You can read it in the press: the Egyptians like to celebrate their revolution in a rather extrovert manner. President Mursi has enacted martial law for 3 Egyptian cities for 30 days, including a curfew at night. Well, our planned date of arrival is about two weeks from now and apart from the fact that one of the martial law cities is on our planned route, our local helper Ahmed, who is responsible for securing the necessary landing and overflight permissions, appears to have disappeared. We surely hope that all is well for him and that he will manage to get us the permissions.

Apart from this little issue, we are making good progress in our preparations. Today our pilot uniforms arrived, which make Achim look like a cheap callboy. Achim did a few traffic patterns yesterday and refreshed his memory of the basic functionality of the Cessna 182. In the meantime, I am reading the user manuals of the autopilot, glass cockpit and FLARM (anti collision monitor) and our feeling is that we are well prepared. Now it's up to Mursi and the weather and of course Ahmed our friendly helper to decide whether we can take off as planned on February 14th.