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Old 6th Mar 2009, 06:01
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soggyboxers
 
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: In the Haven of Peace
Age: 79
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florin

I think your biggest problem if you brought out a microlight would be getting fuel and from some airports you need to file a flight plan with a military clearance number which can take time to get. Of course, there are other small, barely-used airfields out in the country or you could ask Cotco if you could use their strips at Belabo or Dompta. When you're in Douala get over to talk to the CHC guys who fly a Twin Otter from there.

We used to ferry across the Sahara but getting insurance to cross Algeria is now a problem because of the problems there, so my last few flights were down the West Coast. It used not to be possible to get landing clearance or fuel in Western Sahara so we had to route from Morocco to the Canary Isles (my favourite was Marrakech to Fuerteventura then Nouadibhou, though last time my Moroccan overflight clearance expired so I went direct Faro to Fuerteventura). Now you can land at El Aaiún so things are a bit easier. Because of the fuel problem we normally have to either have a ferry tank and/or extra fuel drums or arrange for drums to be pre-positioned at airfields without fuel availability. On my last flight we had a ferry tank and 4 25 litre plastic containers with a modified bilge pump for transferring fuel into the ferry tank in flight. With that layout we were able to do some quite long legs without landing although we still didn't have much fuel left on legs like Fuerteventura to Nouadibhou or Banjul to Bamako. When I ferried the helicopter to Cameroun we routed Bamako to Ouagadougou then Cotonou and non-stop Cotonou to Douala.

Enjoy Cameroun, the flying there in the mountains is lovely, though as they're pretty heavily wooded in the south of the country it's not a place you'd want to make a forced landing. We used to call the leg from Douala to Yaoundé "Jurassic Park" because of the terrain.
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