And two to go!

For once it looks as though the weather will cooperate and I’ll be able to fly up to La Rochelle to get my Savannah’s transponder and radio re-certified this coming Friday 27 June. The winds and weather generally look favourable and if I get away by 08.00 am, current calculations show that I should arrive at La Rochelle in about 1 hour 40 minutes. I plan to fly a counter-clockwise route from Malbec heading to La Rochelle via the north of Cognac and back to Malbec via the south.

With today’s weather forecast the return flight should only take about 1 hour 20 minutes so with the Savannah’s endurance of over 4 1/2 hours and a total flying time of about 3 hours there should be no need for me to take on fuel at La Rochelle. As I remember, I didn’t when I visited to have the avionics checked the first time.

The flight north should be fairly routine – all I will need to be sure of will be to remain under 1500 feet when passing through Cognac airspace. The return flight will be a bit more interesting as I will need to remain clear of Rochefort airspace and also the restricted area at Saintes, which is an Armée de l’Air flying school.

The latter only extends to a height of 1500 feet but to be sure of avoiding any problems I intend to avoid it completely, which is no big deal. I’ll then turn onto a route that passes between the airfields of Pons and Jonzac while neatly avoiding the two of them and with a bit of luck, depending on how long things take at La Rochelle, I should be back at Malbec by mid-afternoon.

So after Friday that will only leave the tasks that I have to complete for my Australian tourist visa. I’ve booked a rail ticket to go to Paris for my biometrics on 2 July and arranged for a medical in Bordeaux on 8 July so that should wrap those up. All I’ll then need to do is wait for my visa to come through.

That will still leave one more thing though – arranging the installation of my new swimming pool the components of which have been standing out in front of my house for the past several weeks. It would have been lovely to have had it during the recent period of very hot weather – over 40 degrees C on some days – but quite honestly I think I’ll be lucky to see it in and ready to use by the end of the summer. Oh well, there’s always next year…

I’ve been very busy lately. The certification of my Savannah’s radio and transponder expires this month and I need to fly the aircraft up to the testing station at La Rochelle airport in the Charente in order to have the equipment recertified. If I don’t I can still legally use the aircraft but not the equipment and especially in controlled airspace, so it’s essential to get the job done.

As I haven’t flown my Savannah since I flew it to the UK and back last August I’ve had to give it a thorough clean, do a small repair to its windshield and give it a thorough check-over, all of which I completed as of yesterday. Indeed, I topped up its tanks yesterday evening so it’s ready to fly and ran the engine for several minutes to check that all will be well for the La Rochelle flight when I can eventually get around to doing it. But that may not be for another week or two.

One of the reasons for that is that we’re having visibility problems here with lots of thick haze, but the other is that having been to Istanbul twice since the beginning of this year and once to the UK, I’ve also been spending lots of time making plans to visit Australia in the autumn. The reason is that I have a cousin living in Victoria who’s about the same age as me but who I haven’t seen since we were little children of about five or six years of age. She returned once to the UK several years ago but I missed her at the time and a few months ago I had a sudden urge to try to get in touch with her again.

The parents of both of us have gone now and we are almost the last of our generation in our two families. I thought it would be difficult but I managed through what was almost a miracle to speak to her on the phone within 48 hours. We’ve kept in touch over the months and as she would have difficulty travelling we decided that I’d go out to Australia to stay with her for a few weeks. Compared to a short break in Europe, planning for the trip has been very detailed. As of now I’ve booked just about everything – air fare, travel insurance, hotel, car hire – you name it, and all being well everything should go off without a hitch

I say ‘all being well’ because I’ve booked and paid for all the above before obtaining my visa, which I applied for on-line yesterday. And I’ve been totally gobsmacked by how difficult it is to get into Aus and I’m just hoping it’ll be forthcoming. The visa application alone cost just under $200 Aus which I understand is non-refundable. It was the best part of 30 pages in which I had to reveal almost my whole life and family history including telling about my son who has no plans whatsoever to travel to Aus, mentioning my ex-wife from whom I’ve been divorced for over 13 years, my finances, health, travel plans, who I’m visiting including her details and DOB for goodness sake, proof that I’ve travelled elsewhere and returned home again, proof I can return to the country I’m coming from ie France and lots more beside. To be honest I found it highly intrusive and much of it bloody impertinent but if you don’t comply you don’t get in.

