Dear readers and friends of flying,
In Porta Delgada I was lucky to have a very friendly guy from a handling company named Marco, who promised to help me fill up with 95 fuel after landing. He sent me a text message that evening that he would be waiting for me at the gas station at 8 am. He arrived exactly on time and had 100 liter canisters in his car. We filled them up and headed to the airport. Everything was officially approved and he had the right paperwork for it. They checked us over and let us go. Then we did it again and I had a plane full of fuel for the trip back to my friendly airport in Benavente. Then a local, very young journalist, Vasco, came to see me and we did an interview about my flight to the Azores. He was probably most impressed by my age. It wasn't the first time, so I'm no longer ashamed of my age and am starting to be proud of it. In the evening I invited Marco and his wife Katarina to dinner, so I could learn a little more about the Azores and life here.
On Wednesday morning, Marco and I met at the airport again at eight o'clock. At 7.59 we met at the security check, Marco had everything ready, so the whole procedure went quickly and I had more than an hour to prepare the plane. Before a long flight over the sea, I always do a more thorough inspection of the plane, so I need a little more time. When I had prepared the plane, put the cameras, some water and a bag of nuts for the trip under the seat, there was nothing left to do but put on a floating suit and put on a life jacket over it. At nine o'clock I slipped into the cabin and in a while I was heading towards the island and the Santa Maria airport, where Marco had arranged a soft landing for me. I managed to do this after 30 minutes of flight and I had about 6 hours of flight ahead of me over the Atlantic. The weather was great with blue skies and only a few clouds. I was a bit surprised that I was flying against the wind again, because I was hoping that my flight against the wind towards there would be compensated by the westerly wind at my back on the way back. This was not the case. The wind was blowing northeast and took away my speed by about 10 km/h. So it was not as unpleasant as when flying towards the Azores, but it cost me about half an hour on the whole route.
After about an hour of flight, the VHF connection became difficult to read, so I called the Santa Maria ATC on the pre-arranged number via Starlink via WhatsApp to report to them. We then agreed that I would call every hour to let them know my position and whether everything was okay. I did that and when I flew over the 15th meridian of west longitude, the border between the Santa Maria FIR and the Lisbon FIR, they handed me over to Lisbon Control. I was able to communicate normally with this service again via VHF radio. Then I had to make a few more detours due to traffic at the main Lisbon airport and at three quarters to five local time I landed on runway 33 Benavente. After opening the cabin, I quickly took off my floatation suit, because in the last phase of the flight, about 40 minutes, I flew in temperatures around 30 degrees and I was, of course, extremely hot. I decided to stay in Benavente for two nights to get myself together.
