A perfect flight first over 200nm of sea and the 600nm of desert with glimpses of the Nile only at the end of the flight. Scattered to broken sc, the remnants of our old depression friend slowly cleared as we reached the Egyptian coast to become CAVOK. Then endless miles of desert looking like this:-
Western Egyptian desert
Apart from one moment when we lost contact with Cairo ATC, air traffic control worked well and we were vectored for an ILS approach to runway 35 at Aswan landing after a flight of 5hr 20 mins having covered 820nm. There we were met by Samy, the charming G A S E handler who quickly arranged fuel before taking us to our hotel where we watched the sun go down over the Nile.
Sunset at Aswan
Tomorrow we are going to do some local sight seeing before setting off for Khartoum on Monday.
Well; what a difference one day makes. This is what we woke up to this morning; it was cool too with a temperature of only 3ºC. After a quick breakfast, we were off to the airport for a departure at 0640Z for Sitia. An uneventful flight at FL110 with a light tailwind routing down over the Peloponnese to the western end of Crete before turning east for Sitia.
Over the Peloppenese
What do you see in the distance? Sure enough, this is the depression we had first encountered at Avignon a couple of days ago. Much reduced in intensity now with tops around FL80 but still strong enough to give some moderate rain showers on the approach to Sitia and after landing as we walked around the small port. Once again, efficient handling by Skyserv (formerly Olympic) soon had us refuelled and into a taxi for our hotel near the port.
Today’s flight was 490nm in 2hr 45 min
Tomorrow the African adventure begins in earnest as we cross to Egypt where our handlers G A S E promise unbroken sunshine.
Phil – this will be a familiar picture to you from last year with rattling window shutters and rain coming in under the balcony door! Oh, the vagaries of the weather. Our little Mediterranean low that we successfully did battle with yesterday has come back to taunt us. Instead of moving NE over Italy to Slovenia with a weak trailing front to the SW as shown on yesterday’s forecast, it has moved SE and developed into a significant feature presently centred between Italy and Greece, and bringing with it rain, strong winds, thunderstorms later and of course, forecast moderate icing above FL60. With high mountains over the Peleponnese directly on our route to Crete, there is no low level sneaky route available so we have another day in Corfu and will leave for Sitia early tomorrow when the weather forecast is good with a useful tailwind. We built a day’s bad weather delay into our travel schedule so no problem with our planned departure for Egypt on Saturday.
Sunset looking NE towards Corfu Town
Later in the day, the rain and cloud cleared as we walked to a cafe for tea and a beer. The photo to the left is taken looking NE towards Corfu Town.
The day at Avignon dawned with rain and a gusty SE wind. We were at the centre of a triple point Mediterranean depression which had moved in overnight and later in the day, thunderstorms were forecast as this reached the Alps Maritime. The big problem was icing, forecast from 5,000 ft upwards. A look outside showed the main base was around 4,000 ft with ragged sc below so I amended my route to go down the Rhone valley towards Marseilles and then take a dog leg round the coast before joining my original route half way to Corsica. This added 50 nm to the route but had the advantage of lower minimum airway levels so that if I met any serious ice, I could drop down to warmer levels without running into any solid objects!
The initial climb out was bumpy and the allotted flight level of FL70 kept me in altostratus with the odd embedded cu,sc. This strategy worked well; I picked up a modest amount of ice but nothing to worry about and eventually after about an hour and a half came into the clear just east of Corsica.
Italy off the left
A short time later the coast of Italy came into view under a high cs overcast and with a lower sc/cu undercast as the picture above shows. The overcast cs slowly disappeared and as the sun came out, so did the cu/sc develop with tops around the 12,000 ft much as forecast. Meanwhile I had climbed to my usual cruising level of FL110. Corfu was cloudy with light showers and we arrived after an 800 nm flight in 5 hr 10 mins. We were met by the nice Olympic handling lady who remembered us from last year; fuel was rapidly obtained and she gave us a lift to our overnight hotel.
Corfu is noticeably milder than Avignon but very quiet as the middle of the off season; tomorrow we move on to Sitia where we spend a couple of nights.
It was raining heavily at home at daybreak but the forecast for the first day’s flight to Avignon was reasonable apart from the 30/40 kt forecast headwind. We arrived at Carlisle in good time to brighter weather and I thought I ought to check the oxygen bottle. I switched it on and there was a hisssssss, O2 coming out of the distributor mechanism. Luckily the local engineer had some O2 suitable ‘plumbers white tape’ and after several attempts at applying this, we managed to fix it but it did mean we were around 45 minutes late in departing.
Apart from the headwind, it was a lovely flight. There were a few build ups in the north but nothing significant and once over the Channel, the tops dropped significantly and it was all but CAVOK by the time we reached the Rhone Valley. We landed at Avignon at dusk having covered 770 nm in 5hr 35 mins. Refuelled and now about to have some dinner.
The forecast for tomorrow is somewhat problematical with another Mediterranean low arriving in the morning and the various different icing models all giving different results, some rather dire. We shall see in the morning!
I went over to Carlisle today to load all our luggage into the aircraft to aid a speedy departure on Tuesday. For our trip to Oman last year, Phil and I procured a fuel pump and delivery hose in case these were needed when we refuelled from barrels. In the event they were not required and Phil stored them in his garage. It is more likely they will be required on this trip and Phil kindly brought them up to Carlisle today having just collected his aircraft from its annual yesterday.
We then went for a short flight to Corsock in Juliet Bravo to give the Delorme InReach a proper test (satisfactory) and see if we could spot Miranda walking the dogs (no sight but she saw us) before Phil returned to Biggin Hill. Good news from Carlisle; avgas price is due to fall by 40 p/litre from 1st March and landing fees also fall by a useful percentage.