But that’s not all of it. I’ve been told I have to provide biometric data ie finger prints and a certified photograph. If the Aus authorities knew their stuff they’d know that the French authorities already have those and could easily send copies, presumably at my cost. But no. As there’s no Aus authority in France who can collect the data – the nearest is Australia House in London – I’ve got to go all the way to Paris for an approved agent to do the job. This will take a full day as it means travelling from south-west to north-east France and will cost me in excess of 100€ in train and Metro fares (pensioner reduced cost) and 45€ for the service. Plus although I thought it’d be a good idea to apply early for the visa I’ve only got 14 days to provide the biometric data otherwise my application will be automatically rejected. Scandalous. Common sense says the time limit should be linked to the planned travel date, not the date of visa application.

But it gets even worse than that. I’ve also got to have a medical by an approved doctor. The closest one is in Bordeaux which is in completely the opposite direction to Paris, will incur me a further cost and will again take the best part of a day to get done. However, very ‘generously’, this time I’ve been given 28 days to comply. So in order to meet these conditions I’ll end up having to travel the whole length of France at substantial additional cost and inconvenience and have less than a month in order to do so! So no wonder my flight up to La Rochelle has had to go on the back burner!

I said to my cousin that if I hadn’t already booked and paid for everything already I wouldn’t bother but I’m committed now. It seems to me that Aus wants to make it as difficult as possible for people to visit so only those who really need to will do so. But I have to admit that it’s taken the edge off my visit which I was really looking forward to 🙁

I reinstalled the seats in my Savannah this afternoon and I’m really impressed. The black dye did an excellent job and they more than came up to my expectations.

The next shot is of the arrangement I’ve used to secure the Savannah’s screen to the two internal sloping tubes which I think will be a big improvement on how I did it previously and will prevent any more flexing damage to the polycarbonate.

It consists of a sandwich arrangement with the polycarbonate sheeting of the screen being sandwiched either side by rubber washers of approx. thickness 2.5 mm which then have a metal washer above and below them. So from the outside the order is metal washer, rubber washer, screen plastic, rubber washer, metal washer and the whole is then pop riveted from the outside to the metal tube inside the cabin.

The metal and rubber washers are all of diameter 14mm with a 3.5 mm hole through their centres to take the pop rivets. I’m hoping that the supports being of such a diameter will offer much better support for the plastic of the screen and will obviate any further problems, but only time will tell. I certainly hope that I’ll be able to avoid replacing the Savannah’s screen which was a pig of a job when I did it a few years ago after an accidental fuel spill destroyed the previous one.

I gave my Savannah’s seats a second coat of black dye this morning as on close inspection I could see a few white patches that were still faintly visible beneath the dye. After they’d dried I gave them a spray and buff with beeswax based furniture polish and what a difference compared to before I started work on them. Well worth the effort!

Here’s a shot of the two products I’ve just been using on the Savannah’s seats and polycarbonate screen, both of which I’m very pleased with.

A word to the unwary. You can’t use just any old plastic polish on polycarbonate as almost all will result in blooming and fogging of the surface that is then difficult, even impossible, to remove. You must ONLY use products that have been specially developed for polycarbonate such as the one I’ve shown above.

This one is for slightly more extreme polishing, to remove the beginnings of oxidation as was the case for my Savannah’s screen. If all you want to do is lightly polish the screen, after normal cleaning or washing, I’d recommend Plexus which is also specially for polycarbonate.

My Savannah has black leather seats which I was told were quite an expensive option back in the day. They were certainly quite eye-catching when I first acquired the aircraft (if not the most comfortable on long flights 😕 ) but over the years they’ve become, let’s say, a bit tired looking. Don’t get me wrong, the leather hasn’t split at all or become particularly worn and the seat interiors haven’t collapsed or begun to sag even, but what has happened is that the leather has begun progressively to lose its colour.

This has manifested itself in the form of white patches that have grown in size and number over the years to the point where they’ve become a real eyesore, as shown in the following image.

