Roger

The Hotel Mara where I’m staying is quite interesting and I’m not absolutely sure what to make of it. The bed is as hard as a rock, harder even than my new bed at home which I’m beginning to loathe, but I’m making the best of it. Every morning the longer I stay here my back ache when I get out of bed seems to be easing more quickly, so that’s good.

I suppose I’d describe it as a boutique hotel but with a large element of self-service. My room has only been made up once since I’ve been here and then in only a very cursory way. Apart from a couple more teabags and a few sugar lumps appearing you’d hardly have noticed as I’d already pulled the duvet back over the bed myself. And that has been it as far as room service is concerned.

I’m still using the same hand and bath towels, although to be fair there are spares, but more worryingly, there was only one toilet roll when I arrived and that is now just down to a few sheets. But luckily I’m used to looking after myself so I’ve gone into survival mode as there’s a small supermarket a few doors up the road where I was able to buy a giant kitchen roll, three large bottles of water for tea making, some milk and some more tea bags as I’d already bought some a few days previously.

I don’t know what the score is exactly but I’ve only seen the charming young Turkish maid making up rooms after people have left so it appears that I’m now dug-in and my room won’t be disturbed until I either die or leave, hopefully the latter. I don’t bother with breakfast which the hotel is not providing anyway and just make do with several cups of tea and a few biscuits, which I prefer as all the spiciness is upsetting my stomach this time.

Yesterday’s breakfast was augmented by the cold left-overs from the previous evening’s Chinese takeaway, which is also just up the road and makes a nice change from kebabs and burgers. So that was very wholesome and nutritious. I ordered only 3 dishes (sweet and sour chicken, beef noodles and egg fried rice) but when they turned up there was enough for 5 people conservatively and possibly 6. So I decided I’d have to make the best of it and the remains have just gone out onto the landing in front of the lift in a plastic bag. Remember what I said about self-service 😉

I think this must be the way to go as I also emptied the somewhat tiny rubbish bin in my room myself and in doing so found a roll of fresh plastic rubbish bags in the bottom of it. I will, however, draw the line at buying a spray can of polish to make the horizontal surfaces gleam and impart a fresh aroma of morning dew to the room. After all, I’d hate to do anyone out of a job…

From what I’d been able to see while walking down the hill from Beyoglu towards Galataport I already knew what to expect so when I entered it after my dental appointment I wasn’t surprised to see what looked like a large block of apartments looming ahead of me.

It wasn’t a block of apartments, of course, but one of the three enormous cruise liners that were moored alongside taking up the whole of the quayside from one end of Galataport to the other.

I decided to head towards the northern end of Galataport before turning back and walking down to Karakoy at the southern end and on my way I saw this sign.

I’m not sure I’d be keen to hang around in an underground cruise terminal this close to the sea as so far I’ve not been that impressed by the quality of basic Turkish engineering. The buildings that have stood for hundreds of years stand much more chance of being around in a few hundred more than what’s going up now, but what do I know…

The Galataport entrance that I’d used last time I was here was now closed and I’d been ‘advised’ by a policeman with a machine gun to walk a bit further down the road and find another way in. From the look of it it was maybe being used exclusively by cruise passengers, or maybe it was being redeveloped as works were going on outside. Nevertheless, there was plenty of port activity going on there.

That’s the Asian side of Istanbul on the other side of the Bosphorus and in the left of centre in the next shot is the Bosphorus Bridge.

Now photographs of what caught my eye walking the length of Galataport from Kabatas at the northern end to Karakoy, what was an enjoyable experience made even better this time by the lovely weather. The first of the three cruise ships, a Viking liner registered in Bergen, Norway. I’ll bet those Norwegians could be doing with a bit of sun after their winter 😉

The liner was the Viking Mars.

Then came a modernist ‘sculpture’ celebrating Istanbul calling itself ‘The City of Names’. It does so, apparently, in honour of all the places from which visitors to the city come. It appears to be in the form of a long roll of coloured stainless steel tape into which all the place names have been punched. Now look, I don’t mean to be overly churlish, but although you can make one or two of them out, you can’t read them, so it seems to me to be colourful but a bit pointless really 😕

Carrying hastily on, the next cruise ship, registered in Hamilton, Bermuda, the Sun Princess.

Looking back up from the quayside you could see passengers swimming around in the ship’s pool which has transparent sides and hangs out over the deck below it. A somewhat weird experience, actually, probably even weirder for other passengers looking up from the deck underneath 🙂

Lastly, the third cruise liner, the Celebrity Equinox.

A couple of shots looking back from the quayside towards the road behind it which is separated from it by a security barrier.

I couldn’t eat much as my mouth was numb after my dental work but stopped in a quayside café along the way for a plate of chips (frites) and a draught local beer. Then I took a last look back up the quay before heading out into the streets of Karakoy.

The last time I was here I was looking for a route back to my hotel via the Galata Tower but this time I didn’t need to so was able to explore Karakoy a bit more. And I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.

I headed out of Karakoy past a service station showing fuel prices of around 1€ per litre for all grades and types which made me whince when I think what we’re paying in France and the UK. But anyway, I left Karakoy with the thought that I’d have to come back again soon.

Here in Istanbul.

Before leaving for my dental appointment on Thursday morning, I thought I’d have a stroll up to Taksim Square and back. And this is what I saw there. Yup, lots of tourists walking around and enjoying the warm Spring sunshine.

But wait a minute…. what’s that over there by the wall?

Hell yes! It’s a water cannon!

But the recent disturbances here in Istanbul don’t seem to have affected the tourist trade too much, although the smaller hotels in Beyoglu where I am, like the one I’m in, do seem to have vacant rooms and, like mine, appear to be dropping their prices a bit.

There is a more than even the usual police presence everywhere either standing around in small groups with machine guns over their shoulders or dashing about in cars with their hooters that sound like a loud burp as they weave their way through the crowds. But otherwise life goes on pretty much as usual for tourists and locals alike.

The last time I was in Istanbul, in February, it rained every day bar one and I left to return to France in snow. I arrived last Wednesday night at around midnight and came straight to my hotel and when I left at 1.15pm the next day to head for the clinic for my first dental appointment of this trip it was already around 25 degrees C.

As usual, Istanbul was swarming with people just as it was at midnight the night I arrived – it really does seem to be a 24 hour city – and this time most were out in tee shirts and shorts. I was in jeans and a polo shirt and by the time I got back to my hotel early in the evening I was feeling a bit over-warm! Summer does seem to have arrived in Istanbul and already three ginormous cruise liners were berthed at the Galataport when I walked along there on Thursday afternoon of which more later.

I am in a different hotel this time and to say I’m underwhelmed by it is an understatement. We Brits have an expression that describes it – fur coat but no knickers. What that means is that it looks good on first impressions but when you get down to where it matters, it’s somewhat lacking.

The outside and interior of the hotel look pleasant enough, clean and in good condition, but it’s where it matters, in the room, that it falls flat on its face. To start off with, my room is small and airless – reminds me of a prison cell, not that I’ve been in one except when I visited Alcatraz.

There is a window that opens onto a filthy gap between the buildings that has a large metal extractor pipe in it from a kitchen next door that roars away through the evening until the kitchen closes, but I suppose I should think myself lucky as the adjacent rooms along the corridor have no external windows at all – just ones with curtains that look inwards onto the corridors themselves.

Because it was hot when I left for the dental clinic I left the window open thinking it would be OK as there’s an insect screen on the outside. Wrong. When I got back there was this big boy lying on the floor in front of the step up to the bathroom – an enormous cockroach (let’s just call it a beetle) about 20 cms long on its back waving its legs in the air.

I managed to pick it up and put it out of the window, but imagine that thing crawling across your face in the middle of the night! And talking about the middle of the night, the wall between my room and the one next to it is thin enough that I had a problem getting to sleep on the first night because there was a gentleman snoring like a stuck pig in there and still was when I woke up a couple of times in the night because I was hot.

I asked for a room with a large bed and that’s what I got. The trouble though is that the room is so small, there’s no room for anything else. There’s nowhere to put your case, even, let alone anywhere to put clothes which, apart from my overcoat, I’ve had to leave in my case. The case itself I have to open on the bed.

And the smallness continues into the bathroom. On first glance it looks OK until you realise that there’s nowhere to put your washing and shaving kit except a rather suspect looking cupboard – even a small shelf would be nice – and worse still, there’s only one tiny double hook for your hand and shower towels.

At least there’s a shower, I hear you say. Yes there is, but getting into it is a challenge. Luckily I’ve lost 6 kgs in weight since I was last in Istanbul and I can just squeeze through the roughly 30-35 cm gap between the shower cabinet doors.

Anyone more portly would have great difficulty getting in and out and I can just imagine the catastrophe that would ensue when the shower does what it seems all hotel showers in Istanbul do, which is switch from cold to scalding hot in an instant. They would squeal and jump and probably bring the whole shower cabinet collapsing down.

But I’m not yet finished with the bathroom. There’s more in the shape of a roughly 30 cm high step going in and out. Going in would definitely be challenging for anyone with mobility problems but anyone could come skidding out if they weren’t careful coming back into the bedroom with wet feet.

OK, am I finished? No, far from it I’m afraid. The room is advertised as having tea and coffee making facilities, and it does, or at least did when I arrived. They were in the form of 2 airline sized cups of water (you know, the thin plastic ones with peal-off foil lids), 4 tea bags and a few sugar lumps. I could see where this was going so while I was out I bought 3 litres of water, a pack of Liptons tea bags and some sugar, and lucky I did because when I got back I found that the ones originally provided by the hotel which I’d used hadn’t been replaced.

And neither had my room been made up even though the young lady who should have done it saw me leaving.

Is that it then? Well, no. When I booked my room back in February I’m pretty certain that I included breakfast in the cost. Why wouldn’t I? However, I was told when I enquired this morning that it isn’t and was directed to a small café next door where I was provided with a very indifferent meal consisting of lots of cheese at a cost of 8€.

So there you have it. Errr, no you don’t. The free wi-fi must be ADSL because it runs at a snail’s pace. When you can connect to it. Absolutely hopeless. I don’t think I’ll be coming back 😕

Oh, I forgot to mention. As I’d had an injection and couldn’t eat much at lunch time on Wednesday, I just had a (large) portion of chips (frites) and a beer in a café on Galataport followed by a Starbucks latte and lemon cheesecake later on. So that evening I decided that I’d stick to just fruit and treated myself to a box of juicy ripe cherries.

Lovely. Highlight of the day 😀

For over a week now 😉

The weather so far this year has been surprisingly poor. We’ve had one or two nice days but they’ve been the exception because even when the sun has been out it’s been accompanied day after day by a chilly northerly breeze. We had a glorious day yesterday, like being on holiday back in the day except every day here is like being on holiday 🙂 But there was something special about it. Beautiful sunshine, everything all perfect, green and lush but for the moment, no tourists. Usually by now we’re beginning to see swarms of Dutch visitors arriving. Spring is when the cranes fly north and the Dutch head south, but there are very few of them at the moment which is quite surprising and a bit unusual.

I’ve been out checking my fruit trees. I bought my first ‘fruitiers’, two cherries, three years ago from an on-line supplier and was disappointed as soon as I saw them. They were small and puny and not what I expected at all. I already had two plums that I’d received as birthday gifts the year before but they had a very bad start as they were stored for several months before being transferred from their pots to my back garden. None of these initial four trees did any good and I ended up chucking three of them away last year, the two plums and one of the cherries, when I bought three more cherries, two apples and a plum from another supplier. The new trees were infinitely superior and have done incredibly well since I transplanted them from the pots in which they were delivered. They cost a bit more than the first ones I bought but they are in a different league compared to those from the first supplier and the extra was well worth the difference.

Even though it was still small and spindly, I took pity on one of the original cherries that I bought from the first supplier because it looked as though it might stand a chance even though it will probably never be of any size or provide much fruit during my lifetime. I moved it, however, to a less prominent position so it could make way for one of the new trees. I half expected it not to survive the move but it has done and after producing blossom early on it looks as though it’ll produce a tiny amount of fruit. It and the new cherries were covered in blossom but all have surprisingly little fruit to show for it. Unsurprisingly perhaps for the new ones as this is their first year after being put in only last year.

In fact, given how puny the remaining original cherry was and that it was also dug up and moved last year, it has not only added some good growth but also done comparatively better fruit-wise than the two new ones. Here are a few shots of it.

In comparison, the three new cherries, which were of two different varieties, have put on some good growth but despite showing quite a bit of blossom early on, have very little by way of fruit to show for it. Here are some shots of the first of them.

The second – hardly any fruit at all.

And the third.

Compared to the cherries, the new plum has done incredibly well. Not only has it put on some good growth but it’s also showing a fair amount of fruit considering this is it’s first year after being transplanted. Here are the pics of it.

As they will ripen much later then the cherries, it’s a bit too early to judge how the new apples will do. Both have put on growth and currently have plenty of fruit, especially considering how relatively small they are, but there’s no guarantee that it will all set. My favourite one that was severely damaged last year by a deer that ripped off one of its branches the day before I put protection around all my new trees, has lots of tiny fruit but I was dismayed to find that it’s smothered with aphids and ants which are presumably farming them for their nectar, which is what I think they do. I’ve sprayed the tree’s foliage twice with soapy water but I’ve ordered some Neem oil and I’ll be giving it a good coat of it before I leave again shortly for Istanbul. I’ll then have to continue the treatment when I get back.

