending up around 22,000 feet and changing course to avoid the biggest cells. I was outside the aircraft taking photos when, BANG! I must have been hit by lightning because I lost Comm Radios, Autopilot and GPS!

Luckily, I know how to fly and navigate without those things but, I figured being without Comms I should land. With the plane trimmed out nicely and only being 34 miles from Luxemburg, I ran to grab my manual of radio frequencies and dailed up the VOR and NDB, then I set my squawk to 0077 (should be 7700 for emergencies - I found out later) and started my descent. The lower I got the soupier the weather got - and I did not have the ILS frequencies so just had to guess that the NDB was near to the runway heading.

I crossed the NDB .... and flew on ... finally finding the runway and landing safely at 19:03 local time.

Obviously this does not finish the story because the leg continues to Sumbaugh.

Some 34 hours later I was able to depart Luxemburg

and continue on my marry little way - across Belgium, along the UK coast to Edinburgh, Scotland and on up to the Shetland Islands.

All told this was a 38-hour leg which means my average speed was about 27 mph!