I’ve been meaning to do something about it for a long time but what with the house and garden, the X-Air and whatever I’ve never got around to it. However, with the X-Air now gone and a lull in my house and garden work I decided that with the Savannah now needing some other attention, as mentioned in my previous post, now was the time to do something about the seats.

So with this in mind I bought a small bottle of black leather dye. I had two choices – a glossy version or one called US Army Black which was described as matt and I decided to go for the former. We had over 35 degrees C today so this afternoon I brought the seat backs and bases home for me to treat this evening when it was cooler because although the dye dries quickly, I didn’t want it to flash off too quickly possibly leaving a streaky finish.

I donned a pair of disposable gloves and applied the dye as you do French polish to a wood surface, using a small cheese-cloth pad, gently wiping it on in the direction of the ‘grain’ of the leather on the sides, verticals and horizontals. To say I’m delighted with the results is an understatement considering it only took a few minutes to do the lot, considerably less than half an hour. Here’s how the pieces came out.

Ignore the ‘brownish’ tinge in the next two shots. It was just a trick of the light and the leather is actually a nice deep black.

Here’s a shot of the dye that I used, which I’d thoroughly recommend.

I was thinking that I might have to apply a second coat but I don’t think it’ll be necessary except for touching up one or two tiny patches near stitching where I’ve missed a few bits of white. Apart from that I can’t wait to see how the seats come out with a bit of wax polish on them and I think they’ll now become a real asset for the Savannah 😀

I haven’t flown my Savannah since my last trip to the UK in it back in August of last year. The main reason is that it suffered slight damage to its screen as a result of the brutal headwinds to which it was subjected which I think were much stronger than most ULMs are designed to resist. The damage was not so severe as to need the screen to be be replaced but it was bad enough for it to need repairing before the Savannah could take to the air again.

There are two pop rivets that secure the front of the screen to two sloping uprights inside the cabin and in order to minimise the stress on the polycarbonate (or so I’d thought) I’d placed a rubber washer between the screen and each metal upright before pop riveting the screen to them. I thought that these would be enough to protect the screen from damage due to the pressure of the air while in flight but I was wrong, mainly because the winds I’d encountered were far greater than what I’d ever anticipated.

As a result one of the pop rivets had failed completely leaving a hole in the screen and although the other had stayed in, spider web cracks were beginning to extend from its hole. I therefore had to remove the rivet, stop-drill the latter and resecure the screen to the sloping uprights with a much better (larger) metal washer/rubber washer sandwich arrangement, which I did a couple of days or so ago.

So so far, so good. That left the job of giving the aircraft a really good wash because as it had been standing in the barn for so long, it had a good coating of dust and also poo from the little finch-like birds that have made the barn their home. And the problem was exacerbated because when I sold my old X-Air I’d moved the Savannah into the centre of the floor and hadn’t realised that its wings were exactly under a roof beam on which the little birds perch, in order to do their toilet apparently.

It doesn’t take much to remove the dust and poo – all that’s needed is a good soaking with clean water using a large floor mop – so that’s what I got stuck into and did this evening after the day had cooled down from its high of over 35 degrees C. The dust washed off easily and probably also helped to remove the bird poo in the process because 99% of the latter is dry before it hits the Savannah’s paintwork. Think mice poop, which is what I originally thought it was until the truth hit me.

The first few shots show ‘before and after’ with one wing still as all of the Savannah’s horizontal surfaces had started out. The others show the dust and poo closer up.

I also noticed that the screen was showing some slight stress crazing around both rivet holes bit it’s not significant and there’s nothing I can do about it other than replacing the screen which isn’t justified. However, the polycarbonate low down in the middle of the screen was also showing some signs of oxidation, rather like car headlamps, and this evening I used some special polish that I received the other day to deal with it.

It seems to have worked really well. I also bought some black leather dye for the Savannah’s seats which I’ll probably apply tomorrow so after that I’ll give more details on it and the special polish I used on the screen.

I came to Istanbul this time with a long list of ‘must see’ attractions in the city but apart from at the week-end when the city was overrun with a huge number of visitors and tourists, the timing of my dental appointments has made it practically impossible to tick any of them off the list. I was supposed to go on a Bosphorus evening cruise with food, drinks and entertainment on Saturday but this didn’t go as planned, fortunately for me I have to say.