Here are some shots of the first apple that’s unaffected by aphids.

And here are some shots if the tree with the aphids.

These are very early days and it’s far too soon to anticipate how much fruit all of my trees will deliver this year. I don’t expect much as this is the first year for all of them after being transplanted and they need to get their feet into the ground. They and all of us could also do with a bit of good weather 😕

I’ve been working on a flight simulator scenery of my home airfield, Chateau Malbec here in south-west France, for some time and I’ve just completed an initial version.

Microsoft’s latest version (MSFS2024) has an amazing feature built into it that allows you to walk around inside the simulator anywhere in the world. So if you want to in Africa, for example, you’ll be on the savannah and will bump into elephants, giraffe and other wild animals, all alive and in motion. You can look around at the world (a very accurate rendition of) from the top of Mont Blanc if you want. I think it’s a triumph of what can be done by incredibly clever computer designers using satellite scans of the Earth and AI.

I’ve used it to do a walk round the new scenery I’ve created. It was originally for the earlier sim, MSFS2020 but works OK in MSFS2024 with a few very minor anomalies that I know are there but I doubt anyone else will notice. There are a few small design bugs to sort out but it’s fully useable and looks very close to what you see in real life. It’s also as challenging to land at in the sim as it is in reality. There’s a link below to the video I made of the walk round.

I’ve been flying for over 50 years and as a natural extension of that I’ve been involved with flight simulators for many years. These have been PC based, of course, although many years ago (late 80s or possibly early 90s, I can’t remember) I was let loose on a full motion simulator used by airline pilots at British Caledonian (remember them?) and successfully shot the Checkerboard approach at Hong Kong and landed a McDonnell Douglas DC10 at the old Kai Tak airport. This really was one of the highlights of my flying career.

The first PC flight sim that I got hold of was Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 (MSFS 2002) and I had a lot of fun with that even though the ‘flying’ experience left much to be desired compared to the real thing. As I was doing quite a bit of graphics work and web design for my business at that time it was pretty natural that I eventually got into creating and designing flight simulator stuff.

I didn’t get into creating aircraft models although I did quite a few livery ‘repaints’ and aerodynamic tweeking that I uploaded for others to download from the internet and my most successful project was a Kai Tak airport scenery package that enabled sim pilots to land there long after it had been closed and demolished for which there were many thousands of downloads from all over the world. I then went onto MSFS2004 and eventually MSFSX before losing interest.

My interest was rekindled with a non-Microsoft flight simulator, X-Plane 11. This was haled by many, although not by me, as being a flying experience that was much closer to real life. I regarded that then, as now, as just hype as all of the ‘cockpit interiors’ of the type of aircraft that I wanted to fly looked crude compared to the real things and to make it worse, the outside views were as far from realistic as you could imagine.

Nevertheless I decided to use the time when I was sick and receiving chemo in 2017/2018 and couldn’t fly for real to get back into scenery design again and at that time created two highly realistic X-Plane 11 sceneries for two local airfields. These were Figeac-Livernon, which I uploaded, and Ste-Foy-la-Grande, which I didn’t bother to, although it too was highly detailed and realistic. The reason for the latter was that the X-Plane ‘terrain mesh’ close to the airfield had a huge bump in it that isn’t there in real life and couldn’t be corrected, so although I also made a scenery for Castillonnes, where I gained my French ULM licence at, I lost interest once again in flight simulators.

That was until the end of last year. Microsoft got out of PC flight simulators after a couple of abortive replacements for MSFSX and the word was that they would have no further interest in them. However, rumours began to circulate and there were leaks that another new simulator was being developed in conjunction with a partner, Asobo Studios in France, and this was eventually launched as MSFS2020 in 2020 to commemorate 40 years since Microsoft launched their first flight sim. I acquired a copy last October/November after yet another upgrade, MSFS2024, had hit the market and it was thought interest would wane in its predecessor.

This hasn’t happened, mainly because teething troubles are still being experienced with MSFS2024, but for now I’m happy with the older version. The reason is that it is now incredibly close to real life in almost all aspects of the flying experience, the more so because the sim can be enjoyed in Virtual Reality (VR). This means that the pilot can be placed inside a VR world and be ‘inside’ looking out of the aircraft they are ‘flying’. The outside view is staggering and close to real life (and is even closer to real life, I’m told, in MSFS2024, although I haven’t as yet tried it) because what they have done is scan the whole Google Earth/Bing Maps world with artificial intelligence (AI) and then recreated it in the flight sim.

Trees and vegetation (of the correct biomes) have been placed exactly where they are in real life, and although AI can’t tell exactly what a building looks like at ground level from looking down from above, it takes a pretty good guess. And for particular points of interest and major towns and cities, buildings etc have been modelled accurately in 3D so flying over them is just like the real thing. So you can fly over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House from your chair at home, fly through the buildings and skyscrapers of London and Manhatten, land and take off at all the major airports of the world and much, much more depending where your imagination takes you to. You can even find your own house and those of your neighbours.

All this perked up my attention and pretty soon I started thinking about scenery design again. Much has now changed, of course, because technology has moved on, but I was intrigued to see if the computer models that I’d created for my X-Plane 11 Figeac-Livernon scenery could be ‘ported over’ into MSFS2020. Many wise heads on the internet said they couldn’t, the main reason being that the computer modelling software I’d used (Sketchup) was not compatible with MSFS2020, which requires designers to use a system called Blender.

I and many others have found Blender to be an incredibly capable app but very difficult and time-consuming to get into and learn and complete over-kill for the sort of modelling we wanted to do. Many also said that it just wasn’t possible. But they’re wrong and it is. After many hours of work I’ve found a way to do it and the first major project that I did was recreate the Figeac-Livernon scenery I’d made for X-Plane 11 in MSFS2020. It’s great and actually looks a whole level better in the newer sim.

I’ve also gone on to make more MSFS2020 sceneries concentrating on the airfields that I fly into and out of in real life. French designers have already created excellent sceneries for several that I’m interested in (including Ste-Foy-la-Grande and Castillonnes for example) so I’ve turned my attention closer to home and have been working on Malbec, my home airfield, Galinat (wrongly named in the sim), Condat (also wrongly named) and Mauzens, a new field opened by Phillipe who used to be based at Malbec.

After many hours of work, which involved a steep climb up the learning curve, I’ve just finished the scenery for Malbec and taken a series of shots with a British microlight/ULM call a MW6. This was a basic second generation ‘tube and fabric’ model designed by Mike Whittaker with characteristics much like those of my old X-Air and AX3 Weedhoppers and I’ve tweeked its aerodynamics so it performs very closely to those aircraft. Below are the shots in question and I’ve thrown in a few real life shots for comparison purposes so you can see how close the scenery is to the real Malbec.

So just how good is the scenery? Admittedly, the shots won’t mean much per se except for readers who know and have been to Malbec, of which there are a few. I’m very happy with it and with its slope and short runway, it requires the same degree of precision to land at and take off from. So it’s a very immersive experience in VR and almost as satisfying and enjoyable as the real thing. Almost 😉

Again! This is becoming a habit.

My first visit to Istanbul was last November at the start of my dental work and I went again last month for it to be continued. I’ll be going back for the work to be finished off early in May and on each occasion I’ll have travelled by Turkish Airlines, which on the last two flights I’ve found to be excellent.

This morning I made a booking to fly to Melbourne, Australia at the end of this October to visit my cousin who I haven’t seen since we were little children. I’m pretty good now at sniffing out airline fare sweet-spots and the exact dates out and back were determined by the flights and fares that are available and guess what. I’ll be doing the trip yet again on Turkish Airlines!

I’ve made the booking for the whole flight on the Turkish Airlines web site but they’ll not be taking me the whole way. The itinerary will be from Bordeaux via Istanbul and Singapore Changi and the connecting flights between the latter and Melbourne in both directions will be handled by Jetstar, a low-cost wholly owned Qantas subsidiary.

But the Istanbul connection will become even stronger on my return journey. Turkish Airlines offer a free service to their international passengers who have a long enough layover in Istanbul called Touristanbul.

Depending on the time available up to a full day, Turkish Airways will entertain you to a guided tour of Istanbul. It’s totally free and you can make a booking as soon as your flight has been confirmed and your e-ticket issued. I’ve already made my booking, for a tour from 0800-1130 which will take up most of my layover period.

Apparently it also includes some light refreshments, so what’s not to like 😉

People often say that, implying that sometimes events or coincidences don’t just ‘happen’ but instead occur under the influence of, let’s say, a master-plan over which we have no control. I’m not saying that I either do or do not believe in that, but since the events of last Wednesday night/ Thursday morning at Brive station, I’ve been having a few more thoughts about what occurred.

Have you read what I wrote here on My Trike about the young Hungarian lady who I was with overnight at Brive and who was eventually taken away by the police? If not, take a look back at the last bit of my last post. She had a child-like vulnerability about her despite her age and kept just going up to people and talking to them, especially men.

There was a lot of work going on overnight at the station and there were quite a few workmen around, some of whom were taking an interest in her, of which she seemed to be unaware, that seemed to me not to be totally healthy. There were two ‘security men’ in particular who I don’t think were of French origin and who I didn’t much like the look of. I think the workmen realised eventually that she and I weren’t actually together and one asked me if she was crazy. I said no, she’s just different and made sure that he and they understood that I was keeping my eye on her.

It occurred to me afterwards that ‘things happen for a reason’ and several things had happened that had caused me to be delayed so I had to stay at the station at Brive overnight and was there to take this young lady under my wing. I wonder if the reason for that was that she needed looking after and I also wonder what might have happened to her if I hadn’t been there?

I shudder to think with hindsight, and I’m sure you will know what I mean, and I’m pleased that it ended in the way that it did with the police taking her away. I think it had to happen that way because she obviously needed help, not punishment and I only hope she got it.

The weather didn’t actually look too promising for my flight north in 24ZN when I checked it one last time early yesterday morning with strong south-easterly winds forecast and freezing fog and IMC conditions unflyable in 24ZN at the northern end. I contacted 24ZN’s soon-to-be new owner and he said that it was cold but that as on previous days, the mist and fog would clear during the morning.

So as I now didn’t have to worry what time I got into Brive at, as I wouldn’t have a lift there waiting for me to arrive, I decided to be cautious and take off later than I’d originally planned to. And the weather forecasts I consulted varied so much in wind direction and strength anyway (the first time I’ve ever seen that happen) that I didn’t think it would be worth re-doing the numbers for a later take-off time. I actually went at around 9.30am rather than the 8.00am that I’d originally planned for.

As soon as I took off at Malbec I knew that the day’s flying conditions would be challenging because of the wind, although I found that with one or two exceptions the bumps and turbulence weren’t as bad as I thought they would be if I climbed a bit higher than usual. So I did the whole flight at around 2500 – 2700 feet only once touching just over 3000. Then the wind came round more onto my tail and although I had to keep a constant right aileron correction to compensate and stay on track, controlling 24ZN became more comfortable.

But the effect the wind had was staggering. When I do my planning, I use a figure of 90kmh for 24ZN’s air and groundspeed in still air. A favourable wind (tailwind) increases that figure while an unfavourable one (headwind) reduces it. Rarely is the wind either a direct head or tailwind which is why for navigation planning purposes, we do either manual or, as in my case, automatic ‘triangle of forces’ calculations in a spreadsheet to work out in which direction we should aim the nose of the aircraft (heading) given the desired direction of travel (track) and the wind velocity (speed and direction).

Now take a look at the numbers. I use a ‘normal’ cruising speed of 24ZN of 90 kmh although actually, if its airspeed indicator is correct, although it’s never been checked to my knowledge, it’s closer to 85 kmh. The total length of yesterday’s flight from Malbec to Morand was 292 kmh, so my starting ‘rule of thumb’ estimate was that it would take about 3 1/2 hours plus an additional half hour to land on the way and transfer fuel into the aircraft’s tanks, so about 4 hours in total. Thus a take off time of 8.00 am would lead to an arrival time at Morand of about midday. Bear in mind 24ZN’s estimated true groundspeed in still air of 85 kmh as explained above.

The first leg from Malbec to Gajoubert where I had permission to land was of 125 km and my final calculation ‘on the day’ was that with ‘reasonable’ wind speed estimates it would take around 89 minutes with bits added on at each end for take off and landing patterns. So at least 90 minutes (a bit more actually) at an indicated airspeed of 85 kmh. In fact the first leg in total took only 55 minutes (I know, stunning) giving a true ground speed of 136 kmh, which is an amazing figure for an X-air and not that far short of my Savannah’s true ground speed in still air (140/150 kmh).

Doing similar calculations for the second leg from Gajoubert to Morand gave a true ground speed for the leg of 118 kmh, still very impressive, and for the flight overall, a true average ground speed of 125 kmh. So you can see, the wind was proving a huge boost to 2ZN over the course of the flight, boosting it’s true ground speed by nearly 50% over its ground speed in still air of 85 kmh.

