Now in its 33rd annual Edition, the Delage Guide to France for general Aviation is well known and has for many years tended to be the ‘bible’ used by most UK pilots visiting that country.
Now in its 33rd annual Edition, the Delage Guide to France for general Aviation is well known and has for many years tended to be the ‘bible’ used by most UK pilots visiting that country. This year it has appeared for the first time in an extra edition published by Pooley’s Flight Equipment Ltd and specially produced with English speaking pilots in mind.
The approach made here has been entirely different from the Guide VFR—VFR Guide. Instead of placing English language translations on every page, Pooleys has inserted a special introductory section in English and left the original Delage pages unchanged, with all text in French. The English introduction (edited by Pilot’s Contributing Editor James Allan) includes English language Legend and Symbol charts, to make it easy for readers with limited or no French to interpret the Delage aerodrome and approach charts and data It also contains a list of aeronautical abbreviations used in French but which may be unfamiliar to many English speaking pilots. Also included are information about crossing the English Channel; French requirements for flight plans and rules for what to do when crossing the French border; important differences between French and UK VFR; an English-French glossary and r/t vocabulary; and basic information about how to use the Minitel found at many French GA aerodromes to file flight plans and obtain Met and Notam information.
The remainder of the book will be familiar to anyone who has seen a French only Delage guide, unless they have been using an older edition of Delage, in which case the delightfully easy to interpret four colour diagrams and charts will come as a pleasant surprise.
Almost 500 aerodromes are covered, including airports, GA airfields, local club aerodromes with restrictions on visiting aircraft, and even the altiports of the French alpine regions. Each aerodrome is fully detailed with technical data on runways, radio and navaid frequencies, lat and long, elevation, customs, fuel etc, and many also have a note to help users find convenient local hotels and maintenance companies on the aerodrome.
A thirty page foreword covers (in French only) details of civil aviation in France, useful addresses, Met services etc, and at the end of the guide come conversion tables and classified lists of aerodromes, names and addresses of flying clubs, microlight clubs and a decode of ICAO location indicators. As always, Delage is a comprehensive flight guide to France, and this year it has become more easily accessible to English speaking pilots. Just one thing about this guide is rather difficult to understand considering the fact that the competitive flight guide to France is backed by Flyer magazine: why on earth did Pooley’s decide to use as the cover photograph on their Delage 2000 France a colourful shot of a Yak-50, prominently emblazoned with the Flyer logo? Editorial staff.