I’d booked but not paid in advance and the arrangement was that I was supposed to have been transported from and back to my hotel but in the event was asked to walk a good ten minutes to a pick-up point outside a seedy hotel to the north. This made me rather annoyed and as it was a cold, windy evening and no taxi had arrived at the allotted time I just decided to call it an evening and headed back to my hotel. So too bad for them.

Today was (is at the time of writing) my last day in Istanbul and as for all I know this might be the last time I’ll ever get the chance to visit I decided that I’d head back down to Karakoy for lunch and check out the situation at the Galata Tower on the way. If there were no crowds or an enormous queue, like yesterday, I thought I might then do the climb up (figuratively speaking). And there was neither, so I did.

The price for doing so, 30€, came as a bit of a shock but I thought if you’re in Istanbul you’ve got to do it, which I guess is what the authorities also thought when they arrived at that figure. But anyway, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience so I swiped my card yet again and off I went clutching my no-refunds, use only once on the day of issue ticket. Somewhat unsurprisingly I found that the entrance is via a flight of fairly steep stone steps, so too bad if you have limited mobility and can’t scale them.

At the top of them is an entrance hall that’s all very swish and modern – not the way you’d expect a mediaeval tower to be at all. And that’s the way the whole tower is – it’s been thoroughly modernised throughout as a 21st century tourist attraction. There are a few museum pieces and artifacts on various floors as you make your way down – on foot on some very narrow and precarious staircases some of which have no handrails – but these don’t seem to be of much interest to most people although they are very well presented.

The big attraction, of course, is, or are, the views of Istanbul and the Bosphorus from the top of the tower, so having said that I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

After climbing the tower I made my way into Karakoy from a different direction to last time and couldn’t find the same little restaurant where I’d enjoyed an excellent burger and draught beer. So I tried another but somewhat disappointingly it wasn’t half as good. But that’s life isn’t it. I’ll take it easy for the rest of the afternoon – may pop out to buy some Turkish Delight to take back with me – and then have a last Chinese take-away this evening if I can find the room for it.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Istanbul yet again and was relieved this time to have some good weather despite it being a bit windy. And I’ll be coming back a more educated man because I’ve found out that the ‘g’ in Beyoglu* is silent, and it’s pronounced Bayolu, and Karaköy is pronounced Karakee. So how’s that then! What a brilliant Turkish scholar I turned out to be 😉

* The g is supposed to have a little accent over it but WordPress can’t cope with it

I took the Taksim to Kabatas funicular to get to what should be my final dental appointment this afternoon. It’s a brilliant way to do it as it saves a massive amount of walking all the way down the hill and back up again. But even so, Istanbul is not a city that’s friendly towards people with limited mobility because even though the funicular can get you down and back again, although there are escalators at each end, these only go upwards and you still have to descend a lot of steep steps down at both ends under your own steam.

I photo-documented the whole journey today as the shots I took previously were so poor and today’s pics give a good impression of what the trip of only around two or three minutes involves. First some shots of the Metro station at the Taksim Square end.

See what I mean about the steps down into the terminus. People coming up have the benefit of an escalator but those going down don’t.

At the bottom there are signs in Turkish and English to direct you to the trains and as everywhere in Istanbul, it seems, at the very bottom there’s a small fast food buffet. Who buys and eats all this food I do not know.

Then you come to a row of entrance turnstiles that only appear to accept credit, debit or previously purchased (by credit or debit card) travel cards. Istanbul seems to be run on credit and debit cards and even small street vendors accept them because everyone has a mobile phone.

Travellers beware. When I swiped my card yesterday the screen turned green with Turkish writing that I did not understand. The turnstile did not move, so I swiped it again with the same result and yet again at another entrance. It was only when I watched other travellers that I realised that you have to push against the turnstile to pass through, so I probably paid the fare several times over learning this simple lesson.

Here are a couple of shots of the empty platform while we waited for the train to arrive and of it emerging upwards out of the tunnel.

The tunnel, the platform and the train all slope downwards (or upwards at the Kabatas end). The sides of the entrances are vertical, of course, and the train floors horizontal with steps in. The entrances have double doors, on the platform and the train carriages, and travellers enter on one side and exit on the other to permit free and easy movement at busy times.

