St. Bartholomew's Cathedral in Pilsen

View of St. Bartholomew's Cathedral in the center of the town square of Plzen (Pilsen). And yes, this is where the beer comes from. There is a reason that Czech beer is considered some of the best in the world, and we can thank this city for making a lot of it.

This night I finished up my VFR night qualification; it was a nearly 3 hour flight in a very big circle around Prague. The visibility was perfect, but the winds were very strong; according to my GPS we had a ground speed of 156 knots going east (awesome), and a ground speed of 80 knots going west (not so great). The final landing a Vodochody (LKVO) was interesting to say the least; the tower advised winds from 250 degrees at 18 knots gusting to 25 for runway 28 (30 degree crosswind component). It sure felt like a lot more; the plane was bouncing all over the place on final. For some reason my instructor pulled out full flaps on short final, whereas in that wind I normally would have landed with half. Anyway the landing was a little hard for my tastes, but safe, and all in all it was a very good flight.

So now I can fly alone or with passengers at night, although I probably won't for a while.

The picture was taken from OK-CPL, a Cessna 172RG. It was hard to take a good picture without the flash with the light turbulence we had over Plzen.