In 2007, private pilot Uwe Thomas Carstensen flew round the world in 80 days in a small single-engine plane. Now he's
off on a new adventure. This time he'll be leaving in the same plane on a 60-day round trip of Africa.
On 1 November 2010, he'll be taking off in the Cessna, or its more familiar moniker: the rose-painted plane. The first leg
will cover Croatia, Greece, Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and end
on 28 November 2010 in Namibia. The second leg will start on 5 February 2011 and take the pilots from Namibia over Angola,
the Gabon, Cameroon, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria and France and back to Hanover. The rose-painted plane will land
there on 24 February 2011.
Carstensen and his co-pilot, flight captain Martin Grohganz, are looking forward to all the
aviation challenges over the 28,000 km trip. They will need to observe sudden changes in weather and heavy thunderstorms
over the Tropics and take into account the risk of sandstorms in the desert regions. The pilots are particularly in awe
of the not exactly run-of-the-mill crossing of the Sahara between Timbuktu in Mali and the Algerian coast.
Some 15 hours of flight time are planned for that stretch alone.