The Kabatas end is smaller in size than the Taksim terminal and more modern but the procedures are similar. You exit onto the platform and ascend by escalator to the outside world via an entrance/exit hall which naturally has a ubiquitous fast food buffet.

They are building a super new ferry transfer terminal at Kabatas which now appears to be almost finished. There’s a large model of it in the entrance/exit foyer.

And to finish off with, some shots of the new terminal itself.

Istanbul is a fast-moving city and there’s a massive amount of rebuilding and development work going on. But anyone thinking of visiting need not be deterred as the amount of disruption to the tourist trade is minimal. You just need to think of it as being a part of the innate character of the city 😀

But this young lady is a bloody good dentist! She understands that for certain procedures you can’t spare the patient. Like when you’re fitting something – like an implant crown – that has to be snug, the patient has to be able tell the dentist where it’s uncomfortable and not fitting right. Where it’s cutting into the gum, for example. And to be able to do that, no pain killer can be administered during the procedures leading up to the final fitting.

So she didn’t and it hurt like hell. Again! But my goodness, I think she did a lovely job and it was worth it. She only gave me a couple of small pain killer injections once she’d finished and although it took a little while, the pain eventually subsided. She asked me to sit quietly for 10 minutes or so and then I went back in for her to finish her work off to her own satisfaction. Like trimming away excess cement around the gum level and making sure everything was neat and tidy and she even gave me a free descale.

And that was it. My treatment had come to an end and she suggested that I might like to return at some time in the future to fill a gap at back upper left with a final implant. I may do so, but I can’t before March next year due to my future travel plans, and anyway, it’s been there since a hack English dentist removed a tooth that he mucked up 57 years ago. So you could say that I’ve got used to it, but we’ll see 😉

Last Sunday dawned warm and sunny so I decided it was time for a decent walk. I’ve not been doing as much walking this time in Istanbul because I’ve been getting a bit of discomfort from my right knee, the one I had keyhole surgery on about 14 or 15 years ago before coming to France.

I think I damaged it again slightly when I pulled my old X-Air out of the barn over soft ground before flying it up to its new owner on 5th March and I’ve been trying to get it to heal again as the consultant told me at the time that the surgery would probably only be good for about 15 years, after which, who knows. I don’t want to get involved in knee replacement and all that stuff and in any case, I’m booked to go off to Australia in the Autumn so haven’t the time.

My hotel, Hotel Mara, is very well placed just off the main tourist street, Istiklal Avenue, along which the trams run from Taksim Square to Tunel.

So I decided to walk down and then turn left with the idea of finding my way down to the Galata Tower and thence to the ferry terminal at Karakoy. This being a week-end there were large numbers of tourists, many of them locals, doing the same as me and as usual, the police were out in force. They seem to make protecting locations with Christian connections a priority and as this was a Sunday, not only was there a police presence outside a large Christian church on Istiklal Avenue there was also an armoured car.

I carried on walking down to the end of Istiklal Avenue but this time, instead of heading straight down towards the Galata Tower, I branched off to the right with the idea of exploring the streets behind it and hopefully making my way up to the tower from its rear.

The trams don’t come down this far but this is where the line ends, outside the Metro station.

I then began to head steadily downwards making my way towards the harbour, and hoping to find the Galata Tower along the way.

Eventually, looking to my left, there it was.

There was quite a crowd milling around in the area at the base of the tower and I can only wonder how big it would be at the height of the tourist season. The ticket office to climb the tower was one of the old Taksim trams and as the cost of entry was only 30 TL I considered going myself. However, the length of the queue and the speed of its progress soon made me decide otherwise.

Instead I opted to continue my walk down the steep, winding streets to find the ferry terminal at Karakoy.

Below the tower I came across this very photogenic flight of steps that led back up to where I’d just come from. While waiting for the crowd to clear a bit and an opportunity to take some photographs I managed to drop my phone onto the concrete road surface and I was very concerned that it might have been damaged. However, I’m relieved that it seems to be unscathed but I’ll have to see over time if in fact that is the case.

I then continued my journey downwards towards the harbour.

And finally it and the Galata Bridge came into sight.

You need to use an underpass in order to get across the very busy road junction. The underpass is a hive of small shops selling everything from mobile phones to underwear and this is a shot of its entrance on the other side.