Yesterday’s times for the log books were therefore a good bit off my original ‘rule-of-thumb’ estimate of 4 hours for the flight as a whole. After departing Malbec at around 9.30 am and after a 20 minute stop to top 24ZN’s tanks up at Gajoubert, I still managed to land at Morand not long after midday. With an engine warm up time of 10 minutes, then flight and engine times of 2 hrs 27mins for the two legs, total engine time was 2hrs 37mins and airframe time me 2hrs 27 mins, incredibly quick.

It wasn’t all milk and honey, though, of course, it couldn’t be with such high wind speeds which are always accompanied by bumps and turbulence. The first time these were felt was shortly after take off when, with the wind coming from its right rear quarter, 24ZN was affected quite considerably during the right hand turn onto track after take off. The next time was at the landing to refuel at Gajoubert where, with the disposition of the runway (22 with a left hand circuit pattern) there was a very strong gusting cross wind from the left at probably a bit more than 24ZN’s design cross wind limit.

It happened again after taking off at Gajoubert and turning right onto track and in the video that I managed to capture on the GoPro set up in the cabin there’s clearly one huge lump of turbulence which lifted me out of my seat and had me reaching to pull my seat belt really tight. After about 15 minutes the turbulence began to moderate as I proceeded north until by the time I got to Morand the conditions were comparatively benign, which I greatly appreciated as I came in to land there for the first (and last) time on its long grass runway 17.

I mentioned above that I managed to capture a video of the second leg of the flight including the take off at Gajoubert and the landing at Morand. But that’s all I did get and I have to say that I’m getting heartily sick of my two GoPro cameras that are totally unreliable. I expected to plug them both into my giant power bank, together with my GPS tablet, and then forget about them as the power bank could provide a running time of over 20 hours.

In fact BOTH GoPros stopped shortly after I’d started them running at Malbec so disappointingly I got absolutely nothing of the flight’s first leg. And nothing from the outside camera of the second leg either which seemed to be running when I checked it at Gajoubert but obviously wasn’t, so that camera was a total loss. I only got the cabin camera working for the second leg because I had to stop it (when it already wasn’t running) and remove it to get to the fuel jerrican and restart it again before take off, so if I hadn’t done that I’d have got nothing from the whole flight.

So my overall conclusion is that GoPros are rubbish and this is further backed up by always having difficulty getting the data they’ve recorded off them because Windows can’t detect their USB mode which allows the files to be directly transferred to the computer’s hard drive. Instead the GoPros usually have to be opened up and have their SD cards removed so they can be read by a USB card reader. This means that they also then lose many settings, like time and date. Hopeless. I’ll never buy another.

Some pictures of the flight, starting with 24ZN parked at Gajoubert after I’d done the fuel transfer.

Take off into the stiff left-hand cross wind at Gajoubert.

Heading north towards the river Loire.

Just about to cross the Loire with Amboise behind me on my left side (not shown in the image).

Just about to enter downwind LH for runway 17 at Morand.

Final runway 17 at Morand with the cables on the approach just visible.

Now you can see the cables.

24ZN in its new home at Gajoubert.

Me after completing the flight north.

Marc, 24ZN’s new owner (down low) and Charlie (I think it was) the owner of the beautiful Piper Cub.

My thoughts were then turning to getting to Vierzon and boarding the train to Brive as soon as possible. But the usual things happened, talking followed by a quick snack, which I didn’t really need, and I was on the platform 2 hours later than I’d wanted to be. Then things began to turn into a comedy of errors. I didn’t realise that two trains would arrive within 5 minutes of each other on my platform and got on the wrong one, only realising it too late when it jolted into motion a few minutes before the train I actually wanted to be was scheduled for. Late yes, early never and I ended up at Bourges and had to return to Vierzon and amend my ticket. The same guy who’d given me my ticket in the first place realised my plight and very considerately swapped my old ticket for a First Class one which was very nice of him, but all of this took time and I missed the next one to Brive as well.

The one I eventually got was supposed to arrive at about 2200 but didn’t get there until about 2345 and we had several huge delays en route, mainly I think because a lot of modernisation work is going on at the large stations along the route, including Chateauroux, Limoges and Brive itself. So when I arrived at Brive it was chaos because people were trying to grab taxis and there was also a large group whose coach apparently hadn’t turned up. For me the taxi nightmare was compounded because no driver wanted to go as far as Fleurac and getting an Uber was also impossible.

One driver who made a mistake understanding my required destination said he wanted a fare of 185€ when he found that I wanted to go to Fleurac and that I balked at, so I decided to bite the bullet and wait overnight until the Montignac bus service started at 0800 the next morning (today) and get a taxi from there. Not too bad I thought – a bit like having a layover at an airport but it was to turn into one of the strangest nights I can ever remember.

A weird young Hungarian lady was also there, just the two of us. She said she was 35 and worked at a Marriott hotel in Paris from whence she had come to see her ‘boyfriend’ in Brive who was now not answering her calls. But that was just the start of it. She had bright, quite intense staring eyes and I think she was Bipolar because she said she was and during the night her behaviour became weirder and weirder as the night progressed. Her French and English were impeccable and she was clearly very intelligent and as the night went on she began to regale me with stories of all the men she had been, was and was still having sex with.

She also described the shenanigans going on in Hungary with her close family unit and friends which seemed to become ever more complex and intertwined as her conversation progressed. I don’t know what the purpose of all this was but I’m an old bird who’s pretty unshockable although I don’t think that was the reason. She herself said she was on a ‘high’ and didn’t need any sleep. I tried to say that I was the opposite and needed a nap but she wouldn’t have it and so it went on.

The terminal at Brive was locked for a while but reopened at around 3.00am because trains were scheduled to restart between 4.00 and 5.00. It was pretty cold by then and I said that we should go into the tunnel that connects the platforms which was open because of the development work that was going on. For some reason she left her small backpack at the top of the steps leading down, why I do not know, and even at that time of the morning, when we went back up again it had gone, together with, she said, her purse and bank cards. However, by now she was expressing little concern about it.

She’d also gone up onto one of the platforms where there was a train parked with all of its systems switched off, opened a door and climbed into it. She tried to get me to go with her but I thought it prudent (ahem…) to decline and went off to see if her back pack had been dumped in a rubbish bin, without any luck. After the station doors had been unlocked and people began to trickle in, some time after 4.00am, things continued to become more manic. At one time she was lying on her back on a banc of seats raising her legs alternately in the air and quite loudly singing the Edith Piaf Hymne à l’amour in pefect French to the amusement and somewhat consternation of the growing travelling public. But it still didn’t end there.

She originally had had a pack of cigarettes which she had been chain-smoking her way through until they were all gone. When the shop opened she asked if I could buy her another which I did as I assumed she now didn’t have any money hoping that it might pacify her. But it was not to be. Unfortunately she insisted on smoking them inside the terminal building which is, of course, strictly forbidden and against the law. She openly defied two SNCF staff members who tried to get her to go outside and that was the last straw.

Shortly after the police arrived and she ended up being taken away by them in one of their cars. I have no idea what happened after that but I think that I might have dodged a bullet. I have no idea why strange things always happen to me whenever I embark on an adventure. After that everything went to plan. I caught the Montignac bus and although I still couldn’t get a taxi there, I was grateful to scrounge a lift off someone I called because by then I hadn’t slept for well over 24 hours. And I’ve still only dozed a bit before typing this, but pretty soon I’ll be able to descend into the land of sweet dreams 😉

I gave 24ZN, my X-Air, a final check-over yesterday and topped up its tanks ready for the flight north tomorrow. I also filled a 10 litre jerrican to the brim with additional fuel ready to be transferred to the tanks when I land en-route at Gajoubert. So today was all about just getting everything packed away and stowed ready for the flight.

The first job was to neatly fold all of its covers and stow them in the space between the wings held in place by bungee cords. I did the same when I flew 24ZN over to France from Kent and also in my old French X-Air when my pal Wim and I did our flight up the west coast of France in 2015, so I know it works and is safe. Then it was just about getting stuff packed securely on the passenger seat and installing the mounts for the two GoPros that I want to record the flight with.

Here’s a shot of the passenger seat from outside when I’d finished.

And here’s an interior shot.

I’m going to use my huge Chinese power bank to power the two GoPros and also my GPS tablet. The latter shouldn’t really need it as its battery should run for 6-8 hours anyway but the power bank has plenty of capacity to run all three units, hopefully without bursting into flames, so why not do it.

Here are the two GoPro mounts, first the interior one and then the one mounted under the left wing.

And here’s the cabin. Nothing can move and be a nuisance or interfere with the controls and my own space isn’t restricted at all, which I’m pleased about. The GPS will be mounted high up on the right and although it may get in the way of the interior GoPro a bit there’s not a lot I can do about it.

So that’s it. All I’ll have to do in the morning is finalise my flight planning with the latest weather for tomorrow, attach and plug in the GoPros and get airborne, which I want to do if I can by about 8.00 am.

I’ll miss the old girl. We’ve had a relationship going back to 2007/8 but the time has come for her to move on to a new and better life. She was made to fly and there’s no way that I have the time to put the amount of air under her wings that she needs. I think that her new owner will be able to do that and also show her the love that she deserves.

Almost! I looked closer at my route from Malbec to Morand and I found a much better alternative airfield to land at to top up 24ZN’s tanks than Bellac. Just to the west there’s a private airfield LF8753 Gajoubert and the reason it’s a better bet is because it has a long, hard runway.

I’ll be sure when I eventually take off that the grass runways at Malbec and Morand are safe for take off and landing but I wouldn’t know for sure until I landed whether a grass runway on an unknown airfield was suitable and safe until it was too late. This risk will be obviated if I land on a hard runway rather than a grass one and that’s why Gajoubert is ideal.

Gajoubert is a private aerodrome that requires prior permission to land and I fired off an email this afternoon. I’ve already received a very courteous reply with a form attached just as we do at Malbec so from now on in it should be just a formality, and I’ve been told I’ll get the approval on or after this coming week-end.

So that wraps up the basic planning for my flight in 24ZN from Malbec to Morand. All I’ll now have to do is ensure that the aircraft is totally ready to go, which it is, and crunch my fight plan numbers based on the weather. Hopefully the weather gods will be kind this time around and I’ll be able to go on 5th March as intended, although to be honest it’s now looking as though 6th March will be better. Watch this space for further news 😀

I bought 24ZN, my ‘ex-pat X-air’, off my friend who I’ll call ‘K’ in England in order to bring it to France and save it from being broken up for spare parts. ‘K’ had owned it since 2007 but shortly after acquiring it and having its engine overhauled, badly injured his arm and never got around to flying it. His brother ‘P’ did put a few hours on it but by the time I became involved, in 2019, its total hours were still very low and it had spent several years parked in a hangar under full covers without being flown at all.

British microlight aircraft are subject to an annual inspection and permit regime under the auspices of the British Microlight Aircraft Association (BMAA) which in my opinion is bureaucratic, expensive and unnecessary *. No such system exists in France and the levels of accidents and incidents are no higher here than in Britain and there are no ULMs (French microlights) falling out of the air as a result and killing children, puppies and little kittens.

Because it had been un-flown for so long, ‘K’ had been informed by an ‘inspector’ appointed by the BMAA that it would be uneconomic to get it inspected and re-permitted to fly again so ‘K’ was in a bit of a quandary. I suspect that if ‘K’ had shown a sign of going along with this assessment that the ‘inspector’ would either have made an offer for the aircraft himself or would, very conveniently, have known a third-party who would be interested in acquiring it, but at ‘scrap value’, of course, as it wasn’t airworthy and would only be fit to be broken up for parts.

And that’s when I heard about it, on one of my return visits to Britain in my Savannah. I was involved in the original purchase of the aircraft by ‘K’ back in 2007 and was impressed at the time by the condition it was in and when I rolled back the covers in 2019 my impression was that it had hardly changed. And unsurprisingly so in view of the small number of hours it had flown in the meantime and the fact that it had been stored at all times since then indoors under full covers. So I thought that the idea of breaking it for spare parts was a travesty and that’s when I offered to buy it to rescue it and bring it back to its homeland, France, where the decision as to whether it could or could not be flown again would be down to its owner and not a faceless bureaucrat or an opportunistic ‘inspector’.

And my decision was not made lightly. By doing so I would be putting myself and my life even, on the line because shortly after taking off from where the aircraft was located in Kent I would be undertaking a crossing of the English Channel. This is something not to be undertaken on a whim and without having confidence in the aircraft you’re flying in, but such was my confidence in what was to become 24ZN and in my own competence to get it into a fit state not only to do the crossing but also to complete an arduous, long day’s flight from south-east England to south-west France.

I began the restoration work in the late summer of 2019 and wanted to get 24ZN re-registered, ‘exported’ to France and actually on the other side of the Channel by the end of the autumn. But it was not to be. There were bureaucratic delays in obtaining a French registration (24ZN) due to needing to ‘prove’ the identity of the aircraft ie that it actually was the one specified on the paperwork when the kit was exported from France to be assembled in the UK back in 2002.

