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Touch and go on Tbilisi intl airport

After we returned from beautiful Batumi, our friends Artem and Mike went for having touch and go’s on Tbilisi intl airport while we enjoyed the pool area of the Natkhtari airfield. Hereunder are some nice pictures they’ve made as well as a slow motion movie of our Georgian C182





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Batumi, Georgia at the black sea (Adjania province 2)

After taking care of landing formalities at Batumi intl. Airport, we headed for the city’s boulevard. This intl airport is the entrance airport for any small planes coming from Europe. Our plan is to setup in September 2016 the “1st long range tourist rallye to Georgia” and Batumi airport will act as entrance point for customs formalities. But today, we’re just exploring the city a bit. Unfortunately, we have not time enough to go visit the Botanical gardens, that will be for next year. As clouds above us are developing rapidly ( CB’s??), we decide to go just for a lunch in Batumi. This city has changed tremendously over the last couple of years, really,a’azing how modern it looks. Just take a look to the pictures below and you’ll see it yourself.

After lunch, we’ve met a nice person who used to work in Antwerp, Belgium and he drove us back in his right wheel car to the airport. After take off, we fly again along the coast at low altitude in order to remain VMC and slowly climb out as the weather improves. Bye bye, Batumi, we’ll be back next year.
The 1,5 hour flight to our georgian home base proved to woek out well and we saw this time the landscape evoluate from lush humid valleys to dryer plains. So beautiful. After landing in Natakhtari airfield, our Russian friends Mike and Artem took over our plane as they went to perform some touch and go’s on tbilisi intl. airport, while Jean and myself enjoyed the swimming pool with outside temperatures still topping 40 degrees celcius.
Upon their return, we paid our bill ( based upon a 250 usd rate per hour for our Cessna 182). Their pricing is similar to Luxembourg. 
In the evening we went to a great restaurant in the Checkov street ( star trek trainee, remember), called Kopala…where we enjoyed probably the best view over Tbilisi….together with a great dinner. A nice way to end our flying.
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Georgian flying: Natakhtari to Batumi at the Black sea coast (Adjania province 1)

August 3, 2015

The plan for today was to explore the coastal area of Batumi, in the south eastern part of Georgia in the Adjana province.

Early in the morning, we headed from our Tbilisi hotel ( British House) to our Natakhtari hub where we prepared to take off. The weather in Batumi is often quite different than in The Tbilisi region, it is not different today. Batumi has many low hanging clouds and there’s some risk for CB’s. 
Flying from tbilisi to Batumi, we effectively saw the landscape change and become much greener and we’be been overflying many lush valleys. The ceilings were quite low when approaching Batumi.
We’ve been flying along the coast of Batumi and sw the remarkable architecture of their boulevard buildings. It seems Las Vegas, all very modern.
Landing at Batumi was perfect, air traffic control speaks well English I noted.