Day 8. Continued. The trip across the Mediterranean from Greece to Egypt was a good one. I was experimenting with different long range power settings, trying to get the most range I could and keep the engine temps low. I knew we were heading into some really hot areas of the world and would be struggling to keep the cylinder head temps under control. I was especially worried about the left engine which seemed to run hot no matter what I did.
Feet dry over EL Alamein the site of a battle between Rommel and his Africka corps and the british troops under Montgomery in 1942.
It looked like a dandy place for a tank battle. A little hot maybe.
I was extremely happy when we touched down in Aquaba, Jordan. We’d made the longest leg of our journey (1000 mn) and still had a lot of fuel left in the tanks. If by a lot of fuel you mean 45 minutes worth. We fueled up at an aero club and got the entire history of the club from the manager in the process of filling the plane’s tanks and all 9 plastic fuel cans. Which Lee loaded into the cabin.
At the end he was begging me to come and run the parachute operation with the kings brother in the Dead Sea. I said I’d think about it. When it came time to pay the bill I was astounded. Avgas was $4.50 US a liter! And even with the .50 cent a liter discount he gave me because he followed me on FaceBook it came out to a bill of $4792.00. Now that was a problem because I’d only brought a little over $10,000 in cash with me. The first fuel stop in the middle east had taken half my stash and I still had 3 cash stops to go. I texted Cory for more cash and took off for Bahrain. Well at least I thought I was going to Bahrain. Right after takeoff the tower made me go 20 miles out of my way to clear some mountains, with the distance back that was 45 miles extra to my leg. Then when we got to the point in my approved flight plan to enter Saudi Arabia they let us get another 10-15 miles before turning us around and telling us that we could no enter Saudi Arabia from that point and again made us turn around and waste more fuel heading south for clearance. By the time we got sorted out we’d wasted over an hours fuel on our seconded longest leg of the trip. That wasted fuel would be a problem.