This I was eventually able to do, by which time the favourable UK summer weather had dissipated and the autumn was turning out to be very unsettled, both in the UK and France. In the end I had to leave the aircraft in the UK and pay for months of expensive hangarage and almost unbelievably the absence of suitable weather windows meant that it remained there until the first week of July 2020. Only then was I at last able to make the crossing to France and the flight down to the Dordogne.

There’s an amusing story that arose because this was in the middle of the Covid debacle. I found out that certain categories of traveller were exempt from movement controls and permitted to enter into the UK, one of which was ‘aircrew’. So I crossed into the UK at Dover in my car, informed Border Force that I was aircrew and was there to reposition an aircraft and had my licence at the ready. I was told that I was the first person to come up with this explanation as to why I was exempt and they very considerately motioned me out of the long queue of travellers waiting to enter the UK and opened a side gate to get me on my way, for which I was very grateful.

But now it’s time for these stories and my relationship with 24ZN to come to an end. I still have my Savannah, which is my principal aircraft, and have hardly flow 24ZN in the years that I’ve owned it. I don’t now have anything like the time to fly and maintain two aircraft and 24ZN deserves so much more than to be left in the back of a hangar. Aircraft need to be flown and if they’re not they slowly deteriorate and become like museum pieces. And they need owners who understand that and are prepared to not only fly them but to also give them the care that they deserve.

So I put 24ZN up for sale in the autumn of last year in the hope of finding such a new owner for it. It took a while and although I had several replies to the ad, it was clear that quite a few were just ‘tyre kickers’ and most of the others would not come up to the mark. Until the right one turned up and decided to buy it and a deal was signed at Christmas time. Since then 24ZN has been a ‘lady in waiting’, waiting in its hangar until it could take to air and depart for its new home in Central France.

The new owner asked if I could deliver it and naturally I agreed to. The destination is Morand (LF3759) which is a flight of between 3 and 4 hours north from Malbec. Both locations have grass runways and up to now both have been too wet to take off and land at, as is fairly normal for this time of year. But the weather is changing, both are drying out and firming up and weather windows are beginning to appear (it would have been possible to do the flight this afternoon, for example, but not without the essential planning and preparations). The new owner and I have been exchanging messages and it now looks as though it might be possible to do the flight on 5th March.

But it’s not that simple, as planning such a flight never is. Even with a slight tail-wind, the duration of the flight means that for safety reasons, just over full tanks fuel will be required, meaning that there’ll have to be a landing en-route to add fuel that I’ll need to carry with me in a jerry-can. A prime stopping point would be Le Blanc, an airfield that I landed at when bringing 24ZN down back in 2020.

The trouble is that the airfield only accepts radio-equipped aircraft and since then the old-specification radio which is still fitted in 24ZN is not now officially approved. So I’ve whizzed off a request to land at an alternative airfield, Bellac, which also has a ‘new’ frequency but does not insist that aircraft using the airfield are radio-equipped. I’ll have to see what the response is, but there are one or two other small, privately owned airfields (similar to Malbec) to turn to as possible alternatives. Otherwise it’s just a matter of waiting now for the weather window and for 24ZN’s new owner to obtain written permission for me to land at Morand.

Parting with 24ZN will be a bit ‘bitter sweet’ in view of the long relationship I’ve had with it. It’s a lovely old aircraft with a great character and although I’ll be sorry in some ways to see it go, I know that Marc, its new owner, will be the right person to take it over. Until the day to hand it over finally arrives, here are a few photographs of the old girl that I took back in the autumn of last year when I put 24ZN up for sale.

The old girl still looks as good as ever – if not in her prime, not much past it, surely 😉

* I believe that a case can be made for mandatory inspections of microlights that are used in a Public category – eg at schools and for ‘pleasure’ and ‘trial’ flights for members of the public. I also think that provision should be made available for private microlight pilots who do not have either the experience or confidence to carry out their own safety inspections of their aircraft and wish to pay for another ‘qualified’ person to do so on their behalf. However, I believe that private microlight pilots who do wish to carry out their own safety inspections should be permitted to do so subject to certain safety requirements eg placarding on their aircraft, even if they wish to carry consenting passengers as they, the pilot, will still be subject to any claim made by their passenger or their estate in the event of an accident or incident whether the BMAA has been involved or not in ‘approving’ the airworthiness of their aircraft. Having a costly BMAA inspection sticker on their aircraft will not save them from this.

After my visit in November of last year, I had to return to Istanbul for more dental work. I arrived at midnight on the 3rd of February and as my first appointment turned out not to be until 3pm on the 5th, I had the whole of the 4th to myself. And lucky I did because although it was very chilly with a cold northerly wind it turned out to be the only dry day, allowing me to get out and about to shoot enough material for a video.

4th February

Despite the stiff wind, I walked the length of Galataport overlooking the Bosphorus and was incredibly impressed. I do not know what it was like previously but now it has been developed and is lined with modern hotels, cafes, restaurants, coffee shops and other places of interest that must be wonderful in the summer months, but not so much now. Even so there were still plenty of tourists enjoying its attractions despite the weather.

And like everywhere else where tourists gather, the security was outstanding and highly visible. To get into Galataport you have to pass through security with metal detectors similar to those in airports. Even if you get in through a store with an entrance on the street there is security in the store entrance and once you are on the quayside there are security officers in uniform, but not police, many of them female, every 100 metres or so keeping their eyes peeled and watching what’s going on.

Istanbul is not the place for you if you’re not reasonably mobile. The walk down from my hotel to my dental clinic takes about half an hour. It’s all downhill on the way down, so uphill on the way back. And the hills are steep. After walking the length of Galataport on Tuesday I ended up way past the road that I would usually have taken to return to my hotel so with my new knowledge of the area I decided instead to head back up to the famous Galata Tower and then back along the main boulevard along which the Taksim trams run.

I was in for a nasty surprise because after leaving Galataport and the flat area next to the sea on which it is situated behind me, the hill up which I had to climb to get up to the Galata Tower, although not that long, was the steepest that I had come across so far, and consisting of large, uneven, bumpy cobblestones. I’m not now in the first flush of youth, or even in the peak of fitness, so this represented some challenge, but I doggedly stuck at it thinking that if I stopped I’d have problems getting going again and made it to the top out of breath and probably with heart pounding. I was then able to stop and take some video of the tower which gave me the respite I needed before continuing my ascent, but this time on far less of an incline.

5th February

A cold northerly wind and snow flurries today. I ended the day with a sore mouth, couldn’t feel my nose and didn’t know for the life of me what I would be able to eat in the evening. And if I thought my hill-climbing experience the day before was bad, it was totally eclipsed today. There’s a turning heading upwards just after leaving the dental clinic and my guess was that it would take me up to Taksim Square from where I could stroll down to my hotel. I checked in a fancy pastry shop on the main road and they confirmed that it would, so off I went and would I live to regret it.

The usual route I take ascends gradually and only has one steep uphill section that is fairly demanding for one of my age and fitness but not so as to cause great physical discomfort. The same could definitely not be said of this route which was one continuous incline right from the get go. And what I hadn’t realised is that Taksim Square is also at quite a higher elevation than my hotel so the climb was also greater as well as being longer.

Nevertheless I again resolved not to give up and did the whole climb without stopping, but I shan’t do it again as this one I did find demanding. I was temporarily shattered by the time I got up to the square and had to take a few moments to get myself together again. Sounds silly, but I’m glad I got back to doing my 10 minute morning work-outs after Christmas which I’m convinced have actually been of great benefit to me.

6th February

With the weather being so unkind this time around, being outside hasn’t been much fun. Today started with an unexpected period of blazing sunshine but I hadn’t planned to go out and was in my hotel room, which is now on the top floor with a small balcony overlooking the rooftops and a small table and chairs. But no chance of using them this visit.

My dental appointments have also cut the day in half leaving little time for other activities so taken all round, my list of things that I intended to do has so far gone untouched. I decided yesterday to have a further unscheduled implant to replace the bungled crown inserted in a right-hand front top tooth by my French dentist. It involved extracting the root and then immediately inserting the implant root, so the wound was a bit raw and painful despite the prescribed antibiotics and painkillers.

By the time I left for the afternoon’s appointment the sunshine was long gone and I stepped out into a chilly northerly wind interspersed by periods of light snow and frozen rain, so there was little incentive afterwards to do anything other than return to my hotel.

An observation I made during my walk to the clinic. I hadn’t really noticed last time how almost everyone in Istanbul is a smoker and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that even included babies and young children who are probably initiated into the smoking habit at a very young age. As you walk past the shops there are invariably people (mainly staff) of both sexes and all ages standing outside alone or in small groups puffing away and outside many of them tables and chairs placed there specifically for the purpose.

Balconies on upstairs floors of tall buildings invariably have individuals or small groups on them puffing away and shivering in the cold while they get their nicotine kick and it’s not very nice when the person you are walking behind in the street turns out to be a smoker when they exhale a foul smelling cloud of smoke which you walk into.

But if you think that’s bad, although there are what appear to be ‘No Smoking’ signs in my hotel’s restaurant, ash trays are actually handed out to patrons who then make constant use of them with their stinky fumes then drifting in your direction while you’re eating. And the previous evening I was next to a group of four guys who did just that, and I mean constant, because one, or usually more, of them smoked the whole time, before, during and after their meal even while they were actually eating. I couldn’t believe it but that’s Istanbul for you.

I could really only eat soft stuff for now and this morning I only had a few slices of bread (with its crusts cut off) and honey washed down with several cups of sweet Turkish tea. No lunch so I bought a box of Turkish Delight and some fruit jellies as I made my way back along the boulevard from Taksim Square. I managed a bowl of chicken soup and a bowl of spaghetti bolognese (Turkish style) for dinner this evening… but come bedtime I’d already eaten half of the sweets that I’d bought. I reckon I needed the sugar to replace all the energy I expended climbing those hills 😉

7th February

Off again this morning leaving the hotel at about 12.30 to have a temporary crown fitted to the new implant. We woke this morning to a thunderstorm and although it eased off, the rain pelted down while I was having a similar breakfast to yesterday’s and during my walk to the clinic.

8th February

Although theoretically my treatment was over for now, I couldn’t leave until 12th February as my flight and hotel had been pre-booked and pre-paid, so I was stuck in a cold, wintery Istanbul up until then. Here are some of my thoughts in the meantime.

With inflation running at just over 42% p.a. in Turkey, one of the things that’s noticeable is by how much the cost of ‘eating out’ has increased even since I was here in November of last year. In the first three days after arriving in Istanbul I had three evening meals which were relatively simple and the food not particularly noteworthy.

On the first evening I had a beer with my meal and the bill came to 1450 TL. At an exchange rate of around 37 TL to one euro (it’s currently standing at 37.06) that works out to 39€ which I considered a bit extreme for what was delivered.

While I was sore following dental treatment I had two evening meals here in my hotel. On both occasions they were very simple – just soup and pasta with a drink followed by a ‘Nescafé with milk’. The first one was fish soup followed by chicken noodles with which I also had a white wine and that came to 1400 TL, equivalent to just over 37,80€. The second was chicken soup followed by spaghetti bolognese (very much Turkish style!) with a red wine, and that came to 1300 TL, equivalent to just over 35€.

But both of these were beaten on the 7th when, despite the constant heavy rain, I decided I’d ‘hit the town’ and find somewhere a bit more amenable than my hotel’s restaurant. I also now had a more adequate set of teeth at my disposal but under the circumstances I didn’t want to go too far and just ended up at the Astral Fish and Steak Restaurant on the boulevard leading up to Taksim Square.

Many of the eating establishments are covered but fully open to the weather and people were eating in them despite it being cold, windy and extremely wet but the Astral offered enclosed eating, although I still found it rather cold inside. The food on the other hand, I found more than adequate – although it came at a price. I ordered a platter of three lamb chops that came on a base of pitta bread with a few chips, some chopped red onion and peppers, a large chunk of grilled tomato and a very tasty large grilled green pepper. I also ordered a bowl of mixed salad on the side, which turned out to be huge, and a 50cl glass of local beer and finished off with a small coffee that had sludge in the bottom, which I quite like.

This came to 1782,50 TL, which is equivalent to just over 48€. The chops were absolutely delicious – tender and perfectly cooked – but I think the cost of the meal was way over the top for what it was. Imagine if you came for 10 days with a partner. Your ‘eating out’ costs alone in that period would be around 1000€!

At these rates I think the level of tourism will eventually be affected as Turkey’s reputation as an ‘economic’ holiday destination will be badly dented. Or is it just me? Am I expecting to pay too little?

By the way, a ‘grande’ but in reality medium-size latte and awful sticky donut at Starbucks at the Galataport cost 249 TL (equivalent to 6,73€) which was 139 TL (3,75€) for the coffee and 110 TL (2,97€) for the disgusting donut, so perhaps all is not lost. Or maybe it is, if that’s where people will be forced to eat and drink at economic prices, away from the establishments offering more traditional and local fare.

The rain continued almost non-stop. I wanted to get across the Bosphorus on the ferry, visit the Grand Bazaar and climb the Galata Tower but I decided to leave all of my plans until the following week before returning home, when the weather was forecast to improve very slightly. I had nothing else to do as I had no need to revisit the dental clinic – just keep taking the antibiotics every 12 hours. Even the prescribed pain killers were no longer needed (5 days antibiotics and pain killers came in at 226 TL equivalent to 6,11€ which I think is very reasonable).

