This leg will be long and dangerous. I'll leave Turkey to cross Irak and land in Iran. The area us surrounded by closed airspaces or dangerous and restricted. I manage to find a route that avoids all of them. But just for safety, I prefer to fly high, to see perfectly the ground, and to combine visual with VOR, specially on Irak. So, after fixing a problem with instruments air pressure, I take off and climb directly to FL195, pressurizing the cockpit, for the first time, since surface level.
And I'm flying over Irak. On my right, the river Tigris and Mosul. It's impressive to think about this region as the Fertile Crescent and the Cradle of Civilization. And sad to see what it has become nowadays.
From Dukan Lake I fly towards Darbandikhan Lake, last waypoint before crossing the Iranian border. Right over the border I began the descent towards the runway, which... well, what I saw was quite unexpected.
The runway is the road! I didn't check this on my maps, assuming it was a regular airfield. Definitely a very nice suprise, as well as challenging. Of course, no ATIS nearby, so I decide to land from the South, based on my feeling of the wind. I'm careful anyway in case the wind is not adequate, to go around. But, a bigger problem showed up on short final. There were cars in the strip! or road...
Luckily, cars move aside and let me land very soft. A totally unexpected end that spiced up the trip a bit. From here, I plan to cross Iran. There are multiple jobs between large airports, so it should be profitable too.
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RNA ZAKHU BASHUR DUKAN DARBANDIKHAN
LTCL 021250Z 17008KT CAVOK 29/11 Q1016
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