17 Adana - Tehran
27. Jan 2007
Departure from Adana airport runway took me past Incirlik, an airport used by us air force during the Iraq war. For the first time I had to climb to FL 170 (17.000 ft.) that is the minimum en route altitude.
That also meant, that I had to use Oxygen from the bottle I have in the cockpit. Via an electronic device, the oxygen is released only when I breathe in. This means, that I have oxygen for about 9 hours in a bottle not much larger than a 2 litre cola bottle.
Coming in over the old Silk route I again had some spectacular views over snow capped mountains (see gallery).
I have the help of an autopilot that can control the 3 axis of the plane – and climb to, and then maintain an altitude. It does however, not control the engine, and I have to monitor it very carefully during a climb – over the Turkish mountains, just before reaching 17.000 feet I had a stall because the autopilot wanted the plane to climb more than the engine could handle, and a descend of about 1000 feet per minute started . Getting the nose down immediately corrected the situation…and after a short time my blood pressure came down too.
Radio communication was a lot better than I had expected – there was no loss of communication despite the high mountains and the remoteness of the area.
Coming into Tehran the smog was obvious, but it was exiting never the less. The approach went perfect, and on ground a marshal showed me to the parking spot. The handler from “Safiran” was there, and he meant that the parking spot was perfect – but it was right behind all the commercial jets….the plane could have been blown away so easily! It was only when the airport authority required the plane moved, that I had to get back in the cockpit and move to a parking spot normally used by big commercial airliners.
The person from “Safiran” did not want to book me into a hotel – I should just get in a cab and try for myself – and phone the handler to inform him of my location. This “service” was I asked to pay 650 dollars for!!
It seems that the lower the per capita income is – the higher is the fees is for these handling companies.
The taxi to the hotel was an “adventure” in itself. The traffic was chaotic.
