Yesterday and a fair bit of today (until 6am) was spent travelling, from Husby via Copenhagen to Istanbul and on to Antalya. The stopover in Istanbul was fun; I ran into some 10 old friends in the gate, all Superfinal pilots heading for Denizli, I wanted sooo hard to come with them…
The flights were great – the XCTurkey guys had booked me on Business all the way, so I was well fed and well looked after all through the trip. In Antalya the usual delays due to other pilots having lost their baggage etc. occurred, so we didn’t get out of there until midnight, and then we had a six hour drive to Karaman… Long trip.
So today we were thrown out of bed at 8.30 am, and after a very nice breakfast and a stressed and short briefing we went to the town square to listen to the speaches etc. There was local folkloric music and other entertainment, and we sat and felt very VIP.
The mountain is called Karadag (Black Mountain), just like the Crna Hora and many other hills around the world. It has a fine if a bit small launch, but we’re not so many so that isn’t a problem. Climbing out wasn’t so easy, but several pilots finally made it to around 3,000 m and set off on a crosswind XC.
The crosswind is due to the unfortunate fact that the NATO has decided to have an air exercise close to here so we can’t fly NE from launch, fairly unfortunate as the winds today were up to around 30 km/h from SW. Lets hope that gets cleared, as the SW seems to be the prevailing wind here.
Not much to say about the XC flight, haven’t scored it yet but a few pilots made around 15 km… The cross wind was simply too strong.
Nice to be back in the air though! I can’t say Murat’s €5,000 (for a 300 km flight) seem to be in much danger, all told. We launched at 1 pm and the conditions weren’t great yet, and the day is over now, at 6 pm, so we’ll need to be able to go downwind at least.
I’m going to halt here as I need to go and do some shopping too, more tomorrow, Insh’Allah,