Although it stopped raining at around midday and it turned quite bright, thick low clouds were zipping across the sky and wind gusts of up to 45kmh or more were forecast for the afternoon. So I decided to stay indoors and nip out for a burger or something later. I was fed up with getting soaked through every time I went out.

In order to complete the work on the extra implant I have to return to Istanbul in early May. I booked my flights today because prices will undoubtedly begin to rise as the weather improves and we begin to enter the main tourist season. The cost of the return flight last November was 246€. The figure increased to 260€ for this current trip and I paid 293€ for the return flight in May. The trick is to be flexible on dates and I increased my stay by one day in May at the cost of an extra night in the hotel in order to obtain a much greater saving on my air fare.

The hotel I’m staying at, the Mien Suites, is typical of the dozens of small, privately owned hotels in Istanbul. It doesn’t have lots of stars to its name and its prices reflect that but it’s clean and comfortable and its staff are friendly and remembered me from my last visit. It’s also well placed in Beyoglu and just a 20 minute walk to the dental clinic, so that’s all good for me.

My 9 night stay this time around cost me 301€, booked through Agoda. When I arrived I was greeted by the owner and he said that I should have contacted him direct, so I passed a note to one of his sons with details of my upcoming 8 night stay in May. I’d hoped to get a good price on the same room I stayed in this time but it was not to be and I ended up booking a room in the Mara hotel that’s next to the Aral restaurant where I enjoyed an excellent, but pricey meal, a few evenings previously.

9th February

The weather forecast for Istanbul was ‘Mostly cloudy and chilly, a shower in spots late this morning followed by occasional rain and drizzle this afternoon’. At the time I made the posting it was 4 degrees C but with a stiff north-easterly wind making it feel like 0 degrees at best and possibly lower.

So it wasn’t much fun being there and I’d rather have been at home, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was so cold and wet the previous day that apart from going out for a Burger King (265 TL, just over 7€, for a burger with fries and a Coca Cola) in the afternoon I stayed in my hotel room for the rest of the day. And I couldn’t see much incentive for doing anything different today.

Back on the subject of food again.

Burger King Whopper meal with fries and a Coca Cola yesterday, 265 TL (7,16€).

Take-away kebab skewer today from a small local cafe with chick-peas, chopped onion, a smallish grilled green pepper and half a grilled tomato, albeit in a plastic container with plastic knife and fork, 525 TL (14,19€).

So the ‘simple’ traditional dish costs twice as much. Is it worth it? I don’t think so. What do you think? Are they pricing themselves out of the fast food market?

10th February

Still stuck in my hotel room stuffing my face with Turkish Delight and getting fat. And to top it all, the temporary crown inserted last week had just fallen out, so it turned out to be fortunate in a way that my stay in Istanbul was extended because it enabled a replacement to be fitted.

11th February

A late appointment (6.30 pm) to give the dental lab time to make a new temporary crown in under 24 hours, which I thought was vey impressive as it basically consists of a small plate with a single false tooth. My gum was, and still is, a bit sore with it in place but as the dentist said, it’s not surprising as the wound was still very raw even though he removed a few of the remaining stitches he’d inserted last week before fitting it.

So that was it for this visit and I’m looking forward to going back in May when I’ll be in Istanbul for 8 nights and the weather is bound to be much kinder So I should be able to do a few activities that I have planned as there are lots of things to do and see.

In the meantime, here’s the video that I shot the day after I arrived on 4th February.

As well as flying my Savannah here in SW France, as I’ve mentioned previously I also ‘fly’ in msfs2020 which I recently acquired. Back in 2017 while I was receiving chemo and couldn’t fly, having made a few sceneries for the Microsoft flight simulators FS2004 and FSX I decided to make a Figeac scenery for X-Plane 11 which I subsequently published.

Although I’ve been out of scenery design for quite a while I wondered if the models I’d made for X-Plane could be used for a Figeac scenery for msfs2020 because there isn’t one available and the ‘default’ scenery is nothing like the real thing. I’ve managed to do so and this video is of the results, which I’m quite pleased with.

There is a restaurant adjacent to the airfield which is still popular with truckers and other travellers and although there have been a few changes to the airfield since 2017, I think if you flew in there, you’d still recognise it from my scenery 😉

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Back in 2024 I purchased what I named my Ex-Pat X-Air from an old friend in the UK. It hadn’t been flown for several years and I restored it to an airworthy condition over several weeks before re-registering it to bring it to France. I eventually flew it out of a field owned by my friend in late 2019 and this is a video of a flight from that same field in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 by a different aircraft intercut with video of the X-Air’s actual. The flight simulator scenery was custom built by me and although it differs from the real thing in some details for reasons of privacy, is actually pretty accurate.

Happy 2025 everyone!

LF2461 Galinat airfield isn’t far from my home airfield, Chateau Malbec and is one which I used to fly into a lot. It’s included in MSFS2020 but incorrectly named as LFZJ Montignac Airport and it’s also not as it looks in real life. Although it’s now closed due to the death of its owner, Christian Ceyral, I decided to redesign the airfield scenery and name it correctly in the sim as a tribute to Christian who was a character who lived life his way.

The video shows a take off and landing at Galinat flying over the Chateau de Losse and the village of Thonac and is intercut with snippets from a real take off and landing that I did in my Savannah about 6 years ago.

As well as flying my real aircraft I’ve also been a fan of various computer based flight simulators over the years. The latest (and most realistic we are told) is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 which was released in November. I’ve not yet experienced it but over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with its predecessor, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (msfs2020).

This was also ground-breaking when it was launched and I decided to give it a go when I found that it was being offered at a significantly reduced price, not because I’m a skinflint but because I wanted to see how it would run on my PC before making the enormous (and expensive) leap into the 2024 version.

I only have what nowadays might be described as a mid-range PC set up – Windows 11 Pro 64 Bit, Intel Core i5-12600KF processor running at 3.69 GHz, Nvidia RT3060 GPU and 32 GGB of DDR4 RAM. What makes these new sims most interesting is that they can be run in Virtual Reality (VR) mode and I run msfs2020 in VR in a Quest 3 headset which I acquired from LeBonCoin.

VR mode allows you to ‘sit’ in the cabin of the simulator aircraft with full 360 degree vision. This means that as well as being able to look out of the front of the aircraft you can also turn your head from side-to-side while flying it giving a lifelike viewing experience that makes ‘flying’ the simulator very immersive. The downside is that this naturally requires considerable computer processing power and graphics resources. Nevertheless, I’m more than pleased with the performance I’m getting. I can’t do crazy things like fly through the skyscrapers of London or New York which would reduce my frame rate to single figures but I enjoy an extremely immersive experience for the kind of low level general aviation flying that I like to do in real life.

Shown below is a video which I shot earlier flying out and back from my real life airfield, Chateau Malbec here in France. The strip appears in the simulator but only as bare grass so I’ve had to make it into something more resembling real life. We used to have two green hangars on the airfield but now only have one. They looked a bit different to the ones I’ve used but that doesn’t matter because the overall effect is strikingly similar.

The runway slopes exactly as in the scenery with trees on the approach and there are two barns which don’t look exactly like the ones I’ve used but again, that doesn’t matter because it’s the effect that counts and only I and anyone who’s actually been to the field know what it’s actually like in real life and the latter would recognise it I’m absolutely certain. I have more detail to add, like improving the tree coverage and trying to add some fences, which are difficult to do on sloping ground, but I’m reasonably confident it might be possible.

I’ve included the mobile phone tower which stands close to the top of the runway in real life and also another significant feature, namely a very tall TV and radio broadcasting tower with flashing lights which is almost always visible in the distance, depending on the weather, on a direct line looking down the runway. The tower is at a commune called Audrix and if you google that name and click on ‘images’, you’ll see lots of pictures of it.

The video is of a flight from Chateau Malbec to Audrix and then to the town of Le Bugue just to the west of it which is instantly recognisable in the sim. Then back up to the river Vézère and along to Les Eyzies which is also very recognisable.

Les Eyzies is famous for being where prehistoric man used to live in caves on the cliff faces there and yes, there are houses there today built into the cliff faces. Not quite as per the simulator, as seen in the video, but the program designers did a pretty good job even so. Then again, they were Asobo, a French company.

Finally, from Les Eyzies the video takes you back the short distance for a landing on Chateau Malbec’s sloping runway which is a test in the sim just as it is in real life. The landing was not the tidiest ever, but then again, I don’t usually fly taildraggers 😉

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This is about the second and concluding part of my trip to Istanbul to get work done on my teeth. The work was done the day before in the excellent dental clinic that I’d had the good fortune to find after an extensive internet search and I use the term ‘good fortune’ advisedly because everyone has heard about disasters that people have suffered as a result of receiving various types of medical treatment in Turkey.

My own experience was nothing but good, both with regard to the clinic itself and the treatment I’d received. I had been advised to allow two days for this initial phase of my treatment (I’ll be returning again for it to be completed in the new year) but after the work had been carried out, the dental surgeon said that if I suffered no ill effects overnight I needn’t return the next day.

That indeed was the case, which left day 2 for me to explore the area of Istanbul around my hotel as my flight back to Bordeaux wasn’t until early the next morning anyway, so as the weather continued to be good I welcomed the opportunity to get around a little bit more and take more photographs. I want to show them to reinforce the impressions I gained of Istanbul in the short time that I was there but if you’re fed up with seeing more photographs, just skip to the end of the narrative where I set out and sum up my conclusions.

But still on day 1, the day on which I’d received my treatment, I’d taken dozens of photographs on my way back to my hotel and had to stop when my phone’s battery ran out. So after I’d arrived I put my phone on charge and enjoyed a late soft (as advised by the clinic) lunch in the café on the ground floor before returning to the main shopping boulevard, Istiklal Cd, to take some more, starting by heading eastwards towards Taksim Square.

The tram in the above picture is one of several historic vehicles that run from Taksim Square, along Istiklal Cd to the Taksim Tunnel and back again. It’s a tourist attraction, much like the trams in San Francisco, although not quite as spectacular, as well as being a useful mode of transport. The fare is only a few Turkish Lira but even at this time of the year, it’s always packed with people hanging off the running board outside.

Next is a shot of one of the side streets off to the left taken while heading eastwards along Istiklal Cd towards Taksim Square.

Here’s one of the many fast-food vendors on Istiklal Cd. They sell only Turkish style food – no hot dogs or hamburgers – and on the stall there are roast corn cobs and large roasted chestnuts.

There were also, of course, lots of Turkish style sweet shops selling Turkish Delight and other confectionery.

Another shot of a Taksim tram.

Now some general shots taken in Taksim Square.

Here’s another side street taken while walking back westwards along Istiklal Cd.

Yet another shot of the Taksim tram taken as the light began to fade. It’s impossible to resist taking pictures of the tram as it trundles past, as many others also want to do, and it’s annoying when just as you’re about to take the perfect picture someone jumps right in front of you to take one themself.

I spotted this charming little café as I was walking back and popped in to take this picture, although I didn’t stop for any refreshment. Maybe next time.

Another side street shot taken as the daylight began to fade and the overhead lights began to come on.

More shots walking westwards along Istiklal Cd.

Looking back eastwards after the tram had passed.

A very contented Istanbul cat on a bench on Istiklal Cd.

A cosy café/bar at the westerly end of Istiklal Cd.

I then turned around and headed back eastwards along Istiklal Cd to return to my hotel.

The next day, as I wasn’t going back to the dental clinic, I started off relatively early in the morning by exploring the narrow, non-touristy streets behind my hotel. The market stalls were already beautifully laid out and ready for the business that would soon start and continue throughout the day.

I then headed to the westerly end of Istiklal Cd, where I’d stopped and turned round the previous evening, with the idea of continuing onwards down the hill on the street heading down to the Galata Tower, another famous tourist attraction.

I think the name of the street was Galip Cede Cd, a promenade containing lots of music themed shops selling a variety of musical instruments.

How’s this for a little drop-in clothes outlet. And drop in you might well do if you don’t have your wits about you. I don’t know if there are any health-and-safety laws in Turkey but I’m pretty sure that such an entrance would not be allowed in the UK or, I suspect, any other western European country.

This is as far as I got before my phone’s battery ran out yet again. Luckily I got a shot of the Galata Tower before turning and heading back up the hill to return to my hotel.

And so my short trip to Turkey came to an end. I was up shortly after 5.00 am the next day to head for the airport only to receive a message from Turkish airways saying that my flight had been delayed by one hour. When I arrived there (in an Executive Taxi arranged for me by my hotel costing me just 40€) I had a chance to view the airport terminal for the first time.

Istanbul has two international airports – Istanbul (IST) on the European side and Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) on the Asian side. I was travelling via IST and I was highly impressed by how new, fresh and modern the terminal is. I arrived at what I thought was ground level but when I walked over the bridge into the terminal I was amazed to find that I was actually several floors and 50 or more feet up!

The interior was equally impressive and in comparison seedy old London Gatwick (and possibly Heathrow too) has a long, long way to go to catch up.

