ISLANDS OF THE ADRIATIC AND AEGEAN SEAS
This part of the expedition "European Islands from the Skies" took place between 30 September 2014 and 10 October 2014. Altogether this meant about 40 flight hours, 10 days of flying and about 8000 kilometres flown. I covered the islands along the Croatian and Greek coasts and the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. As I have done during all the other parts of the expedition, I was sending on line reports and videos/photos from each day of the flight. These were published by the news portal iDNES.cz together with an on line map showing my actual position. The journey reports attracted around 3 readers daily.
October 8, 2014
From Samos I flew over the mythical island of Icaria where Icarus
fell from the skies. Then I travelled further west to overfly
Mykonos and south over Naxos and Ios to Santorini with its wide
flooded volcano. When I finished filming there I continued to Milos
and then landed at Syros. Here I managed to refuel and continued to
Lesbos. more
October 9, 2014
From Lesbos I crossed the Aegean Sea for the fifth time on this
trip flying west again. I flew over the Sporades island group
- Skentzura, Skopelos and Skiathos. Then along the western coast of
Thessaloniki Bay to the city of Thessaloniki where I
stayed for the night. more
October 9/10, 2014
Day 9 was probably the most stressful of all the journey. After
crossing the Greek/Turkish border I was not able to establish radio
communcation with the Turkish ATC. I must have tried at least
hundred times but no response. Not daring to enter the Istanbul TMA
I circled at various altitudes and tried to talk to someone.
Finally, a Lufhtansa pilot helped out by relying my message.
Originally I wanted to fly via Bosphorus but in the end I was not
allowed to do so and I had to turn north, directly to Bulgaria. more
I have been flying gliders since my age of 15 and in 2006 I completed my PPL in Texas, USA. More
