Month: August 2016

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Local tour operator Vanilla Sky setup a full tourist program spanning over four days for our 44 person group. It included a visit of visit of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, but also a visit of the Khazbegi castles. It further included a flight high in the European Caucasus whilst a two day tour in Svaneti with overnight stay in Mestia. And finally, the eastern part of Georgia (the Kakheti wine region) was visited as well.

The food we enjoyed has always been amazing! A great farewell dinner was organized in the “Shadow of Metekhi”, overseeing the valleys of Tbilisi. We’ll always remember the great cultural heritage and absolutely exceptional hospitality and friendship one finds everywhere in Georgia. This is unseen!

The official part ended on August 12th. Some teams extended their stay in Georgia for another week and discovered the country with rented jeeps, some other crews flew to Antalya, where the local authorities offered free half board hotel stayover for several days. Some other crews flew home over the Black sea.

Amiran Ivanidze , Peter Sodermans and Niko Tsiklauri

Peter Sodermans and Jean Birgen

The Peterzelka family

Peter Sodermans, Jean Birgen, Georgia State Minister David Bakradze and  Giorgi Chogovadze (head of Tourism in Georgia)

State Minister David Bakradze talks about Georgian’s EU and atlantic integration

Peter Sodermans and Jean Birgen with the picture of Minister Goebbels of Luxembourg

Speech Peter Sodermans and Jean Birgen

Georgia State Minister David Bakradze and  Giorgi Chogovadze (head of Tourism in Georgia) actively supporting to attract general aviation into Georgia

some 120 persons attended the welcome event

Peter Sodermans hands over the (very rare) Chateau de Schengen wine to Georgian State Minister David Bakradze

a memorable event

After being validated for an overland flight by the Georgian central dispatching unit, all our planes left subtropical Batumi in the morning and headed for our final destination, being the general aviation airfield of Natakthari (UGSA), north of Georgian’s capital city Tbilisi. This airfield has a hotel and swimming pool at the same facilities. It proved to be a perfect stayover location. We had also lots of children with us on this rally, which strengthed the family atmosphere of the rally

The owner of the airfield, Amiran Manjavidze, organized a huge welcome party for the European aviators with dance, music and whilst tasting the excellent Georgian food and wines of his own vineyards. The Chairman of the faction Georgian Dream, Gia Volski, attended the event and was quite enthusiastic when we rolled the flag of the Schengen agreement.

dance and music party was organized for the first European aviators arriving in Georgia

welcomed by Gia Volksi, chairman of Georgian dream in the Georgian parliament

The Luxembourg Schengen flag arrived in Georgia

Gia Volksi and Peter Sodermans

With sunny Turkish skies, all our pilots were able to take off early in the morning and we flew to the University Engiz airport in the northern part of Turkey, where we received also a warm welcome. Avgas was provided to all planes over there

Whilst preparing this rally, we learned that finding AVGAS once you pass Istanbul is not obvious. We had to organize in advance to get AVGAS at all the airfields we visited

Flying from there over the Black Sea shores, our pilots approached hot and humid Batumi, Georgia by the end of the afternoon.

Our pilots have been paying in advance for AVGAS to Vanilla Sky in Georgia, which was brought in barrels on the back of a car and served with a hand pump at the Batumi airport. The good teamwork with the Georgian Vanilla Sky management made it possible that we were delivered with quality AVGAS (imported from Holland) all along our route in Georgia.

landing in rainy Batumi with CB’s around

approaching Batumi via the sea

refueling adventures with a hand pump

• 11 planes are on their way to Georgia right now, carring 25 persons 
• 9 persons coming by regular airline 
• 34 persons in total arriving at Natakhari of which 4 are children 

Turgut

Dear pilots

Although the initiative of this rally was driven by Luxembourg, the official gathering point for all crews to join was the airfield of Jakabszállás in Hungary (LHJK) with its famous Aerohotel (with swimming pool and 2 runways: grass and concrete). A social event has been setup as welcome party, being an aviator’s party with a live band playing gipsy music.

Greetings for LHJK where already 5 planes arrived

– LX AIX
– G-UILT
– D-ELAY
– D-EWGA
– SP-AVI

Our initial plan was to take of on August 3 for the Hans Gutmann memorial long range tourist rally to Georgie, but our Cessna Skylane (the 182) with call sign LX-AIX was still in the maintenance. As the plane was finally ready on August 4th, it started to heavily rain in Luxembourg. With western winds a front was passing in Luxembourg. So we were postponing and postponing our departure. At 2pm UTC (4pm local time in Luxembourg) we finally left Luxembourg.

I filed a flight plan to LOLW , Wels airport in Austria. Wels Airfield (ICAO: LOLW) is an airfield serving Wels, a city in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. It is not used for commercial scheduled services but features business and general aviation as well as private and military training flights and medical transportation.

bad weather for departure

many clouds on part I of the flight

the new GNS 650

perfect landing in Wels

our crew: Romain Fouarge, Peter Sodermans, Guido Peterzella

We have 15 crews who signed up for the rally. We’ve used a website and blog, as well as a Facebook page to interact with our pilots and followers. However, due to the political troubles in Turkey in the weeks prior to the departure of the rally, we noticed that 5 crews did not show up and 1 crew canceled due to technical problems. All by all, we had 9 crews who flew into Georgia. Some 10 persons flew to Georgia by regular airline. All together, we had a group of some 44 people.

The following planes participated at the 2016 rally
• Luxembourg LX-AIX C182
• Luxembourg LX-AVS Piper Saratoga PA32T
• Luxembourg LX-AIE C172SP
• Turkey TC-UTH Flight design CTLS
• United Kingdom G-UILT Cessna 303
• Germany D-ELAI Flight Design CTSL
• Lithuania F-HASD Cirrus SR22
• Austria D-EWGA Flight Design CTLS
• Poland SP-AVI Cirrus SR20
• Turkey TC-MCM Cessna Skylane (till Batumi)
• Turkey TC-EST Socata TB-21 (till Ordu Giresun airfield)