Eric Raymond <<ericraymond_165>> writes:

Greetings from the southern shore of Spain!

We are celebrating on the beach my having flown the SUNSEEKER here from Switzerland, without ever taking it apart.

The following is the description of what really happened, as opposed to the “Official” story, which should be on the web site shortly.

The idea was to fly from Zurich to Gibraltar, starting with a very long flight direct to Spain. We had to wait for north east winds to make this possible, but it rained for two weeks, and finally came a small hole in the clouds, so I took off and circled up through the hole in the clouds and set out to the west, crossing over Lausanne, to the north of Geneva, and finally to the middle of France. The second day, my progress westward was thwarted by thunderstorms, so we went straight south to the Mediterranean coast at Montpellier.

The next day was cut short, when my worst fears came true, with sudden offshore headwinds, pushing me out to sea, so I had to land at Beziers, where I was met by fire fighters in full gear, and axes, wanting to chop the SUNSEEKER up, as I was having trouble moving it in the 30 mph cross wind.

We took a day off to wait the wind out, and went windsurfing and rented a Hobbie Catamaran. Next day we got and early start, and made it past the Pyrenees mountains, to the north of Spain. The next day I had to cross vast deserts of pink sands and colorful mountain ranges that look flat from 13,000 feet. Due to intense heat and growing headwinds, we diverted to an airstrip on the beach, where we took a day off to enjoy the location.

The next day I made an all out effort to get as far as possible toward our goal, but it was very difficult even getting started from sea level, going up hill for more than 5000 feet, against the wind. After many hours of fighting the wind, I made it up to 15,000 feet, and had several airports within range in the middle of Spain. At that point, my well meaning ground crew decided to call ahead to announce my arrival. One after one, every airport told them that I was forbidden to land this type of plane, which is strange, because being transponder equipped, I have the right to land at any airport, large or small.

The very next day we met a Swiss pilot who lives there, and he said that the Spanish airports will always deny permission to land, if it is your first landing there. He just announces his landings by radio, the same as I have always done. Airplanes are allowed to land at airports by international agreement. But now I had to face the fact that I was forbidden to land at any airports within range, even from 15,000 feet!

Eventually my ground crew obtained permission for me to and at an airport almost 100 miles away, in the wrong direction. I knew that if I took their advice, I would never make it to Gibraltar, because it was against the wind all the way.

While arguing with my ground crew over the radio, I happened to look outside and noticed that the SUNSEEKER was getting sucked up into a thunderstorm cloud, and it was all I could do save myself from this monster in the sky. I landed at 9:00 pm, after 10 hours flying, near the ocean again. From there we tried one more day, but the wind was so strong and turbulent, it was all I could do to divert again to a cooler costal airport at Almeria, where we gave up.

Spain is just too hot, windy and turbulent in the middle of summer. There are not enough airports, and we had to deal with the police almost every day when I showed up unannounced at the airports I landed at.