Planey spent a couple of months comfortably tucked away in the Flight Cal hangar at Shoreham, kindly looked after by Andy from the Flyer forums, while I returned to the real world of work and the like. I spent this time preparing for the next part of the journey, which would be by far the most logistically challenging. Everywhere after Slovenia would require a flight permit for landing or overflight, and fuel would need to be arranged in each stop. Outside of Europe, getting Avgas is one of the biggest challenges of a flight like this. For the most challenging countries, the section from and including Jordan to Myanmar, I chose to work once again with Ahmed from General Aviation Support Egypt. His colleague Eddie had sadly passed away about a year ago, but he was now ably supported by Essam.

I arrived in the UK just a couple of days before my planned departure and set about the final preparations; immigration paperwork for leaving the UK, final arrangements for fuel and handling at the first couple of stops, and also the completion of a new barrel pump system. This system is for transferring fuel from 55 gallon/200 liter fuel drums, in locations where it is not available from a bowser. Sometimes fuel suppliers have their own barrel pumps, but sometimes they don’t, so being self-sufficient is essential.

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My alarm rang at 0600, and I left my bed with a mixture of regret (it was dark, cold, and foggy outside), and anticipation. I had turned in late the previous night, as I had been tracking the progress of my copilot Ben who was attempting to get to Shoreham from Geneva. Multiple flights had already been cancelled due to fog in the UK and it was by no means certain that he was going to make it in time for departure. Luckily his flight eventually departed several hours late and he had made it to Brighton in the early hours, grabbing a few hours sleep and meeting my father and I at 0730 when we collected him on our way to the airport.

A friendly local pilot at Shoreham had spent some time on the phone with me the day before, talking through departure procedures; it’s all very well reviewing the published literature, but nothing can beat local knowledge. As such it was simple to gain access to the airport, even at this early hour (although we had to ask in the cafe as the usual entry was still locked). Planey was sitting outside the Flight Cal hanger; nobody was around so they had generously pulled him outside the day before so he’d be ready for us. We spent a short time packing the aircraft, and I also changed the air filter, ready for the long flights ahead.

The weather could best be described as interesting. At first glance it looked awful; there was poor visibility in mist, low temperatures of just 4 degrees C, and a cloud base of a few hundred feet. However, looking deeper things were not quite so dire; the cloud tops were at about 1,500ft, and the freezing level all the way up at about 7,000ft, meaning that we could take off and quickly climb through the thin cloud layer to cruise in the sunshine on top, all with no risk of picking up ice. The low overcast was forecast to continue all the way to Austria. A departure like this does come with some challenges; in event of an emergency after take-off, it is challenging to return and land (we’d probably have had to go to Gatwick or Southampton in that event), but we chose to accept this calculated risk.

No take-offs are permitted at Shoreham before 9am on a Sunday, seemingly due to pressure applied through the local council by the classic idiots who buy houses next to a long-established airfield and then complain that they can hear airplanes. This presented some challenges as our destination, Maribor, would close at 1630 local time, giving us just 6 and a half hours to fly the 718 nautical miles in between. We would be flying IFR of course; apart from the weather, it just makes life much easier on a trip like this as airspace clearances are all implicitly given as part of your IFR clearance. Planning an IFR route in Europe is almost impossible without the aid of computer-based tools due to the 30,000+ constantly changing and often nonsensical restrictions and limitations put in place in European airspace at any time. I had therefore used the Autorouter tool to identify and file a route, and it had done a good job for us, finding one with not too much overhead in terms of extra distance.

We killed the remaining time in the cafe before heading out to the aircraft and starting up. Winds were negligible, being variable in direction at just three knots, and the radio operator kindly switched the nominally active runway for us so we could take off south towards the sea instead of north towards the hills. Just moments after takeoff we entered the cloud at 300ft, and not long after that we broke out at about 3,000ft and continued our climb in bright sunshine, the English coastline invisible below the overcast which spread from horizon to horizon. London Control gave us radar vectors along the coast before clearing us direct to KOK VOR, at the border of Belgian airspace, as we climbed to our initial cruising altitude of 9,000ft.

Brussels ATC gave us a direct clearance from our entry point on one side of Belgian airspace, straight to the other, eliminating a few wiggles from the route and saving a few miles. At the German border we were handed over to Langen Radar who sent us off to the south of the planned route, before having us rejoin it a little way east of Mannheim. Not long after that we were given another 150nm direct routing as far as Munich, cutting out a few more little corners from the original route. We could hear “UPS 1” on frequency with us, and I was curious what flight would be assigned this flagship number. Turns out it’s a flight from Sharjah in the Emirates, to Cologne.

