Base visit to Cerklje ob Krki
Cerklje ob Krki, Slovenia
In September I visted Slovenia for one week to cover a exercise called "Lord Mountain 2010". This exercise was held between Slovenian and Hungarian pilots to train mountain flying. During my stay, I was also able to visit Cerklje ob Krki air base in south Slovenia. The air base hosts the air force flying school and part of 15. helicopter battalion. The flying school operates a various amount of aircraft types such as the Zlin143, Zlin242, PC-9 and B.206 as helicopter.
When I arrived in the morning, I got an instructional briefing on how the flying school operates and educate their (future) pilots. All pilots start their carreer on the Zlin143 and moves on to the Zlin242. When pilots succees they will recieve their civil pilot licence. Helicopter pilots will continue their training on the B.206 and eventually Bell.412 or AS.532. As fixed wing pilots continue on the PC-9 and stay on that type. Exeption for those who will continue to flying on L-410 or PC-6. After a great tour through a hangar packed with aircrafts and helicopters, the maintence crew was so kind to place a PC-9 and Zlin242 outside for some pictures. After climbing on top of the hanger for some shots, I visited the brand new ATC tower. From here a nice view of the base could be given and did I recieved a briefing on the future expansion plans for the air base. During my visit no flying operations took place with fixed wing aircraft unfortunately due to very bad weather. In the afternoon the weather cleared up a bit alowing one B.412 to fly, that made an excellent flyby along the ATC tower.
