Karlstejn Castle

A view of Karlstejn castle from a Piper Archer III after a flight through the Praha Ruzyne CTR.

The flight went fine, but my instructor was handling the controls during the portions of the flight when I was communicating with Ruzyne radar and Ruzyne tower. I know that I'll have to do everything myself during my checkride, so, since I'll have plenty of time before I do my checkride, I'm sure I'll get a chance to practice this again and do everything myself.

Communicating in such a busy airspace is really a challenge; twice I started talking simultaneously with another pilot. The other pilots were only ATP pilots (of large aircraft), so I had to wait for a period of silence and then try it again. You really have to concentrate on being brief and communicating as fast and clearly as possible. I made a couple of little mistakes, but it was no problem.

My next flight I will fly to Karlovy Vary and land at their airport in their controlled airspace.

Today it was difficult to choose a picture; on takeoff there was a Piper Seneca waiting, then I took some pictures of Ruzyne from the air, with some large aircraft taking off and landing, then there are pictures of the Czech president's summer house outside Prague (actually another castle), then, when I returned to Sazena, there was an Aero Experimental Diamand DA20 with an American registration (N760SH) sitting outside the hanger without a propeller. This small single-engined aircraft crossed the Atlantic ocean - pretty impressive. I did a google search for N760SH and it returned photos from all over.