Three hours into the flight, the blanket of cloud below us began to break up, and before long we had great views of the south German hills below us. Frost was still visible in the fields in those sections that were shaded by the tree rows. Clouds returned now and then, but by now the Alps were coming into view off to the right. United Airlines flight 760, from Denver to Munich, could be heard flying the ILS approach to land on runway 26R as we passed by.

Just before entering Austrian airspace we were handed over to Linz Radar, and cleared direct to the Austria/Slovenia border. This would take us straight over the eastern end of the Alps and necessitated a climb up to 11,000ft. The dramatic terrain below us was explanation enough for ATC’s direction to increase our cruising altitude, and indeed this had been expected, with the airways in this region all having higher minimum altitudes.

Before long Maribor came into sight and we were handed over to tower, flying a right downwind to land well in advance of closing time after just over five hours of flight time. I touched down firmly – I had clearly not flown in too long – and we turned off left and followed the “follow-me” car to parking. An airport handling agent was there to meet us, and turned out to be a pilot herself, of light sport aircraft. She coordinated refueling from a venerable avgas truck, the operator of which was also an airport firefighter; he gleefully informed us that they all went on high alert whenever our handling agent went flying. She seemed unimpressed!

I loaded 20 gallons of fuel into the ferry tank, so that we could prime and test it on the next flight, and be sure it was working properly before setting out on a long flight where we’d need it for real. After fueling, we were offered a place in the hangar for the night. This was gratefully accepted; it’s always nice to keep Planey under cover!

Customs and immigration was quick and easy, and we were soon in a taxi to downtown Maribor. I had given Ben the task of coordinating ground activities, while I concentrated on flying, and he started off strong with a lovely, well-priced hotel in the middle of town. I did have to laugh at the rooms, which were remarkably long and thin. After a few minutes to settle in we put on our warmest clothes and headed out to explore. It was much colder here than it had been in the UK and I was glad of my woolly hat.

I had not known that Slovenia itself is a very young country, having only seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991. Maribor is situated in Slovenia’s east, and is the country’s second largest city with a population of about 330,000 people in the metropolitan area. This seems small for a second city until you realise that the population of Slovenia as a whole is only just over 2 million. Settlement in the area has been confirmed as far back as the fifth century BC, and Maribor in its current incarnation was first recorded as a castle in the year 1164 (although it is likely the castle itself was built earlier), followed by a market in the year 1209, and received town privileges in 1254.

We strolled from the hotel down towards the river, crossing over one bridge and returning over another. Holiday activities were still in full swing with multiple Christmas markets and fairs, and a surprising number of people out and about given the cold. Finding somewhere for dinner was more challenging than expected; a lot of places were offering drinks but not food, but we eventually chanced upon a lovely Italian restaurant. Given the fact that Slovenia borders Italy, I deemed this authentic local cuisine.

That evening I finished off the preparations for the next day’s flight; IFR flight plan filed using Autorouter, primarily. We had already been in touch with the airport to confirm fuel availability and methods of payment; a surprising number of places have very limited forms of payment that they’ll accept. In the case of our next stop, Skopje, it was cash only. By checking well in advance, I was able to ensure I had plenty with me!

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Today’s flight would be one of the shortest of the trip, just a few hundred miles south across the Balkans to North Macedonia, taking about three hours. We therefore didn’t need to leave early, and started the day with breakfast at a nearby coffee shop Ben had spotted the evening before. Before departing for the airport we stopped in to a supermarket to buy some essentials; mandarins (a very convenient flying snack) and a few other things to nibble on during flight. One thing to bear in mind with food is that some countries are very strict about what you can and can’t bring into the country due to biosecurity laws. No such issues existed along our present route however.

Ben also bought some vitamin tablets, that can be dissolved in water. These would later prove to provide more entertainment than expected.

It took a few minutes to find the handling agents after we arrived back at the airport; there are no commercial flights, and the terminal was mostly deserted. We tried to communicate with the customs and immigration staff using Google Translate, but without success. Once we found the right person everything went quickly though, and we were soon back at Planey and pre-flighting. Two Evektor light sport aircraft were active, conducting flight training, and a regional jet from Austrian airlines was performing circuits for practice.

ATC gave us our clearance; the PETOV 2B departure, followed by our flight-planned route. A high pressure system was sitting over the region, giving clear skies and calm conditions, with an altimeter setting of 1031 (3045) – a far cry from the deep low pressure that we had followed over the Atlantic! After waiting for the Austrian jet to pass by on another touch-and-go, we took off and turned towards the Croatian border.

