Adriatic and Aegean Sea Islands 10: From Thessaloniki to Veliko Tarnovo

2.8.2019

Adriatic and Aegean Sea Islands 10 (video) Our series of our flight videos with microarticles named Adriatic and Aegean Sea Islands today ends by flight video from Thessaloniki to Veliko Tarnovo

The penultimate part of the expedition over the island of Adriatic and Aegean seas took me from Thessaloniki in Greece to Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria. I planned to document several Greek islands and also some Turkish islands. I was especially interested in seeing and recording the infamous peninsula of Gallipoli where so many young men lost their lives in WWI.

Also, I planned to fly over Istanbul and Bosporus to the Black Sea. The first problem came when the cameras mounted under the wings stopped working. I therefore used my alternate camera from within the cockpit.

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Then it took me about an hour to establish communication with the Turkish ATC. When I managed to start speaking with the Istanbul Approach controller, he advised that there will be no flying anywhere near Istanbul and that I have to turn northbound and fly direct to Burgas in Bulgaria.

When approaching Burgas I learnt that they had no Avgas so I continued to Velka Oryachovitsa airport near Veliko Tarnovo. There are no more pictures or video shots from that part of the flight as I focused mostly on the fuel gauges and tried to hypnotise them to stop moving down. I managed to land at the airport of Velká Oryachovitsa airport but there was no fuel either. Therefore, I spent the next 4 hours commuting with a local taxi back and forth to the local service station bringing fuel in just one 20 L fuel tank that was available….

So the quality of today´s video is somewhat lower but I hope you will find something interesting in it nevertheless.

Jiri Prusa