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World Odyssey |
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Bonzai into Moscow Wednesday 13 June
Bad weather has parked over all of western Russia, forcing us to wait, wait and wait some more. Four days in St. Petersburg is great, but how many times can a person visit the Hermitage? At the first sign of a cloud, the Russians close all airports to VFR flights (visual flight rules). This is no problem to anyone except us, since airlines fly in any weather with special instruments that we don't have. In fact, we're probably the only aircraft in Russian airspace without all-weather instruments as the concept of general aviation simply does not exist in this country. So as VFR traffic, we're nothing more than an unidentified flying object for Russian air traffic controllers. With the first drop of rain, they ground us just to be safe. Over the radio, all we hear is nyet, nyet nyet... We're tempted to just turn off the radio and plead an instrument failure, but as we've already had one brush with the law, we've decided to be good boys and follow instructions (for now). We're hoping that the aviation rules become less rigid once we get further east away from civilization. But at this rate, the Shalon-Verniol 2001 World Odyssey might need to be extended into 2002.
Thursday 14 June We finally manage to escape from St. Petersburg using a tiny window of reasonable weather. Low clouds and rain en-route makes for some very low level flying, which can be quite fun at 250 km/hr. In any case, we make sure to fly low enough so that we cannot hear air traffic controllers telling us to turn back. What should be a 330 mile direct route to Moscow is turned into 400 mile zig zag path due to our navigator flying us around "sensitive military areas". This, coupled with strong head winds, have us at the absolute limit of our range, even with the reserve fuel tank. In fact an hour out of Moscow, the fuel gauge says we won't make it. The following conversation occurs between Michel and our Russian navigator in the back seat:
Michel: "We need to take a straight line from here to Moscow. We're running out of fuel." Navigator: "We must follow approved route." Michel: "The approved route has very little connection with getting us to Moscow." Navigator: "We must follow approved route."
Michel: "We don't have enough fuel for these stupid zig-zags." Navigator: "We must follow approved route." Michel: "I don't give a damn. This is bullshitsky. I want to fly direct to Moscow." Navigator: "We must follow approved route."
Michel: "One more zig-zag and we'll need to land in a field, do you understand???" Navigator: "We must follow approved route." Michel: "I am sick of this. We fly direct. Let them arrest us."
By the time they finish their argument, I fly the helicopter to the threshold of the Moscow airport (using a direct route of course) and land with 12 minutes of fuel remaining. Had we not taken a straight line, we would have needed to land in the Red Square, which would leave us with very few friends in Russia. We call this low-level fly-where-you-want approach "bonzai flying" and it usually works well in any country other than Russia. So tomorrow, weather permitting and if they don't arrest us first, we'll be off towards Yekaterinburg, eight hours flight time east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains, gateway to Siberia. |
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Copyright Dari Shalon 2004 |