Otober 7, 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
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.
Otober 7, 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
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
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
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
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
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