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 up to 30 000 readers daily.
The beauty of the Greek and Croatian islands is well known but seeing so many of them in a period of less than two weeks was overwhelming. I also managed to fly over and record cities like Split, Dubrovnik, Heraklion. On top of that my journey included the Corinth canal, Boka Kotorska in Montenegro and Mt Olympus in Greece.
The departure for the last part of the expedition "European Islands from the Skies" was quite routine - arrival at the airport two hours before the planned departure time (10.45 LT) and then: checking the weather, filing my flight plan, loading the , getting the maps and everything else ready, entering my flight plan into the GPS, aircraft check, interview for iDNES.cz, couple of photos and departure (10.40). Here are some of the photos taken just minutes before take off. more
30 September 2014
I started the journey at 10.40 on 30 September, 2014 departing from
Příbram - LKPM. I flew over the Alps to the small airport of
Portorož in Slovenia to clear Schengen customs and continued the
flight along the Istria peninsula to Mali Lošinj island in
Croatia. more
01 October 2014
I had trouble buying fuel in Mali Lošinj but managed to convince a
taxi driver to help me buy it at a service station. My flight
continued over the beautiful Adriatic islands belonging
to Croatia and over the city of Split to Brač Island. From
there I flew via Dubrovnik to Tivat in Montenegro where I stayed
for the night. more
02 October 2014
Tivat, Montenegro is close to a beautiful area called Boka
Kotorska. I flew around the maze of sea bays hidden among high
mountains which is, surprisingly, the wettest spot in Europe as it
records about 4500 mm p.a. of rain. Then I continued my trip along
the Montenegro and Albania Adriatic coast to Corfu. To enjoy and
film Corfu and the adjoining islands I set off for an hour-long
local trip. I stayed the night at Corfu. more
04 October 2014
From Corfu I flew to the island of Zakynthos passing over such
famous islands as Ithaca, Cephalonia and Lefkada. After having
landed at and flown around Zakynthos I continued to a small private
airfield at Messalonghi in the Bay of Patras. Lord Byron lived and
died here in 1824. more
04 October 2014
From Messalonghi I flew between the Peloponese peninsula and Greek
mainland towards and across the Corinth Canal. Then
I continued over the Argosaronic islands of Aegina, Poros and
Hydra and landed at Kythira, the southernmost island of the Ionian
island group. After a brief break I flew further south to
largest Greek island - Crete. more
05 October 2014
Having flown along and filmed the northern shores of Crete the day
before, I continued north-east to the island of Rhodes - the main
island of the Dodecanese islands. more
06 October 2014
From Rhodes I flew along the Greek/Turkish border to the North
passing over such beautiful islands as Tilos, volcanic Nisyros, Kos
and Samos. The famous mathematician Pythagoras was born and lived
on Samos. more
07 October 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
08 October 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
09 October 2014
This was perhaps the most dramatic day of this part of the European
Islands expedition. I flew over the islands in the Northern Aegean
Sea and crossed over to Turkey. However, for about an hour I was
not able to establish radio communication with Turkish Air Traffic
Control. As a result I was increasingly concerned about the
possibility of being chased by the Turkish Air Force. Finally, over
the Marmar Sea an airline pilot conveyed my message to the Istanbul
Approach controller who gave me instructions to turn to the North.
This meant that I could not fly my planned route via the Bosphorus
but at least I managed to get through Turkish airspace without
any real trouble. more
10 October 2014
This was the last day of the last part of the expedition
"European Islands from the Skies". Because the weather
forecast was not favourable for the following day I decided to fly
directly to Příbram and thus leave out filming the Dracula castle
in Romania. My trip that day took six hours and I landed at
Příbram with fuel for another about 45 minutes. more
I have been flying gliders since my age of 15 and in 2006 I completed my PPL in Texas, USA. More
