Some cravings are easily sated. A waffle cone of soft-serve ice cream, for example, or a hot greasy Big Mac (with a supersize side order of regret). Other, more deep-seated desires, however, seem only to intensify once indulged. Wanderlust is that way for me: The more that I see, the more I’m compelled to roam and explore. And aviation is probably the most insatiable compulsion I’ve ever known. Perhaps I could be weaned off it, slowly but surely, while my attention was diverted by glittery gewgaws — but give me one little taste of the good stuff and I’m back, baby. It’s more addictive than hard drugs, and twice as expensive to boot.
So after flying an Ikarus C42 microlight at Germany’s Mainz-Finthen Airport (Taking Wing, September 2018), my latent cravings kicked into high gear and compelled me into action. I finally signed up for Jack Brown’s Seaplane Base’s single-engine seaplane rating add-on course; it’ll be done, pass or fail, by the time you read this.
I touched base with a bunch of friends who own airplanes, and will hopefully fly several in the coming months. And I made plans to fly an ASK 21 glider on a 26-hour Paris work layover.
I don’t speak much French, mind you, just enough to muddle through ordering wine and victuals on layover walkabouts through the City of Light. But it’s been my experience that most Europeans involved in aviation tend to speak pretty good English.
Alas, when I called the gliderport after a midmorning arrival to Charles de Gaulle Airport, the instructor on duty explained that it was not a very good day for flying gliders — very little lift, as evidenced by the midlevel stratus clouds. Somewhat deflated, I did a Google search of flying clubs — and was surprised to find a whole passel of them just southwest of the city, at a small airport called Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole. I perused the club websites and found that all offered introductory flights and most had Robin aircraft of various vintages, but only one offered the airplane I really wanted to fly, the classic tailwheel Robin DR.221 Dauphin. A quick call to the Aeroclub les Alcyons yielded an appointment to fly with an instructor at 5:30 p.m. After my customary post-Atlantic-crossing nap, I took a train to the Versailles-Chateau stop, explored the fabled palace gardens for a few hours, then hiked the last few kilometers to Saint-Cyr.
The Aerodrome de Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole (LFPZ) is a shockingly small, pastoral airfield considering that it is one of the primary general aviation airports to a global city of some 10 million people. There are two grass runways, the longest 3,000 feet long, but both with displaced thresholds due to tall trees and a motorway on their respective ends. The airport has been in operation since 1907, and served as a maintenance facility for military aircraft during the Great War and as a training field before and after World War II. Despite its diminutive size, it is quite busy and has a control tower. The southern side of the airfield is lined with hangars, most belonging to the flying clubs. At midfield, I found the hangar and clubhouse of Aeroclub les Alcyons.
I was greeted by affable pilot Guillaume Mignot as he smoked a cigarette outside the clubhouse. He welcomed me inside and showed me around. Most recreational flying in France, he explained, as well as most primary training, is done within the framework of fraternal flying associations, which are sanctioned and supported by the French government. Private flight schools exist, but they mostly provide advanced training to those who plan to fly professionally. There are nine flying clubs at Saint-Cyr alone, of which Aeroclub les Alcyons is the largest and busiest, with 330 members flying 4,500 hours annually at both Saint-Cyr and a second location at nearby Toussus-le-Noble Airport. Roughly a third of their members are training at any given time, and they have several instructors on staff, both salaried and volunteer.
We proceeded to the hangar, where Guillaume showed me a portion of the club’s fleet. Other than an Evektor SportStar LSA and a Piper L-4 Cub, they are all Robins, which are common throughout Europe and ubiquitous in France, but very rare in North America. At Oshkosh, you might see a few Jodels, vintage homebuilt designs of which the Robins are license-built derivatives. Both Jodels and Robins are immediately recognizable by their distinctive “cranked” wing, the outer panel of which incorporates considerable dihedral, taper and washout. Robins, which are still being built today, are of wood and fabric construction, from two to four seats, utilizing Continental and Lycoming engines from 100 to 180 horsepower. The classic DR.221 I was to fly, F-BPRT, is quite a handsome little taildragger, sporting three seats and a 120 hp Lycoming O-235. It has an all-flying stabilator, small flaps deployable to 60 degrees, and a unique fixed canopy with hinged halves that swing forward to permit entry and egress.
