SUMMER SOARING CAMP 2007

Aeroclub Ceska Lipa, airfield Lada, Czech Republic





Wellcome to the Summer Soaring Camp pages of our aeroclub!

      Ceská Lipa is to be found in the North-Bohemia. It is the district town with about 47.000 inhabitants (the district Česká Lípa has about 105.000 inhabitants). This town, not so small, not so big, provides lot of services, shops, markets, several hotels, restaurants, pensions a.s.o., which can be used for accomodation or for spending free time. The town Česká Lípa is not so far from some other great towns - the (route) distance from some of them is: Prague - 78km, Liberec - 56km, Ústí nad Labem - 58km. In only 16km southerly from Česká Lípa, there lies a great water pond - so called Máchovo jezero (Macha´s lake). This is very well known summer resort, providing lot of water sports, incl. surfing, yachting a.s.o.

      There is one official public airfield, that serves to the town Česká Lípa, that is airfield "Lada". It belongs to our aeroclub, named Aeroklub Česká Lípa. The location of our airfield is 3 km northerly from the town. The RWY (13/31) is 700m long and it has grass surface. About airplanes, hangars, camping and facilities I will write further. The ICAO - code of our airfield is LKCE. So you can find more information in the official publications, e.g.: AIP Czech Republic, Vol. III - AD 4-LKCE  (http://aeroklubceskalipa.cz/cz/aip).
      In addition to the airfield Lada, there are some other good airfields in the neigbourhood of the town, but none of them is now oficially operational and therefore they are used only for microlight flying (or as emergency stripes for glider cross-country flying, for this purpose they are very usefull). 4 km southerly from the town there is a microlight strip - so called "Ramš" (700m grass), 16km easterly there is a military airbase "Hradčany", which is abbandoned after the departure of russian armies. It has 2500m concreete strip of very good condition (with good and long grass emergency strip lying by). The location of the airfield LKCE is very good for the silver "C" distance flight attempts. If you will take a look on the ICAO chart of the Czech Republic, you will see, that in the distance of 62 km (Est) there is airfield Jičín (LKJC). The mentioned airstrip Hradčany is in the very right direction, the same, as is the other former military airstrip - airfield Mnichovo Hradiště (LKMH - now it is used by Aeroklub Mnichovo Hradiště and this airfield is international, that means, that the custom services are provided there). Good diversion airfields for that distance flight are Liberec (LKLB), Hodkovice (LKHD), and Mladá Boleslav (LKMB). The landscape of the North Bohemia has lot of hills and lot of fields inbetween, so good contions for the thermal flights are here with good security for safe field landings, if needed.

      Our Aeroklub has started its history after WW-II by local flight enthusiasts, who had used the former horse-pasture, called "Ptací louka" (the birds meadow) for flyig first. Then they had bought some small grass pastures near the hill Spicak, the same, which are the part of our apron and taxiway now. There are stil some pilots in our club, who remember those times. The starts had to be done downhill and the landings uphill on this field (see the photo above from the year 1964). Afterwards, in seventies, our club has bought the field lying near by (which has good horizontal position). After drying it, this field became our nowadays RWY.

      Our main building (so called "bulding A"), in which flight services are provided, is the original one wooden barrack from forties. Off course - we have made new interiors during the time, but because outside it looks the same way as the war airfield barracks had looked, it is often called "Flight Skansen" by the visitors. We like it as a veteran and lot of our friends (czech or from abroad) advised us not to change the appearance of it. We have two hangars. First is old - a part of our skansen, the second is from seventies and this one servs for sheltering the planes of our guests.
      Inside the building A we have the Pilot´s Club, which is supported by private bar. In this bar our guests can order not only drinks, but even simple meals ("a la carte" or hamburgers, fried potatoes, fried chese, saussages, sweet a.s.o.) and at last, not at least, wel chilled flight beer, directly from the wood!
      The buildings of our airclub are suurounded by the bulges of the forest with the meadows inbetween, on which the weekend-houses of the club members are spread. This meadows are used by our guests as the camping place very often. There are lot of place as for the tents as for the caravans. We provide the electricity net connections (22OV/50Hz) for the camping purposes and for reloading of the air equipment batteries. For the visitors we offer eight beds in a simple dormitory. The visitors can use the fully equipped kitchen, with cookers, refrigerators and sinks. In our camping area there are of course lavatory and showers with warm water, too.
      Near by the old hangar there lies a fire-basin, which is very well beloved as a swimming-pool during the hot summer days.

