We had been watching the winds aloft forecast quite close the last couple of days before Sunday when we planned to fly to Bahrain in the Persian Golf. With the current configuration of the aircraft we can do approx 1100 nautical miles without refueling. The distance between Sharm el Sheikh and Bahrain with our planned route was 921 nm, therefore we could only do the flight if we did not have any headwind.

Flightplanning in Egypt (nice hat, don't you think? =)

The routing was set to be south-east over the red sea for an hour and the turn more or less straight east across the huge dessert of Saudi Arabia. The thing with the flight over Saudi was that our overflight-permit was only valid for one day, therefore if we would have need to postpone the flight this could have resulted in redoing permissions and could have grounded us quite some time in Egypt. Anyhow, the forecast for Sunday morning showed really good winds with 20-40 knots of tailwinds all the way over the dessert!

After some administration at the airport we came out to the aircraft which we had to refill with 10 liters (!) of fuel, we had fueled the plane upon arrival and during the four days stay the fuel had heated up during daytime and expanded causing some of it to go overboard. I can tell you that the fuel-personal looked quite puzzled when we asked for that small amount of fuel, normally used to fill up large airliners with tons of JET A1 =)

The scenery over the dessert was impressing, there are some quite high mountains towards the coast of the read sea but after that everything turns into sand and sand and sand… It felt safe and comfortable sitting on 11000 feet studying the landscape listening to the sound of our diesel engines while crossing the big wide open land of sand.

Dessert mountains

After some hours into the dessert we spotted some circular green spots, it turned out to be some agriculture in the middle of the dessert, I still can’t imagine from where they got all the water needed to turn the yellow sand into fruitful green spots.

Some green spots in the sand...

A little closer...

The VHF radio and radar coverage was quite bad at our altitude; we therefore got several clearances stating to contact the next controller on another frequency at a certain later waypoint. We landed on the small Island of Bahrain after an ILS approach to runway 12 left after 5 hours and 40 min, more than 1 hour faster than expected due to the good tailwind.

The kingdom of Bahrain is a very small country with its only connection to the mainland via a highway bridge into Saudi Arabia. The country is approx 20 km wide and 40 km long and has a main income from Oil. Bahrain was actually the first country in the Middle East that started oil production, which was back in 1932. When you walk on the streets you see a rich mix of cultures and religions, a feeling of east meets west.

We have now spent a day here and among other things we have visited the Bahrain national museum and experienced a heavy rainfall over this dessert land (isn’t the dessert supposed to be dry?)!

The next part of the journey will go to Muscat in Oman, more about that in a while, we’ll be back…

Written by Henrik

Posted by: Johan Hammarström
Thank you for good luck wishes Åsa!

Nils (and everyone else interested): Our aircraft is equipped with a TKS deicing system which consists is a alcohol based de icing system where a specific de ice liquied is pushed out through microscopic holes in the leading edges of the wing, stabilator and fin.

/Johan

Posted by: Åsa Bäckmark
Hi guys! It´s really fun to read about your world flight tour including all your stops. I hope everything works fine for you. Best wishes Åsa

Posted by: Nils Dahlgren
I am curios about your de-icingtools! Is it bleedair from the engines or is it pneumatic? Or maybe electric heating on the leading edges on wings stabilator?
What is yor glideratio with both engines feathered? Must be very good with that long wings!
Wish you happy and God bless you!
Nils Dacke