So what was my take on my trip to and short sojourn in Istanbul? The main conclusion is that I found it very rewarding in all senses of the word. I’ll go into the financial aspect in a moment but my purpose in posting so many pictures of Istanbul was to show how incredibly photogenic and what an amazingly attractive tourist destination it is. Putting aside my reason for going to Istanbul, this alone made the trip rewarding and worthwhile just as a short-break destination.

I found the Turkish people very warm and friendly. I was only ripped off once, and then not in such a big way as to justify making a fuss about as I knew it was happening. On day 2 I decided to have lunch in a small café off Istiklal Cd. I didn’t want much so ordered two lamb skewers and a bowl of frites (potato chips) together with a Corona (a more expensive) beer. I finished off with a couple of large latte coffees and expected the whole lot to come to at most 25-30€

When I asked for the bill I was shown one in Turkish Lira which the waiter then took away with him when he went to bring the card terminal which already had a figure on it when he returned. He pressed me to increase it even further for a tip which I declined to do up to the amount he suggested, but even so the meal ended up costing me 45€, expensive even for France let alone Turkey!

Now, what about the financial aspects. The dentist in France quoted 3880€ for the work that I wanted doing and also charged an up-front fee of 100€ for a panoramic x-ray giving a total of 3980€. I also assume that at least two more panoramic x-rays would be required during the treatment, bringing the total up to 4180€.

The all-in total quoted by the dental clinic in Istanbul for the same work was 1020€ and all-in means totally inclusive of everything including things like panoramic x-rays which are ‘free’. Then in addition there are the costs of travel and hotel accommodation in Istanbul, as shown below. I have also included the amounts for the follow up trip to conclude my treatment in February of next year, which I have already booked, so the figures are final and in full.

Turkish Airlines return flight 04/07 November 2024… 246€
3 nights original Istanbul hotel… 58€
Additional for second, more expensive hotel… 40€
Taxi from airport to hotel… 35€
Taxi from hotel to airport… 40€
Parking Bordeaux Airport 04/07 November 2024… 47€
Turkish Airlines return flight February 2025… 261€
Hotel Istanbul 8 nights February 2025… 281€
Taxis from and to airport… 80€
Parking Bordeaux Airport February 2025… 66€
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Total travel and hotel accommodation… 1154€

Total cost of treatment including travel and hotel accommodation… 2174€

So this figure is around half the cost of receiving the identical treatment in France (4180€). But in my own case there is yet another consideration. Usually in about February every year I take myself off for a short winter sun break in Hurghada in Egypt. This usually costs me around the same as what I will pay for the return flight to Istanbul next February and hotel accommodation thus effectively making the second part of my dental treatment (480€) even cheaper.

So as far as I’m concerned, choosing to have my dental treatment in Turkey will be doubly rewarding, financially and also as an enjoyable winter city break. What’s not to like?

Unfortunately (for me!) I’ve reached that age when my teeth are beginning to let me down. Some dental work that I’ve had done over the years is beginning to fail and some of my teeth are beginning to crack up merely as a result of wear and tear and the abuse they’ve been subjected to over the years. In the last few months alone I’ve paid out north of 2000€ for dental work here in France, some of which to be honest I’ve not been very happy with, and I hit the limit when it came to replacing a couple of mighty molars that couldn’t be saved.

My French dentist referred me to one of his ‘colleagues’ near Limoges (yes, I know what you’re thinking, I thought so too…) and my worst fears were realised when I was given a quote of 3880€ for a couple of implants as I refuse to have removable false teeth. The total would have been more actually as I had to pay 100€ up front for a panoramic x-ray scan and there would undoubtedly have been a need for more during the course of the treatment.

So I decided to seek alternatives in the form of overseas treatment. Countries such as Romania and Tunisia were suggested to me but I decided that I’d start off with a search for clinics in Turkey. Now Turkey has a reputation for providing dental treatment at affordable prices but with the risk that you can end up with incredibly bad as well as excellent results for your money depending on which clinic you choose for your treatment. So much due diligence was going to be necessary.

The problem, of course, is that you don’t know what you’re going to get until you get there and even if the facilities on offer look terrific, you have no idea what quality of treatment you’ll end up receiving. For all you know you’ll be worked on by a crooked, failed ex-estate agent who has no qualifications despite lauding themself on their web site and who’s just in it to rip foreigners off for lots of money. Do you know how to make a claim for negligent health treatment in Turkey? No, me neither.

And so I began my search and it didn’t take long to find a throng of dental clinics in Istanbul and Antalya, the main coastal holiday resort. And it was pretty clear that this is big business as almost all of them wanted to provide a ‘dental tourism’ package including hotel accommodation, ‘VIP’ transfer from the airport and ‘Executive’ transport between the hotel and the clinic. At a price.

So you need to cut through all the fluff and concentrate on the heart of the matter – what treatment do you need and what will it cost.

At the ‘brass tacks’ level most of the prices for what I wanted were similar, ranging from 1150€ to 1790€ at the extreme upper limit, for two implants and three crowns. And they all required an initial visit of two days for the implants to be inserted plus a follow-up visit of five to seven days about three months later for the crowns to be fitted. I didn’t bother checking to see if these prices included the VIP ‘extras’ because among all of the clinics I checked, one stood out.

This was because they were the cheapest but on the face of it, their facilities as shown on their web site, were excellent. So I was immediately sceptical. Contact with all of the clinics is by Whatsapp and to be fair, with I think just one exception who I think has still not replied, all were very responsive and free with the information they provided. A couple also asked for a copy of the panoramic x-ray that I’d had done in France before providing quotes but most didn’t and just sent back prices based on the information I’d given them.

I was intrigued by the clinic mentioned above that provided the cheapest quote. I decided to be direct and Whatsapped them back with a message saying what’s going on, how come you appear to have facilities that are second-to-none yet your prices are so low? Usually the two things don’t go together and that makes me sceptical.

They were totally unoffended and replied very promptly saying that they are not in the ‘dental tourism’ business, they do not have to shell out profits to shareholders and they merely concentrate on being a serious dental clinic providing excellent treatment. They pointed out that both of the senior dentists are highly qualified from the University of Istanbul Dental School and one of them is a lecturer there.

I liked that and what more could be said? So I went ahead and made an appointment followed by bookings for flights and a hotel in Istanbul. That was back in July of this year and I went off on a Turkish Airways flight from Bordeaux to Istanbul at 6.00 pm on 4th November.

I like Turkish Airways. Not only do they offer a generous cabin baggage allowance compared to almost all of the other airlines and a low fare, they also fly direct to Istanbul from Bordeaux and they provide a meal on board during the flight. So what’s not to like?

By making a ‘non-refundable’ hotel booking so early, the room price I was quoted was peanuts – just 19€ per night. In fact I mistakenly only booked for two nights when I needed three and when I realised my mistake a couple of days before leaving I booked another and that also only cost 20€. And both bookings included breakfast!

But there ended up being a twist. On arrival in Istanbul I enquired about a taxi to the hotel at the airport and was advised that I could have a ‘VIP’ taxi (a comfortably converted Mercedes van) for 50€ or I could take a standard yellow cab that would cost 35-40€. I’m not a mean type but you can guess what I opted for even though it was gone midnight.

The young cab driver turned out to be very friendly and we conducted a conversation, with him using a voice translator on his mobile phone as he drove because my Turkish is non-existent and his English was not much better. But we had a laugh. As we approached the hotel I became more and more alarmed because not only did the area become more and more dystopian with lots of derelict and boarded up buildings, but finally when we pulled up it was in the pitch black. There had been an area power cut and I was assured by a young man who was expecting me and loomed up out of the blackness with a tiny torch that it wasn’t always like this. But I was unconvinced.

He said that I needed to go to another hotel and we set off on foot, me carrying my case and him leading the way at pretty high speed. After a minute or so we entered into the light and shortly afterwards we were met by another large man waiting half-way down the next street. My companion gestured that I was to go with him, turned heel before I knew it and disappeared to go back to where we had come from. So what other choice did I have? My fate was in the second man’s hands and off I went following him to I knew not where.

In fact it all worked out fine. We ended up at a second hotel which turned out to be surprisingly good. Checking it now as I write this it’s being advertised for around 90€ a night but although the room I was offered wasn’t worth that it more than met my needs. It had a window with a full height curtain that opened onto an outside stair well and you couldn’t see the sky but I didn’t care about that for the time I’d be in it. It had a separate bathroom and shower plus tea and coffee making facilities and what more would I need for the two days and three nights I’d be staying there? God lord, I even got to watch Trump’s election in English on the Bloomberg TV station in English!

Here are some shots of the hotel, first of its outside. It’s the second building in from the right next to the one with the red sunshades over its windows. It’s much like lots of other ‘minor’ hotels in Istanbul, tall and narrow. It’s above a café which I think is part of the hotel because it’s where breakfast is served. I’m not sure if, like much of Istanbul, the premises ever shuts its doors because you enter the hotel through the café, either by a lift in the café itself or up a stairway just inside the café entrance on the left.

And here are some shots of the room I was given. It was room 202 on the second floor. The ‘reception’ such as it was was in a cubby hole on the first floor and after I’d been handed the plastic card that opens the room’s electronic door lock I hopped into the lift and pressed button number 2. And found myself on floor 3. Very confusing, but don’t forget that this is Turkey. It turned out that the ground floor was -1 and you get used to it.

OK, the fan in the bathroom sounded like a monster truck engine and one hinge of the toilet seat was broken, but these were only minor details, petty inconveniences. I was initially more alarmed by what I spotted in the top of the main cupboard.

Then I thought, what the heck, I’ll not be putting anything on the shelf. It’ll be fine. Anyway, it was late and I had a dental appointment in the morning and just wanted to get to bed.

The next day the manager – he said he was the owner but I wasn’t wholly convinced – said that as the hotel I was now in was more expensive than the original one that I’d paid for, I’d have to return there for the next two nights. I said I couldn’t be bothered moving and he said that I’d therefore need to pay a further 70€ – in cash. I offered 20€, he suggested 50€ and we agreed on 40€, which I thought was a result as my three nights only cost 98€, an average of just under 33€ per night. Including breakfast.

It seems to me that Istanbul is very much a ’24/7′ city and one of the advantages of having a room at the rear of the hotel was that there was no noise and I slept surprisingly well. My dental appointment was for 11.00am so I had plenty of time and was able to enjoy a ‘full’ Turkish breakfast – cold sliced sausage, olives, yoghurt, a hard-boiled egg, as many slices of baguette style bread with butter, cherry jam and/or honey as I wanted and coffee or tea. I was also offered an enormous omelette to follow on both mornings, which I declined as the former was quite enough for me.

Then it came time to find my way to the dental clinic. The hotel was in the heart of ‘old’ Istanbul not far from Taksim Square while the clinic was to the south of the city down towards the port area. I asked at the hotel what was the best way to get there. Should I take a taxi or what? Or could I walk it? The manager was installed in his cubby hole and was very friendly and helpful. He whipped out a sheet of used A4 paper, called up a map on his computer and printed it off on the blank side.

He then proceeded to draw the routes I might take on the map. The first alternative was to walk to Taksim Square, jump on the metro, head south to another unknown (to me) metro station, hop off and walk down a road that I didn’t know to where the clinic was located. This seemed a bit sketchy to me, so I asked about walking the whole way as I had plenty of time.

He then drew two more lines on the map starting by heading off in completely the opposite direction, which concerned me somewhat. The route was in two parts. The first part ended up in blank white space on the map because that part of the city had been missed when it was printed off. It joined with the second part inside the blank space and then headed back along what was obviously a main thoroughfare up to the clinic.

I may be getting on a bit but I like an adventure as you’ve probably already gathered by now, so I opted to go for the walking option. I was told that each part of the route would take 10 minutes, or 20 minutes in total, so I got myself ready and departed with plenty of time. All I had to do, I’d been told, was turn right out of the hotel, turn right again and keep walking as far as I could. Then I’d need to turn left and keep walking until I got to the clinic. And by jove, he was right!

The first part of the route was all downhill from north to south towards the port area. I find Turkish addresses and road names totally mystifying but it appears that I might have been on Yeni Çarsi Cd but I don’t know for sure. The route was fascinating, much of it very steeply downhill. Istanbul is a photographer’s dream. Every step, everywhere you look there’s another shot but I didn’t have time. That would come later, on my way back.

Two things there were lots of. Mobile phone shops – everywhere, more than you can count. And cats. Google Istanbul cats. There must be almost as many as there are people. They’re wild but are for the most part well looked after because people have made little shelters for them where there’s nowhere else for them to live and put out food and water for them. And although they’re wild they’re not feral and let you pet and stroke them.

It’s amusing when they decide to sit in the middle of the road in front of an approaching police car, of which there are many, and refuse to move until either someone picks them up and deposits them to one side (the most likely) or the car almost runs them over and they hop out of the way at the last moment. Savvy they certainly are.

When I arrived at the bottom of the hill at the main road I knew I had to turn left. The road was very wide, two-way with trams running in its middle and I surmised that this was the road on which the clinic was located. But I didn’t know for sure. There was some kind of gallery or something just a hundred or so metres in the direction I wanted to head, so I popped in. A young lady behind the desk didn’t speak any English so I showed her my map and the main road. She confirmed with a smile that it was the right one so I thanked her and off I went again on my journey. And sure enough, as confirmed by a helpful lady police officer a bit further on, if I kept walking I’d find it on my left. And I did.

