My longest flight...

Just a quick writeup on a flight I did yesterday which was the longest flight in my career — longest in track miles and longest in the planning phase, not unexpectedly long because of a headwind I have to say.

I’ve flown from Germany to the Red Sea in Egypt before, the first time in 3 days, then in 2 days and now I wanted to do it in 24h. The first time it was a real adventure with a lot of unknowns and virtually zero experience to draw from: http://www.elgounaandback.com

My destination El Gouna (formerly HEGO, now ICAO ID withdrawn despite 1500m runway 24h and VOR approach) is not a port of entry so a direct flight was not possible, also 1700NM requires a lot of fuel, especially if you also need to carry some for the way back.

My favorite stop in South East Europe is Belgrade LYBE. AVGAS currently costs 1.15€/l and a technical landing only 30 € for 24h ILS, marshaller, handling, lounge, top notch. I don’t think any airport in Europe beats Belgrade.

I cruised at my standard altitude FL150 with a nice 25kt tailwind and good weather. I believe Eurocontrol celebrated the “International DCT day” because I got a very unusual treatment, all the way to my destination. It started after the IFR pickup where I got “proceed as filed” until she had time to look closer and then came back with a 200+ DCT until the Austrian/Hungarian border. The moment I contacted Wien Radar, I got a DCT to the Hungarian/Serbian border. The moment I contacted Budapest Radar, I got a DCT to my IAF in Belgrade. As ATC, you can’t do better than that. And — as already mentioned on the other thread — Belgrade did me the favor of asking me to confirm that I’m visual with a Fokker. Yes! I’m always happy when I get a visual approach offered and don’t have to burn fuel on pointless IFR procedures in CAVOK but it is always striking how reluctant the airliner crews are when they get asked for a visual. It does bring them outside their comfort zone more often than not in my experience. Surely a different challenge in an A320 than a Cessna!

Unfortunately the monopolist fuel company in Belgrade has gotten a lot worse. It is not unusual to wait hours for fuel, I personally had to wait 3.5h a few weeks ago and others more than 4 hours, even when you’re a jet. This time I was lucky and they came after only 35 minutes. So the rules I’ve learned by now: do not come at rush hour between 10:00 and 14:00 local and do not come between 18:00 and 19:00 local when the shift changes. In the past, it was generally OK to fuel jerry cans but this has become very difficult to impossible now — in line with most other airports. I don’t want to talk publicly about this stuff but my general advice is — do not expect it! In order to avoid this problem, I had fitted another real fuel tank to my aircraft bringing the fuel capacity to 770l but filling up completely would not be very smart for W&B considerations.

On the plus side, the handler drove me to the main terminal for duty free shopping and picked me up so I could load some non ethanol free fuel and buy Plazma cookies for my Serbian employee in Egypt.

I now had enough fuel to make it to my destination with plenty of reserves and fuel for the way back to the next AVGAS source. The next leg was planned for Alexandria Borg el Arab which usually is an efficient port of entry and has bearable routings with not too much pointless dogleg flying. In Egypt you need a permission for every leg with a permission number. Those are very easy and cheap to get but they usually come very late — although 100% reliably when you use the services of Ahmed Hassan at G.A.S.E. This time I got at 1 in the night (alarm was set at 0200Z for a 0400Z departure) along with the message that Alexandria airport will not accept me between 0800Z and 1400Z for capacity reasons. Great, that means landing at my destination at night on the 2nd last day of Ramadan right after Iftar. Also it means having set the alarm to 4am for no reason. Grr! With the winds alot, the leg was planned to last exactly 6h so the flight plan was filed for 0745Z.

LYBE are very efficient and very busy. They had me (30 minutes after startup clearance) line up at the threshold and asked a Swiss jumbolino to do an intersection takeoff and line up before me on the same runway. This made the Swiss pilot very very uneasy, he was thinking “what if this idiot in his Cessna departs?” and I had to reassure him that I won’t do it this time.

My aircraft has a lot of useful load (600kg) and I have rarely ever flown at MTOM, certainly not at ISA+20. It’s turbo charged so not a huge problem but the takeoff was different from my typical 150m run and jump manoeuvers. Again I climbed to my favorite altitude FL150 but due to the hot weather only with 600fpm and rich mixture for love of my cylinders. I had spent quite some time with the W&B calculation because the rear bench was removed for the turtle pac and I had to measure and make sure the COG was right, the tank was very well attached, no sloshing was possible (push out all air and fix its shape with the various latches). I was happy with the result, the trim position in level was exactly where it always is.

Here you can see my patented and ETSO certified snot suction system:

Bulgaria has some serious mountains with snow, quite remarkable as I was about 8000ft above those mountains at +3°C. This is just a bit west of Sofia.

