Hi folks,
after seeing this great race, and the shock of seeing the new Mansell emergeing from the racers, we celebrated the results with the McLaren guys. They asked us a favour to move their VIP tent to the next race to Bahrein. They gave the crew some gifts, so we decided we have enough room left next to the regular cargo.
The plane waited at a near military airport to not interfare with public cargo transfers on the crowded airport. When we landed the plane in Kuala Lumpur, the McLaren trucks were waiting there already. We just started to pack the containers and pallets, when we received a message that we need to move some BMW containers too. We were a little overweighted and late on the schedule by half an hour, but fortunately at the beginning of the flight there was not headwind at all, so afterall we were on time at Bahrein...
After packing, we were standing on the cargo terminal with some other MASKargo planes. Finally we could spin up the engines and start our flight toward the mystical Middle-East. Farewell Malaysia, see you next year !
Climbing to cruise level. We got a new runway against to plans, so I flew the STAR manually as I did not want to bother with the FMC reprogramming.
As we reached flight level, I realized we are heading almost completely westward. This time I was amazed by the terrible cumulonimbus clouds ahead of us and we stepped upper to FL380 to avoid them. The sun just did not want to set on the horizon for hours...
But finally it became dark, as we reached over India. And when we passed its western coast, the headwind came and the FMC proposed a half hour delay according to the original schedule. The sky was dark and I started to look for a known constellation. And finally I found it
the Ursa Minor, alias Little Bear / Göncöl Wagon in Hungarian (Göncöl was an ancient astronomer)
Star spots were too small, but the constellation is nice.
I watched Shrek2 on TV, so just missed the moment when we left the Dubai coastline, and the sight of the Palm Projects. Anyway it was dark night by then.
Then we reached our destination, the small island airport in the Persian-Gulf. METAR reported rain, and 3500' cloud bottom...but in reality it was a total mist down to the surface, with around 6 miles visibility only.
The landing went quite bad before I spotted the PAPI lights. I just could not center with the ILS...there was nothing feedback on the gray horizon. Then I continued as visual when the landing lights came out of the mist clearly. I made a nice touchdown with the beast, and let it roll for a long time, as I checked the cargo terminal is at the other end of the airport.
This is a quite little airport, but a sozen heavies were waiting there on the aprons. I finally parked next to an unknown airline's 747 freighter, and started to unpack the plane. Both the McLaren and BMW stuff arrived to the next race.
We wished good luck for them, and prepare ourselves. I saw that Hector, Peter and Tamas were already on their way to this tiny little airport, so we decided to move the plane to Dubai, and make a little excurtion there.
Thank you for travel with us on the fantastic Boeing 747F