Guillaume and I had just finished pulling F-BPRT out of the hangar when my instructor, Julien Moreau, returned from his previous flight. “Every club has that instructor who goes the extra mile for their students. That is Julien!” Guillaume told me. We hit it off well, and I later learned that Julien is a former Air France A320 pilot. He briefed me on the route for today’s flight, which would be circuitous and low due to the profusion of airports and airspace in the area. Lowering myself through the canopy into the cockpit was a bit of a twisting exercise (which would have been easier were I an average, lithe Frenchman); once seated, I noted a few interesting features. The visibility is excellent, even in the three-point attitude; there is no need for S-turns while taxiing. The DR.221 has control sticks, as every good taildragger should. There are no toe or heel brakes, only a single centrally mounted brake lever. However, moving the rudder pedals to full deflection actuates that side’s brake, something that is necessary for most turns on the ground and takes some practice to do smoothly. The airspeed indicator is in kilometers per hour, the VSI in meters per second, and a few switches are labeled in easily translated French. Overall, the cockpit is simple, comfortable and easy to use.
Start-up complete, Julien listened to the ATIS (in French) and then called the tower in English. The controller gamely replied in kind, and a few other planes in the pattern followed suit — one of Julien’s buddies rather hilariously mimicking his accent. My takeoff was a bit of a swervy affair — I hadn’t flown a taildragger in 18 months — but I kept it on the runway during the somewhat ponderous ground roll. I brought the tail up at 50 kph, rotated at 100, and initially climbed at 120. At 300 feet agl, I retracted the flaps from their takeoff position (20 degrees) and accelerated to 140 kph, which yielded a 2.5 meter-per-second (500 fpm) rate of climb. We turned to the north, intercepted the A13 motorway, and followed it northwest to avoid several small airports to the west of Saint-Cyr while leveling at 1,500 feet msl to stay below Class B airspace. Several airplanes crossed in front of us at our altitude; Julien said the airspace funnels all north-south VFR traffic through this area. We kept our heads on a swivel.
Level, trimmed out and at 75 percent power, the airspeed settled at 210 kph, which translates to a respectable 113 knots. What the DR.221 lacks in power for takeoff and climb, it makes up in cruise, with its sleek lines and efficient wing design. It was fairly bumpy, the stratus having long burned off into puffy cumulus, but the Robin felt quite solid and stable. I tried a few turns, finding the controls nicely responsive and the stick forces just perfect. If the DR.221 isn’t quite a little fighter plane, it’s not obviously a dowdy trainer either.
We turned southwest toward the town of Thoiry, circling around its beautiful chateau and associated zoo and hedgerow maze before continuing southward across the patchwork quilt of green and gold that dapples the unmistakable French countryside. Aeroclub regulations limit bapteme flights for nonmembers to 30 minutes, so I soon turned east and followed the N12 highway back to Saint-Cyr. Per the tower’s instruction, I made a crosswind entry to the right downwind for 29L, which kept us out of airspace for the nearby Velizy-Villacoublay military airfield. There is also restricted airspace for the Palace of Versailles immediately east of Saint-Cyr, so traffic for 29L/29R must turn a rather short final inside of the palace’s Grand Canal. My previous experience instructing European pilots is that they tend to fly wide patterns and long final approaches, but those who trained at Saint-Cyr-l’Ecole must be the exception.
I’m happy to say that I acquitted myself rather nicely on landing considering my lack of tailwheel recency, and I emerged from F-BPRT grinning ear to ear. The sun was setting, the breeze had calmed, and the airfield was bathed in that incomparable Parisian light. Laughter and chatter filtered over from a club down the flight line, where members were assembled on the lawn enjoying wine and hors d’oeuvres while watching the last arrivals of the night whir down to kiss the grass. It was a perfect end to my first GA flight in France, in a French-built classic. I couldn’t wait for my next Paris overnight to return to Aeroclub les Alcyons and fly the Robin with Julien again. Of course, on the train back into Paris, I remembered that my rotations for the upcoming month contain nothing but Amsterdam layovers. “OK Google,” I said to my phone. “Search ‘Netherlands gliding clubs.’”
Yep, I’m an addict all right, and I just had a taste of the good stuff.
