Having arrived safely into Addis again (we've been here before you know) I had to get aclimated to the food and altitude - lucky for me I had Daniel and his family to help out. Next, I needed to find an "Ethiopian Queen" to take me to Debra Tabor and back.
The flights this month are pretty straight-forward although I know the runway at Debra Tabor isn't too improved. I'm not about to abandon my goal of flying Embrears for a year at this point! Daniel doesn't even know that this plane exists so if this doesn't get him to surface I don't know what will?! (Ethiopian EMB-120) that I used for this flight.
The flight up was pretty uneventful - I used Debra Marcos as a mid-way waypoint. (pict3) Once over Debra Tabor I flew over the airport and then set up for approach and landing. I had everything trimmed and smooth; it was very nearly a hands-off landing (a bit long however).
After an hour on the ground we were ready to return to Addis for our next leg up to Cairo.
We had a 90-minute layover to flightplan and get back into an EMB-190 for the 1,330-mile flight up north (no stopover in Asmara needed)
The flight up to Cairo in real weather was windy and bumpy and turbulent! I tried higher and lower altitudes but it was just a very miserable flight - haven't had one of those in some time. I'm sure that cabin services would have been minimal due to the fact that even the FAs would want to be belted into their seats!
Despite the in-flight weather we arrived safely and then had a long taxi to the gates.
The next day I returned to Addis in the EMB-190. Next I opted to slow things down a bit so I took a C-46 Commando on the same route, this time with the stop-over in .... as I was flight-planning I got my "A"s confused and made a stop-over in Aswan as opposed to Asmara. The full-plane take-off from 7,500 feet ASL took FOR-EVER and the climb out wasn't much better but once I was able to settle in at 12,500 feet it was a happy (but painfully slow) ride. After lunch in Aswan I flew basically VFR up the nile all the way to Cairo - that was pretty fun!
Daniel, if you get to a computer again soon you may read this: THANKS FOR SENDING US BACK TO ETHIOPIA and for the brief history lesson too!
