Istanbul to Belgrade

Looking around from Istanbul, at the airports within my circle of comfortable fuel range for the SF50, I touched on Belgrade, Grad Beograd, Serbia, and found the airport is named Nikola Tesla International airport. That name Nikola Tesla has such an interesting and controversial history associated with it! I remember him being referenced with great respect, in the courses I took from the Free Enterprise Institute, so far back in my past  So of course I just had to visit this city, with an airport named after him. Here are some things to do in Belgrade.

Climbing out from runway 25R at the expansive Istanbul airport. The visibility is fairly good, considering the hazy conditions.

Turning left over the Black Sea for a short time; the Northern Turkish coast is barely visible through the misty air.

Climbing through 10,000 feet, and almost on the 297 degree direct course toward Belgrade. You can see that the green predicted range rings are visible again on the multi-function display on the right, as they are during most initial climb-outs, before the higher thinner air reduces the fuel burn rate.

Pretty view of the rising sun behind me, as I level off at my 26,000 foot cruising altitude. At this altitude, cruise speed approaches 300 knots, and fuel burn reduces to about 60 gallons per hour, which gives me plenty of range to make it to Belgrade with about 150 gallons of reserve fuel on board.

Crossing the Sava River, just east of Belgrade, as I descend towards Nikola Tesla airport. I'm not sure this plane would be making wingtip condensation trails as often as X-Plane shows it, but I think they look pretty cool, and in all fairness, the air is pretty moist out there, on this particular early morning, with the temperature and dew-point only a few degrees apart.

On short final to runway 30 at Nikola Tesla airport. The X-Plane ATC module vectored me way off what would have been almost a straight-in approach to runway 30, but then they got me back on track just in time. I was comfortable during all this misdirection, by monitoring the ILS to runway 30 approach on the Garmin G1000.