From there I found my way round to the ferry quayside next to the Galata Bridge. You can walk across the bridge if you want to go from Beyoglu to Fatih on the other side.

This is the somewhat undistinguished looking ferry terminal entrance.

This is not just an area popular with tourists. Today it was alive with local fishermen and the odd sharp-eyed cat seeing if they could find an opportunity to get a share of any of their spoils. They occasionally did when they were tossed the odd tiddler that was too small to count as a proper catch.

A final look back before I made my around to the Galataport side and thence to Karakoy itself.

The next is a shot of a cruise liner moored at Galataport taken from the ‘other’ side of the security screen before I turned left into a side road leading to Karakoy.

I love Karakoy and I heartily recommend anyone visiting Istanbul to go there. Its narrow streets are traffic free apart from the odd motor scooter that are everywhere and its little bars, cafés and restaurants are quaint and super inviting.

And you’ll also come across the odd Shisha bar there too, as in the next picture.

As well as purchasing food and drinks there, you can also hire the use of a Shisha pipe, or Hookah, and as I passed by it was apparent that a number of patrons of both sexes were doing exactly that. There is a misconception that Shishas are for smoking hashish, but although some no doubt are, this is not their intended primary purpose. They are mainly for smoking special blends of Turkish tobacco flavoured with herbal and floral aromatics.

The smoke is filtered through water contained in the main bowl of the Shisha and many people believe that because of that smoking a Shisha is safer than smoking cigarettes. But this definitely isn’t so. The water does not filter out any of the tars and other harmful materials contained in the tobacco smoke and any smokers who are tempted to give a Shisha a go are strongly advised not to do so. The reason is that a 30 minute Shisha session is the same as smoking 100, yes that’s right, 100 normal cigarettes and although Shishas have been around for hundreds of years they present a huge health threat, much more so than ‘ordinary’ smoking, which is very widely prevalent in Turkey among all age groups.

I thence made my way through the narrow windy street to find somewhere to buy a beer and a burger, which I did. And most enjoyable it was too, sitting in the sun filtered through an overhead vine.

A last look back at where I’d enjoyed my alfresco meal. Excellent.

I love Karakoy. If you’re in Istanbul, give it a go. You won’t regret it.

I had to go back to the dentist today for follow-up work prior to the final fitting of my implants. The young lady dentist told me last week that she was going to hurt me again today and boy, was she not lying!

My appointment was originally set for 6.00 pm but I received a call at about 3.45 pm asking if I could get there in half an hour. I said that I could because there’s a funicular railway that runs from Taksim Square down to Kabatas which I’d not tried before but had scouted out yesterday. It would save me ages compared to walking as it only takes about two or three minutes and costs just 40 TL (about 1€) each way, so well worth the saving in shoe leather alone.

I expected the train to look like something off an Austrian ski slope, but no. It’s very modern and looks like an ordinary underground train, except it slopes and has steps in its floors. Here’s a shot I took of it on my return journey.

It wasn’t very busy on my way down so I was able to take the next shot at my leisure. Not so on my return back up to Taksim Square because the carriages were packed out like a normal rush-hour train.

I have a pretty high pain threshold but this afternoon I suffered the most painful dental treatment I’ve ever received. The dentist is replacing the implant pins in my right lower jaw and inserting a new one in my left upper front. She started without giving me any pain killer but the pain, especially in my lower jaw, was so intense that it literally made my toes curl and my eyes water. And it didn’t get much better after the injections because she pressed on almost without any delay to finish her work. Back tomorrow at 3.00 pm. I can hardly wait…

While making my way back afterwards to the Metro station at Kabatas I had to pass a development site that fronts onto the main road and this is the amusing sight that caught my eye – a proud rooster looking after his flock of hens and living in harmony with the cats. Maybe the workmen like boiled eggs with their breakfasts, I don’t know, but I think this could be only in Turkey.

This is the Metro entrance.

And here are a couple of final shots that I took after most of the crowd had cleared the platform.

The images are very poor but I’ll try again when I return to the clinic tomorrow. I managed to drop my phone onto the concrete yesterday and I hope that nothing’s been damaged as up to now I’ve been very happy with the picture quality I’ve been getting.

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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