Utterly Epic.

We sat at the airfield restaurant in Northern Slovenia waiting for the temperature and thermals to settle down for a looong time and planned a departure that would follow a VFR route through the mountains to Postojna. Matt picked up a transit from Ljubljana info and they cleared us to 5000ft and so we climbed slowly into the mountains. After 15 minutes it became apparent Paul E was having some issues with unserviceable instrumentation. No Speed, No height, and a transponder telling ATC he was halfway to the moon. We worked out he must have something wrong with his static pressure port which controls all this instruments....this alongside his partially knackered Flydat giving him sporadic information about his engine. 

Matt notified ATC to disregard Paul's transponder readings and the controller asked for him to reboot his transponder.  Knowing the issue at hand, Paul's somewhat animated response to Matt was that "it won't make any f difference, the ASI is F'd, but don't tell him that, my Altimeter is F'd but don't tell him that either, I've got no RPM either , but I'll just set the transponder to lat/long only, that's all I can do"....and he was right!

We pressed on into the hills and the setting sun. The scenery was almost indescribable, and utterly beautiful.

We weaved our way southward through most of the countrys mountains and although there was a headwind, we didn't care. The air was smooth and we were all spellbound by how incredible the scenery was and when offered a direct route by ATC declined in favour of more time en route and more scenery. Eventually our destination came into view and in still air we landed on Postonjas silly runway at sunset. It was an unforgettable flight.  The restaurant at the end of the runway were calling last orders, so half of us put a tent up under the wing and rushed to the restaurant to order 6 beers and menus.   I'm afraid the photos just won't do this flight justice.

Update. 15 mins in the restaurant with a beer and Graham's phone rings....it's ATC. He had forgotten to close his flight plan, another beer related flight plan incident to the list!