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Vagar to Egilsstadir Iceland.
Egilsstadir. iceland, Iceland |
Day 13, 4th July 2014. Vagar to Egilsstadir Iceland. 312 miles 3:32hrs Day score 10. I ran back down to Sorvagur to the local shop, got some biscuits and drink for the day and ran back up to get warm. The airport opened at 8am and I walked over to Itzy to start preparing. I put my immersion suit on but as the cloud was still poor, I had a kip for an hour. Malik was in the control tower and with the weather clearing in an hour or so the satellite images said, we filed the flight plan again. He said he would put the information on the departure boards as he did for every other flight. I shook hands with Malik and went over to take a selfy of me and my plane at the top of the departures board. Jumping in Itzy, the weather did clear and I taxied out. Take off was on 30 and I headed out over Sorvagur. Stunning stunning scenery. I took video and photos and flew as close as I dare due to multitudes of bird life on all the jolting cliffs I climbed past. Ok time to set out over the Atlantic. Only 2:20 hours of water and it all went quite easy for once. I said goodbye to Malik in Vagar 60 miles out and on to Reykjavik control. They could not hear me but I relayed some position reports twice, via airliners way above when ever I could hear them clearly. I spoke to Delta 219, who ever they were and later Speedbird 287, which is a British Airways jet. I climbed above some thin cloud a couple of times and sat there just watching the cold engine temps and watching the ‘distance to go’ winding down on the GPS screen… At one point there was nothing on the GPS moving map except the words North Atlantic. About 100 miles out, Reykjavik control relayed a message to me via Airline 456 to change frequency and be handed over to Keflavic control on 119.7, but what was the point. All the airliners above were on Reykjavik, next to no one was on 119.7 and I couldn’t relay any messages anymore. 60 miles out I called Egilsstadir directly, they could not hear me as there was a mountain range between us and the radio is best when in line of site. The signal can’t travel through rock. Also I had to descend now as there was cloud ahead. Egilsstadir did call me through relaying to yet another aircraft and I replied with my position report and they gave me their weather. Few at 800, scattered at 1,500 broken at 2,400. Not good but ok. Bugger, really quite a lot of cloud ahead, I went into it. Only thin I hoped but down at 800ft above see level I was not happy… I decided to climb again and turned around to go back out to sea where there was no cloud. Back in sight of the sea again I descended down until I could see under the cloud and turned back in towards land, but now cloud base was under 500ft. Being this low I had lost all radio contact with Egilsstadir and the relaying aircraft, again possibly because of the mountain ranges in-between us. Down at 300ft I entered a fjord leading to Egilsstadir airport but the hills were 3,000ft plus all around and the cloud was solid at 300ft. I remembered to fly up one side of the fjord not straight up the middle as most people do. If you are in the middle if you want to turn around suddenly, say at the end, you have only either half the valley left or right to turn in. If you are to one side you have only one way to turn but you have twice the width to turn around in than if you were in the middle. People have crashed flying in the middle with no enough room to turn around if they have to. Back out to sea there was only one option available, that was to go 40 miles north, around the mountains and follow the river up a wide valley floor to the airport. Sea fog now rolled in and I was down to 100ft. This weather was not forecast and not fun or fair… It took what seemed an eternity to keep flying around fjord after fjord, followed by vertical rock faces into the sea before I found the correct valley. As soon as I entered it I could hear Egilsstadir calling immediately. I replied that “I’m still here and ok! I’m heading up the river towards you about 40 miles north.” You could here the relief in his voice and also the relaying Air Iceland plane which had manoeuvred to my location to try and remake contact. The captain of that plane congratulated me and I thanked him for his assistance. I’m not sure what I had done well, but he said “You have done well!” The controller asked me what was the colour of the river I was following? What a strange question I thought but then maybe he had good reason to ask… “Brown” I replied. “Good!” the reply… Apparently there are two rivers in the valley, one being glacial blue and it leads into the glacier! The brown one below me was correct and the runway was clear and only 24 miles away. The controller asked if I had seen a hydro electric plant on the river yet? It was just coming out of the gloom and it whizzed past under my left wing. I called to say yes. I ran 12 minutes at 200ft above the beautiful river before the runway lights came out the gloom. I did two left turns and landed on their 04 runway in 4000 meter visibility and driving rain. As I taxied in, the emergency services were all driving away? Apparently, since I was some 30 minutes overdue on my flight plan time, since my diversion, they had all been scrambled… So embarrassing. The rain abated as I climbed out. I pulled Itzy to a safe corner of the pad, nearer the protection from the wind of the hangars. First a medical examiner called Thora I think, came to check on me and took me inside and sat me down to catch my breath. I was ok… Thora handed me over to two police officers and I spent some time with them filing a report with police captain Davith and his deputy officer. English was good here. We went to have a discussion in the control tower so they could explain their side of events and clear a few technical terms up in Icelandic. Annoyingly, by this time the weather had cleared through and was quite decent again now… The controller said that since there was no one hurt or no damage to the plane, no report need be filed with him to their CAA authority. I was sure he was not right, but I was not going to argue and with all that completed, the police said they would drive me now to the medical centre. It was procedure? I jumped in the back of their police car and off we went. In the medical centre I met up again with Thora and she joked about cutting off my immersion suit, which was normal for these events. Admittedly I had to worn her of the fact that I had been in this air tight suit for about 6 hours now, before unzipping the shoulder seal and extracting myself from it. She took my blood pressure and heart rate and eye tests and my vital signs were all normal. With this I was free to go. I have to pay for this and they are not open again till Monday, so here I stay till Monday… Dam. Davith then drove me to a good reasonable guest house as all the hotels were full. They asked me if I had food, no being the answer, they stopped off at the supermarket. In the supermarket I met a camera man again who had been hanging around the airport. I apologised to him for being a bit rude earlier. He said he wanted to discuss with me the plane, I told him I could do it tomorrow, but he said it was too late really and that his report had already gone to the news station. Get out of here!!! I came out with bread and ham for me and a couple of bottles of coke for the police. They then drove me about 2kms over the river to the guest house as they said they were not busy… With the proprietor, he mentioned that he knew who I was as he had just seen me on the news… No way!!! I thanked the police, they were cool. I felt like giving them a hug for being so kind, but I didn’t and I settled in my room. A shower and more diary and Brazil verses Colombia. Thought for the day: I’m not really telling the full truth of quiet what happened today. I’m probably going to remove it from my mind and dele te it over the next few hours. All my tedds go in my backpack so I can insist I take it with me if I get dragged out of the sea so I don’t loose them. I had it with me in the room and as I took each one out the bag and laid them on the spare bed, they were all looking at me and pretty ****** off! They are the only other things except the plane and the data logger that know quite how stupid things got today. What did Andrew of Farnorth Aviation say… Something about the weather….?
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