The wind was exactly as predicted and ATC still had their “DCT day” and even the Greek participated — wow! I thought I would not live to the day where a substantial DCT was issued by Greek ATC Still in Serbia, I got a DCT until the Bulgarian-Greek border. Then as soon as I was with Sofia, I got a DCT to Mesta (MES) — over 200NM. Super. That means Bulgaria ATC proactively contacted Greece and they negotiated an improvement for me. Normally I fly the Western route via Macedonia and there some cold war going on between the two countries whether it should be Judean People’s Front or the People’s Front of Judea. Obviously the Athens area has a lot more traffic and operational considerations.

Part of the flight in Greece was without radar coverage but that was not much of an extra burden as the Greek seem to have a very good idea about where aircraft are based on previous reports.

Here’s the island of Thassos:

Lemnos, also with airport — for a surprisingly large portion of the flight I was within actual gliding distance.

Ikaria, a rougher looking island:

Astypalaia LGPL, not sure that was still within gliding distance:

For sure now the time of forced landing options was limited to H2O — until reaching Africa. In addition to my usual drill with life vest, float, water proof grab bag with PLB, sat phone, water, porn magazine, etc. I had trained a new procedure. During the descent, I would hold the breather of the turtle pack outside the window like a pitot and thereby inflate it like a balloon and then close the valve. This would have for sure prevented the Cessna from sinking (more than 400kg of lift) and that’s always a plus.

I passed Crete on the East and continued to the standard FIR exit point PAXIS. At FL150 there was radio communication almost all the time, maybe 20 minutes without but that doesn’t matter. Neither Greece nor Egypt are too worried about such traffic. In the beginning I did try to get relays but I learned that 80% of the airliner crews don’t bother even when addressed directly and of the other 20% most are not capable. It’s time consuming and not really necessary.

It’s always reassuring the see the coastline of Africa.

Alexandria is a rather large town with an impressive harbor, agriculture thanks to the Nile and salines.

As requested after a few (this time actually good) radio vectors, I got a visual approach in Alexadria with own separation, that easily saves 10 minutes and I landed exactly on the earliest time my slot allowed. Turnaround was reasonably fast, about 1 hour which means I gave the handling agent 50% of the tip I promised for a speed procedure. There were a bunch of European offshore oil men with me and when they learned I came with a propeller piston plane, they quickly concluded I must be a complete lunatic.

I still had plenty of fuel for my 2.5h onward flight which led me over the Cairo main airport and to the Hurghada VOR.

So I set off into the sunset. At first we the green fields of the Nile delta until I reached Cairo where it turned into desert until my destination. It’s a rocky desert with large mountains and what looks like a smooth surface from top, is not. A forced landing even during the day would be a very dangerous undertaking, one should try to locate a road. At night it’s probably not even worth trying.

Close to the equator, there isn’t much twilight, a moment later it was pitch black and millions of hungry and thirsty people filled their stomachs for Iftar. I did see a few lights of military, oil and beduin settlements and would have probably headed there in the hope of somehow spotting a road close. Flying near the coast would have been better but there is no off airways flying in Egypt whatsoever and these days they have remarkably good radar coverage so I wouldn’t get away with what I did before.

This time I did another relay and again it was a reminder to never do it again. I try to listen for callsigns of aircraft that are not about to leave the frequency (so need to find out where they are and where they’re heading), have a good radio quality and speak English well. I identified a German crew from Germania so I addressed the pilot in German. He was very helpful but what came out of it was chaos. Radio communication on a shared medium where not all parties hear all transmissions is challenging. He first had to explain to Hurghada that they should be quiet, get my message, transmit it, back and forth. At some point a British pilot shouted “radio discipline!” thinking we’re having a private chat. No, won’t do it again as both I and ATC can live with us not being in contact until close to the destination.

Very unusual was the weather. Wind from the south! This is very rare and always brings a humid climate so I was sweating like a [inappropriate animal for Egyptians] in the descent. Landing was fine just the usual problem that Hurghada only release me in the middle of the base leg which makes it unnecessarily hectic because I have 10 seconds to get a landing clearance from Gouna (it’s towered). I could of course ask for vectored 4-6 mile final like the jets do but I had enough flying for the day and chose the pattern.

All in all about 12 hours of flying and with my past experience, a simple trip. Total preparation time was 30 minutes for flight planning, permissions, handling and 90 minutes for loading the aircraft. The Telegram BOT worked very well during the trip and I could use it to get weather information enroute. I also chatted extensively with Peter from FL150 over Serbia and Greece so he will no longer be able to claim it doesn’t work. He concluded the airframe might have an influence — possibly one of the many things the Cessna does better I had no reception of the open sea and for most time in Egypt but for the rest it worked so well that I did not use my satellite telephone other than ensuring it works.