The elderly security guard just inside the front door directed me upstairs and I entered the clinic to a very warm welcome after waiting a few moments after I’d knocked on its door. I was immediately impressed because what I saw before me was exactly what had been shown on their web site.

These were the views from their front windows of the main road along which I’d walked to get there.

I’ll not go into detail about the treatment that I received except to say that it was totally professional and impeccably delivered. All of the instruments and devices that the dentist came into contact with were wrapped in sanitized film that was replaced for each patient and both the dentists and the assistants took the greatest care to ensure that I was comfortable, safe and protected against infection.

I was delighted with the quality of the treatment I received. Before I left I was told that although I’d been told two days would be necessary, if I experienced no problems overnight, I didn’t need to come back the next day and they’d see me again in two or three months time. I was given a prescription for pain killers and a course of anti-infection tablets which I picked up from a pharmacy just down the road and was told that if I was careful I could eat soft food, like soup, pasta, ice cream and yoghurt. So that’s what I had for lunch when I got back to the hotel and as I experienced no problems whatsoever, I didn’t go back the next day.

Then came the walk back up the hill to the hotel and this was the time for photographs. And I took lots of them, starting with a view in a westerly direction along the main road, Meclis-i Mebusan Cd.

Just along from the dental clinic, next to the pavement and the busy main road with its huge volume of traffic, was this lovely little group of cats sitting contentedly in the warm sunshine.

With all of the large number of cats that I saw while I was in Istanbul there wasn’t one fight or indeed any sign of aggression among any of them. They all seemed happy and content and able to get on very well together.

Now more shots as I walked westwards back along Meclis-i Mebusan Cd, the first looking back in an easterly direction. There was an enormous police presence everywhere, traffic police like this one, but also civil police in the pedestrian areas of the city.

After a few minutes I arrived back at Yeni Çarsi Cd where I had to turn right and start the climb back up the hill to my hotel. I continued taking lots of photographs along the way in both directions, looking up the hill and back down from where I’d just come. I enjoyed the experience. The colours were so vibrant and the buildings quirky and all different with none looking the same, and old jammed in against new. I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

Can you spot the two cats in the next shot?

There were cash machines everywhere but this was the only time that I came across a complete bank of them. There were several more that weren’t included in the following shot.

The cash machines were at the top of the hill where Yeni Çarsi Cd intersects with what appeared to be the main shopping boulevard, Istiklal Cd, on which all of the big name brands were situated.

Taksim square, an important landmark in Istanbul, was off in the distance in the final shot above but this is where my phone battery ran out and I had to stop shooting. It was time to head back to the hotel for my ‘soft’ lunch, and that’s exactly what I did.

More about my Istanbul experiences and my Turkey Teeth in the sequel, to follow.

I removed all of my house’s shutters a few weeks ago just before we had a period of wet weather. They still haven’t been painted and I wanted to keep them as dry as possible until I could get around to the job, preferably this side of the winter, and since then they’ve been standing covered, not very effectively, with plastic sheeting in my porch. This has meant that it’s been difficult getting in and out of my front door, especially when carrying anything bulky, but more importantly, edges of some of the shorter shutters were still being exposed to driving rain.

So the time had come to recognise that there’s now no way that they’re going to get painted until the spring. I’ve still got to prep my old caravan for sale and that’s the priority, not just to get it sold and out of the way, but also because now’s the time to find a buyer who has a house or building project kicking off in the spring. I’ve cleaned the outside but I’ve still got to go right through its interior and try to tidy up its entrance door a bit.

So today’s task, in a surprise temperature of nearly 80 degrees F, was to find somewhere safe for the shutters where they could be kept clean, dry and as free from insects as possible. I decided on a spot under the trees in the front of the house behind my tool store and I stacked them up on wood blocks off the ground totally cocooned in thick plastic sheet. I’m pretty sure that the stink bugs will find their way in as a place to die over the winter but hopefully they’ll stay dry as the sheeting is completely wrapped around them, over and under.

So although I’ll have to keep any eye on them to ensure that the wind doesn’t get under the sheeting, that should be it until the spring. That may seem a long way away but before you know it Christmas will be upon us, the leaves will be sprouting and turning green again and it’ll be time for me to get stuck in and get painting!

You know what it’s like, when you spot a product on Aliexpress or Temu and you buy it, then when it turns up it turns out to be of poor quality and a waste of money? Well, this is quite the opposite.

Like many GA pilots, I like making videos of my flights and that’s become a lot easier these days with cameras like GoPros and other specialist video devices, some of which can now give all-around 360 degree views with no sign whatever of what they’re mounted on. I just use standard GoPros and what has always bugged me is keeping them powered up long enough to create decent videos that include the whole flight from take off to landing.

The problem is that standard GoPro batteries only run for just over an hour which is nowhere near long enough for the kind of flights I do, especially when, as last month, I fly up to the UK, which takes over 6 hours of flight time. I tried using one of those jump packs that you use to start your car engine when your battery is flat but that only gave me just over 2 hours of recording time for 2 GoPros, so nowhere near long enough to record the whole flight to be edited down.

After my last UK flight I happened to be looking on Amazon and a product caught my eye that appeared to offer a solution. It was a large battery bank rated at 60000 mAh that could therefore potentially run 2 GoPros for much longer, perhaps not for the whole flight but at least for a good part of it if switched off during refuelling stops etc. The only problem was that it cost 100€ and that seemed to me to be a bit over-the-top for an untried solution.

So as I occasionally do, I decided to check to see what was available ‘at source’ by cutting out the middle-man ie on Aliexpress and here’s what I found (the price shown in the ad is actually less than what I ended up paying.

A quick calculation revealed that a capacity of 100000 mAh could be a game-changer with the potential of running a couple of GoPros well into double figures, and I mean well into! So with a price of only around 30€ I decided to take the plunge and it arrived a couple of days ago. Here’s what it looks like.

It’s about the size of a small brick and weighs 839 gms. And although I hadn’t expected much for that sort of money, it’s good looking and surprisingly well made. It has 4 USB outlet ports and 3 alternative inputs – USB 2, USB 3 and Apple wotsitcalled, I dunno. You can charge it from a PC USB port or a mains USB charger that doesn’t come with the unit but which I’d recommend as it came 65% charged and took several hours to charge to 100%. It also incorporates a light which can be set at constant or flashing and could turn out to be very handy if and when it’s needed.

OK, but does it work? The answer is a resounding ‘YES’. I charged it to 100%, attached my GoPro 7 and GoPro 8 and left them recording, starting at just before 7.00 am. I was prepared to be disappointed but both continued running until their SD cards were full – 12 hours later, by which time the unit’s charge had only dropped to 50%. OMG, 12 hours is ample for any flight that I might do.

It’s equivalent to two France/UK flights and in theory, if I doubled the size of the SD cards I could get 24 hours of continuous, non-stop video although it would probably be slightly less as I’m sure the unit would switch off before then to conserve battery life, like my jump pack does. So where will I go from here? I have 2 extra long USB cables that I think I also found on Aliexpress for peanuts (might have been Temu) and which I run to a GoPro mounted in the cabin and from the cabin to a second GoPro mounted on a wing strut. They’re shown in the final shot, below.

With the capacity that’s been demonstrated by this unit I could easily add a third camera and I’ll start by experimenting with one of the ‘cheap Chinese’ 4k sportscam cameras that I already have mounted in the cabin with both GoPros mounted externally. If it works out I’ll probably then acquire another GoPro for quality, or an alternative, something like DJI. It looks as though another new video world is about to open to be explored!

My last post was about the first flight I did in my X-Air, 24ZN, after not having flown it for several months and having carried out maintenance on its engine. I made a short video about the flight and here it is.

I carried out maintenance on my X-Air and gave it a thorough clean right back in the first week of August and have been waiting ever since to test fly it. I couldn’t at the time because the weather wasn’t favourable enough and then later in the month I went off to the UK in my Savannah, so it still remained unflown. Since I got back we’ve been subjected to excessive winds that have continued to keep the X-Air grounded but as my friend Wim pointed out on Monday, this afternoon was likely to be acceptable.

And it was. I wanted the conditions to be as suitable for a test flight as possible as although I’ve carried out multiple taxies up and down the runway at Malbec together with several engine tests at take off power, these things can always be unpredictable. But today it looked as though although the winds wouldn’t be totally calm, with the possibility even of a small tail-wind on landing, conditions in general would be OK.

I did another taxy and high power engine test and was going to do another, but the results were so good that I decided not to and took off anyway.

My intention was to just fly around in the vicinity of the airfield and then land back. In fact things went so well with exhaust gas and water temperatures rock solid in range and fuel pressure at a constant 0.3 bar, just as it should be, that I eventually ventured a bit further afield, to Thonac and overhead Galinat to see how it looks now that it’s closed (its owner, Christian, unfortunately passed away at around the time of Covid and there’s no news about what’s going to happen to it in the future).

I also took in Rouffignac as shown in the next shot.

The T & P readings remained perfect so after an hour or so I decided that it was time to head back for a landing at Malbec. The next shot was taken as I approached Fleurac.

And here’s a shot taken just before touching down at Malbec with everything looking good. Take a look at the windsock. Although a light southerly tailwind had been forecast in fact there was a cross wind from the north-east, a complete turnaround!

In many ways the results of the test flight were bitter-sweet because it now means that I can advertise 24ZN for sale. Yes, I need to sell it because as I’ve said on several occasions, I don’t have the time to fly two aircraft and aircraft need to be flown, not become hangar queens. In some ways I’ll be sorry to see it go though, as my association with it goes right back to June 2008, not long after I started My Trike, when I found G-BYPW as she then was for my friend Ken up in north-west England. That’s over 16 years. Many people don’t even stay married for that long 😐

When I landed at Linton airfield in Kent last month, my destination in the UK, an old friend John was there and took a video with his phone.

I think it’s the first exterior video ever shot of one of my landings! It was quite windy and I came in a bit hot, but fortunately they’ve just extended their runway and I managed to stop in time 🙂

It’s taken a while to put together and edit but I’ve at last managed to upload the video of this flight. It’s quite long (nearly 1 hour) as it’s of the whole flight in its entirety. I’ve done this because I wanted to show other pilots who maybe have thought about doing the same but are worried about the procedures involved, especially the radio contacts that are necessary with air traffic control on both sides of the Channel, that really there’s nothing to fear.

You don’t have to be perfect as many of the conversations included in the video show. All you have to do is say what you want to say clearly and confidently and the Controllers, who have massive experience, do the rest. And that includes the French ones who demonstrate amazing skill switching in an instant from French to English and back again.

The landing at Le Touquet is quite interesting as traffic in the circuit began to build up, and this wasn’t even a very busy morning. It gets even more frantic on week-ends with aircraft coming in from all over Europe. All you need to do is not panic and keep aviating, navigating and communicating in that order, as the old saying goes.

Enjoy!

I awoke the next morning in the Red Fox Hotel feeling remarkably refreshed. I didn’t know whether the hotel offered breakfast or not but decided anyway not to bother as I still had a flask of cold orange and yesterday’s lunch in my aircraft which I could consume when I eventually got the chance while preparing he paperwork to depart from Le Touquet. In the meantime I checked the weather and re-did my route calculations on my laptop, although I had to be fairly quick as I didn’t have its charger with me.

Then I went downstairs, paid my bill and waited for my police transport to arrive. And waited and waited, for over an hour. Then my phone rang. “Where are you?” said a voice. “In the hotel, waiting for someone to pick me up”, I replied. The voice said that nobody was coming and that I’d have to walk there. It turned out that the police station was only about five minutes away and when I announced my arrival there, the reply was, “Ah, the aircraft man!”

Shortly after a youngish officer in plain clothes appeared and invited me upstairs. We walked into a spacious upstairs office and a colleague joined us, for no reason apparently, except that he was interested in what we were talking about. After the previous day, the conversation was a bit of an anti-climax. He said that as nothing untoward had happened, everything was in order and I was ‘unknown’ to any of the authorities, things would not be taken further and nothing was going to happen. Then the three of us began talking about flying. The two of them were very interested in my experiences and exploits and liked the pictures of my aircraft that I was able to show them.

But they realised that I was under pressure to leave due to the weather and after bidding farewell to his colleague, I was given a lift back to the aircraft by the first plain-clothes officer. We had a very enjoyable conversation on the way and after dropping me off, before he left and I entered the airport building, he took some shots of Hotel Papa. For the ‘dossier’ 😉

But that wasn’t the end of things. My GPS was totally flat and I needed it for the flight over the Channel to Headcorn. When I went to the counter to ask if they could charge it for me, which they did, one of the airport staff who had been there the day before (but not one of the two apron workers) spotted me and his face broke into a huge grin. “Shall I call the police now?” he said. And we both laughed.

I didn’t stay laughing for long though. When I took off from Le Touquet it was clear that the cloud was much thicker than forecast on the way to Cap Gris Nez. I spotted a corridor that would allow me to climb up over it but it meant initially flying almost directly out to sea in order to do so. So that’s what I did before gradually attempting to regain my planned course to Folkestone on the English coast.