Direct routing from ATC was the order of the day, and we were given direct legs straight across the whole of Croatia, and then again across Bosnia to the border with Montenegro. As we entered Bosnia, radar service was terminated and we were handed over to Banja Luka approach. Surprisingly there was significantly more snow, despite us being further south and the terrain at no higher elevation. From Banja Luka we were handed over to Sarajevo, and then to Podgorica, who cleared us direct to AKIKO intersection on the Albanian border.

We were now outside the region of Europe that uses 8.33kHz frequency spacing so I was able to switch the radio back to the standard 25kHz spacing; what I had failed to note was that doing this resets all the currently tuned frequencies. A combination of memory, and checking on Foreflight, allowed us to retrieve the frequency that we’d been working, and all was well.

Entering Albania the already rugged terrain became even more dramatic. Our cruising altitude of Flight level 110 (roughly 11,000 feet) had given us plenty of terrain clearance up so far, but now we climbed to FL120 at the border, and again to FL130 halfway across Albania in preparation for entering Macedonia. At the Macedonian border we took a 90 degree turn to the left, and headed for Skopje; this dogleg had kept us clear of the airspace over Kosovo. The turn changed what had been a tailwind into a headwind and ground speed dropped from 145kts to 115 kts, but we didn’t have much further to go.

Skopje cleared us to descend, pausing us halfway through to allow two WizzAir A320s to depart VFR to the west and pass below us. We flew a VFR approach to Skopje, and taxied in to the Avgas pumps to fill up. The next flight would be a long one, and the fuel price in Skopje was very good, so I wanted to take on plenty of Avgas.

We quickly ran into a problem; the fuelers in Skopje would not refuel a cabin tank such as our ferry tank. Without ferry fuel, we were liable to run out of gas somewhere over the Red Sea. Further questioning revealed that this restriction was a commercial one; people had allegedly been filling cabin tanks at Skopje’s low price, and then selling the fuel on elsewhere. Frankly I am not sure how true this can be; the fuel price at Skopje is nowhere near low enough to make this a sensible business proposition in any kind of small aircraft. After some discussions, and detailed explanation of why this fuel was needed, the fuelers were persuaded and we loaded 360 liters into the ferry tank to complement the 420 liters in the wings.

Customs and Immigration were straightforward, with the handler taking us to the main terminal and escorting us through the crew lane. Skopje was much larger and busier than Maribor had been. A taxi ride to the hotel was swift, partly thanks to our driver spending a significant part of the time on the wrong side of the road to avoid a traffic jam.

Before heading out to explore the city I took care of flight planning for the next day. I’d heard from Ahmed and Essam at General Aviation Support Eqypt (GASE) a few days earlier that Avgas was no longer available at our original planned destination of Aqaba. They suggested alternatives of Hurghada on the Egyptian Red Sea coast, or Amman further north in Jordan. Hurghada was closest to our route; but I had been there before with Gavin back in 2019 and I wanted to see new places, so Amman it was! This would involve an extra ~150nm of flying and correspondingly longer flight time.

We had come to the end of Autorouter’s coverage area, and so I switched over to file through Foreflight. It took a bit of trial and error to figure out how to do this, and I never worked out how to file an altitude as a flight level instead of a plain altitude, but eventually the important extras such as entering permit numbers were resolved. A final problem presented itself, though; an error message from Foreflight telling me that filing in Jordanian airspace was not supported. I sent a message to Ahmed at General Aviation Support Egypt (these guys would be helping us with permits and ground handling arrangements from Egypt through Myanmar) to get his input, and prepared to go out.

A few minutes later, however, I received an email from Foreflight’s operations team. They had noticed that I had tried to file a flight plan, and proactively reached out to ask whether this was just a trial flight plan, for flight simulation or something, or whether it was real. I confirmed its legitimacy and they enabled full international filing on my account. I tried again, and the problem was resolved – we were good to go.

Ben had chosen another great hotel location and it only took a few minutes to reach the center of Skopje. As North Macedonia’s capital and largest city, with a population nearing 600,000, the city is the country’s political, cultural, economic and academic center. The earliest signs of occupation in the area date to the 4th millennium BC, with settlement waxing and waning through the bronze and iron ages, and into Roman arrival in the 2nd century AD. In subsequent centuries the city was ruled by the Byzantines, the Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire, the Ottoman Turks, the Kingdom of Serbia, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

What was immediately clear on our walk was that the people of North Macedonia enjoy a big statue. We crossed the river over the historic Stone Bridge, which dates back to the mid-1400s, and made our way into the bazaars of the Muslim quarter of the city. Climbing the hill to the fortress we discovered that sadly it was closing early; the journey was not wasted however as the views were spectacular, and we met a particularly friendly dog who followed us most of the way back down. We found a local restaurant in the narrow, winding streets of the Muslim quarter for a dinner of traditional local grilled meats before heading back to the hotel for an early night.

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