      Our Aeroclub is the small one. We have one special tow airplane Zlin Z-226M (a twooseater, single controls). It is the backbone of the summer soaring camps. The most used nickname for this airplane, during the summer soaring camps for several years, is "the Slim". As the second tow airplane we often use Zlin Z-142, the training and aerobatic twooseater boroughed from Aeroclub of the Czech Republic. For the soaring flights we use one of our L-13 Blaniks - the all-metal twoseaters. For the better performance solo flights we have one Cirrus, one VSO-10 Gradeient (nicknamed "Vosa" - the wasp) and one all-metal single seated advance-trainer, L-33 Solo.
      For sightseeing flights, now we mostly use Cessna C-172 Skyhawk, owned by one of our members, during the summer season on addition we often have the fourseater Zlin Z-43, lended from Airclub of the Czech Republic.
      Nearly all our starts are made by a tow airplane. Only rarely we use the winch (but we think, that is a pitty). Maybe that it is so, because for the winch starts there are more people needed. But maybe we are too lazy. Although nearly every guest group during Summer Soaring Camps want only tow-starts, we are prepared to provide the winch starts, if they would be requested.
      During the flight season a lot of other aircrafts can be seen visitting our airfield. Nearly every weekend a group of parachute jumpers and divers uses our airfield as their base. They are jumping mostly from L-60S "Brigadýr" (a powerful STOL upperdecker, former crop-duster). Sometimes those divers use the well-known biggest single-engined biplane in the world - Antonov An-2. Those planes are usually borrowed from the other airclubs, but they are flown by our pilots very often. Sometimes a really exotic visitor can be met, e.g. Let L-41O Turblet, Partenavia Victor and others.
      You can find the pictures and the story about our our airfield also on the web site of one of our best friends Han Fraijmann from Netherlands. Try:  www.xs4all.nl/~fraijman/clipa/clipa.htm

      Click here to read more about sightseeing flights and special events offered by our closest cooperator, Sky Office JTN company, which is based upon our aiffield.

      If you are familiar with Microsoft Flight Simulator, you can get lot of detailed sceneries, even the scenery of Ceska Lipa lada Airfield. If you want to, you can try to fly very detailed virtual gliders L-13 Blanik, VSO-10 Vosa, TMG L-13SE Vivat, Z-226, Z-142, off course Cessna c-172 and many others.

      From 1992 we have offered our airfield and facilities to the several groups of sport pilots, both czech and foreign ones, and for their families, too. We were pleased by the summer stay of the pilots from Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. One of these groups had returned to Česká Lípa for five years repeatedly.
      The location, disposition and surroundings provide a good bacground as for the flight programme - flight pupill training flights, local soaring, cross-country flights, as for the whole-familly summer holidays. That is the reason, why most of our guests book their camp at the end of july and the beginning of august.
      In the same time lot of our pilots have their summer-holidays and therefore they are participants of these soaring camps, too. So the club life is more intensive during this time.

                     

      Before his first flight in Czech Republic every member of the SSC is detailly informed about flight rules pending in czech airspace, about local flight rules in Česká Lípa and about the techique of starts (both tow and winch, if it is used). Please, be prepared, that your skill may be verified by some of our instructors before your first solo flight in aerotow or before flying some of our aeroclub´s airplane.

       Every season, the prices for the SSC members are slightly lower, than the ordinary commercial prices. The price list for the summer 2007 has not been finished yet, so, please, do not hesitate to send the request to some of our members (see "contact us" below).