Luckily it was dead calm above the cloud because the conditions were a blue-out IMC with no horizon. Very disconcerting but turning back was more risky than continuing on. I spotted the coast off to my right at Dover before I got a horizon and a sight of the coast at Folkestone at which point I could descend for an eventual landing at Headcorn. After crossing the coast I got a call from Headcorn asking if that was me as they were watching my ADSB out signal on their computer screen. And after a bumpy cross-wind landing I was never more pleased to be back on the ground after the experiences of the previous two days.

Now I can assure you that I’m not making any of what follows up.

I’d landed at Le Touquet at 4.50 pm and by the time I’d taxied to the apron and parked it was pushing 5.00 pm. I’m pretty sure that this must have been the highlight of these two chaps’ day because even though they were only apron hands, they had evidently been delegated some authority and were taking their new responsibilities very seriously. Thinking back I suspect that the police had told the airport that they were on their way and that I shouldn’t be allowed to leave and these two nice but slightly dim gents were the means by which that was to be accomplished.

They tried to hustle me a bit as I got out of the aircraft but didn’t forget their duty as apron hands, however, and asked if I had a fluorescent ‘gilet’ to wear on the apron (mandatory at all larger airfields in France). I did have and put it on but I wasn’t to be hustled and took my time gathering up my charts and generally clearing up the cabin. Even so, I was unable to switch off my GPS and when I left with them for the terminal I left my keys in the ignition and didn’t latch my door.

I, of course, didn’t know at that stage what they were talking about and I doubt that they did either. It was difficult to take what was happening seriously but as we made our way up to the terminal four hefty (including the one woman) police officers emerged all toting side arms and a host of other dangling equipment. They must do exercises every day just to stay fit enough to carry all that stuff, let alone run with it, but I digress.

So by now I was surrounded by six people all about two feet taller than me who were taking their jobs very seriously indeed. The police told the two airport workers they could go and they sloped off with an air of obvious disappointment. Luckily I’d had the foresight to dismount my GoPros as their power bank was long exhausted and fetch my laptop and flight bag with all of my documents thinking that as soon as I got the chance I’d need to file my necessary papers to get away to the UK. But these custodians of the law thought otherwise.

We pretty soon established that only one officer had a smattering of English and my French was perfectly adequate for the tasks in hand, and that visibly tilted the balance such as it was in my favour. Every now and again the officer who had a bit of English came out with some but he was the only one who could throughout the whole affair, which was conducted almost wholly in French.

They’d started by asking me for my documents and I had all of them in order, for both myself and the aircraft. I sensed that this might have been something of a surprise to them but we ploughed on. Then they said that they’d noticed that I had two GoPros, a camera around my neck and my phone and that they’d need to take a look at what I’d been taking pictures and videos of. I still hadn’t a clue about what they were driving at and assured them that the GoPros hadn’t worked since shortly after I left Saumur, that I hadn’t taken any pictures with my phone at all and that I had only taken a few shots with my camera since leaving Saumur, except for one or two coming up the coast, due to the bad weather.

They said that nevertheless they had to see what I’d been photographing and after I’d paged through the pictures in my camera and shown that there were none on my phone, they went off with my two GoPros to see if they could borrow some ‘C’ type USB leads to view the videos they contained on a PC in the airport reception. By now the atmosphere was becoming more relaxed except the youngest officer, who clearly took his policing very seriously, maintained a grim expression the whole time.

After a few minutes I decided to go and see how they were doing and found them all gathered around a computer screen. I said that I hadn’t had a chance to view the videos yet myself and sidled in beside them to get a good view. In fact they had already seen as much as they needed to and the one who could speak English turned and said to me, “We saw your take off at Saumur. Very good!” He then got his phone out and brought up a picture he’d found of the apron and control tower there that I’d left several hours before.

They clearly hadn’t found anything incriminating and they returned all of my stuff, including my pilot licences (I’d also produced my lifetime UK PPL), passport and ‘carte de séjour’ (my residency permit). So now I had some questions for them. What on earth was this all about? To cut a long story short, it turned out that the ‘prohibited zone’ was a lot more significant than what I’d thought and that was what all the fuss was about.

The English speaking officer then produced a slightly crumpled sheet of A4 paper that turned out to be a printout of the radar screen showing my incursion into the zone. It wasn’t by very much but it transpired that the zone wasn’t just around a key French nuclear establishment but was around just about the most key one in the whole of France. No wonder people were jumping up and down in the way they were!

I thought that as we’d established that nothing untoward had happened I’d now be allowed to continue on to the UK, but no, apparently they had other instructions. They had to take me to the police station in town as ‘procedures’ had to be followed. They had no choice, so I followed them and got into the back seat of a Gendarmerie car with two officers in the front and one beside me. I’d forgotten that I’d left my aircraft totally unsecured on the apron.

Things were now beginning to descend a bit into a Boys’ Own farce. As we were driving to the police station they activated the blue lights and the marvellous French emergency sirens that sound the opposite way to those in the UK (Dah Di, not Di Dah) and always sound a bit hoarse to me. As the traffic miraculously parted in front of us I thanked them for not wasting time getting to the police station as I needed to get away as soon as possible for the UK but they replied that they always drove like this. Goodness knows what people outside thought. Maybe they thought that I was either a government minister being escorted or a criminal getting my comeuppance, often one and the same thing here in France.

On arriving at the police station I was taken into a back office. I think policemen must be the same everywhere. I’d seen offices like this in the UK when I was younger while working in my vacations for a plumber and a builder who had government contracts, which is also why I’m pretty unphased by being around the police. An interrogation room this was not, its walls plastered with printed jokey sayings and phrases. Officer ‘English speaker’ eventually began typing a ‘statement’ for me although he didn’t need to ask me many questions as I’d already told him just about everything he needed to know. Then he left.

Then it was the turn of the lady officer. I kept looking over her shoulder whenever I got the chance and it was clear that typing wasn’t really her forte. I asked who was going to read all of the paper that was being generated and she looked at me, smiled wanly and raised her eyes to the ceiling, which was answer enough. I’d already noticed that they had a check-list that they were working their way through and it wouldn’t be over until it was over.

Eventually she left too and Officer ‘English speaker’ returned and asked me if I’d like a drink. As I’d had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast I accepted a glass of water and asked how long this was going to take? He said that it was a problem as it was a Sunday and that a ‘procureur’ had to be contacted in order for a final decision to be taken. He couldn’t say how long that might take but that in any case his colleague had to come to take another statement from me.

In the meantime I was shunted out of the office into the vestibule and the more I asked what was going on the more embarrassed the office staff became as it was clear that nobody really knew what was going on. The ‘colleague’ duly arrived at 8.00 pm when I suspect the shift changed. He then proceeded to type yet another ‘statement’ and confirmed that a decision about the matter had to be taken elsewhere. He was very sympathetic about my situation but said that unfortunately it wasn’t up to him and when I asked for a copy of the ‘statement’ he’d typed it was clear that he’d been telling me the truth. It couldn’t have been more in my favour.

But by then I’d been in the police station for nearly five hours. I’d asked what could be done about my aircraft but was told very apologetically that they’d tried phoning the airport several times and it was closed. So nothing could be done and I just hoped that as the Savannah has no parking brakes there would be no strong winds overnight. I would obviously need a hotel for the night and one of the staff went off to make a few phone calls. Shortly after they said they’d found me a room in the Red Fox Hotel in the town and four of us, me and three officers, bundled into another car to take me there.

What the staff thought when we all piled through the front door I can only guess. I asked how I’d book in with no luggage and without my passport (the police had hung onto my documents) but they smiled and said that with them accompanying me, that wouldn’t be a problem. And I got a special rate too (the police declined when I suggested that they should be paying for my room). They then left saying they’d pick me up in the morning and I went off for an enjoyable meal at the Matisse restaurant just up the road, followed by a good night’s sleep.

A very strange day indeed 😕

There’s an expression used in aviation, which is “When the holes in the Swiss cheese line up”. It’s often used to explain what led up to an accident occurring, but it can also be used for any incident, even far less serious ones. Like the one that happened to me.

The expression explains how a series of events occurred that taken together allowed the incident to happen but if any one or more had not occurred in the way that it or they did, the end result would either not have happened at all or would have been completely different. The following image makes it easy to understand.

I’ll explain how this how is relevant to what happened to me during my recent flight up to the UK and to do so I’ll need to go right back to the start of the flight. I originally intended to take off at 8.00 am but couldn’t do so on account of low cloud at Malbec. In fact I couldn’t get away until 10.10 am, a delay of over two hours.

This needn’t have been a problem as the UK is one hour behind France at this time of the year and with a total flight time of 6 1/2 hours or so allowing for landings and take offs en-route, I would still have arrived at Headcorn in Kent in good time to clear the UK entry formalities. So what en-route landings and take offs had I planned?

First off, I had to land at Le Touquet in order to file my international flight plan, the paperwork to leave the Schengen area and the form to notify my entry into the UK. Secondly, I needed at least one, and preferably two fuel stops to ensure that I had enough for the whole flight. The first one would be at Saumur which was half-way and also had an easily accessible pump that accepted bank debit cards, but the second was more problematic.

My calculations showed that as a result of the forecast headwind component it would be touch and go making it across the Channel without a second top-up and the places available for this were limited – either Le Touquet itself or Dieppe. The system at the former is more complicated as you have to order fuel and taxy to a remote delivery point and a staff member has to come and serve you and then you have to return to ‘Control’ to pay. At Dieppe the system was far simpler, so that was my choice.

Now the holes in the Swiss cheese began to line up. Having taken off at 10.10 am I should have arrived at Dieppe in just over 4 1/2 hours even allowing for a previous landing at Saumur. However, due to the larger than expected headwind component, it took 5 1/2 hours during which my GPS was switched on the whole time, although this shouldn’t have been a problem as it was plugged into a 12V socket on the Savannah’s panel.

The delay was compounded even further, though, because whereas I thought I’d be able to serve myself with fuel and get away pretty swiftly, it turned out that the pump there is operated by the parachute school and only the jump aircraft pilot can do it. And he was in the air. So after I’d refuelled and paid, it was a full six hours after leaving Malbec before I was able to get airborne again.

The leg from Dieppe to Le Touquet should only have taken 25 minutes but I knew from the flight so far that it would take longer. In fact it took 45 minutes, almost twice as long. Excluding the landing at Le Touquet, the whole flight from Dieppe to Headcorn should only have taken 1 1/4 hours but with the wind over the Channel having by now picked up considerably, that also was going to take much longer.

So my rough mental calculations told me that allowing for a bit more than an hour to complete the formalities at Le Touquet, I could well be landing at Headcorn at around 6.00 pm local time or later, at which time the airfield would be close to closing. That was already placing me under pressure and things got worse when I took off. I’d noticed coming into Dieppe that my GPS screen was becoming darker and difficult to read, so I’d turned it off after landing.

I thought that it was possibly overheating but after departing Dieppe it was just as bad. I assumed that something was wrong with it but decided to press on as I could still make out my route on its screen, albeit with some difficulty. I had my phone as a back up but was reluctant to try to set it up as controlling the aircraft as I ascended in the wind, which I conservatively estimated at 280 degrees 31 gusting 40 kmh, was demanding in itself without having to take my eyes off the instruments and one hand off the controls to open up the GPS system on my phone.

So I persevered, but that wasn’t all. As I intended to enter the controlled airspace at Le Touquet, I also had to call up Lille Approach on the radio for a squawk code at the same time, so together with the time pressure I was under and the problem I had with my GPS, my workload was quite high to say the least.

Now it just so happens that to the north-east of Dieppe, there’s a restricted area. I didn’t know then what it was for but I did know that entry into it was prohibited at all times, so I’d planned to skirt around it, as shown by the following image of that section of my route.

But by now the holes in the Swiss cheese were fully aligned. Just before I’d called up Lille Approach I’d looked more closely at my GPS screen and thought that I was getting much too close to the restricted area. So did a sharp turn to the right in order, as I thought, to avoid infringing it, but after contacting Lille and getting my squawk code they came back with the following message. “Hotel Papa, you are in a restricted zone”.

That’s the sort of message that no pilot wants to hear. I replied that I didn’t think I was as I’d turned so as not to enter it, but it was later shown that I was wrong and they were right. I had indeed just entered the zone and subsequently even my own recorded track proved it, as shown by the image below.

The blue line is my intended track and the thinner red one is the one I actual flew. It shows that half way towards the zone from leaving Dieppe, my track continually veered left without my noticing. Once I’d noticed it was too late and although I’d taken steps to exit it again as soon as I could, my incursion had been picked up on their radar screen. The chart on my GPS is not 100% accurate and the actual incursion was less than the above image shows, but there was still an incursion and that’s the end of it.

My approach into Le Touquet was otherwise without incident and I received full cooperation and assistance from Lille Approach. However, once I’d taxied in and parked up on the apron, as I opened the aircraft door two large airport employees loomed up and said, “You have committed and infraction. The police want to talk to you”. And so the next phase of this unfortunate incident began.