On our way to Bahrain for a quick fuel and sandwich stop and then on to Dubai

Take off from Luxor is a non event, we launch second and soon we are over the red sea the Arabian desert and the island of Bahrain appears.

Only the Saudis would call a VOR Gas in the middle of the desert.

Looks like on this view we could have made it to Dubai non-stop, but with the Blowing Dust waiting for us, that might have been a little too much pressure

Blue Skies as expected and very nice speaking controller, made our arrival easy with one exception we were given a reporting point that was no where to be found on the approach plate and after queuing the controller with the correct spelling, magically the waypoint was there...So far i have not found out on which plate we where suppose to find it.

A big long runway in excess of 14000 feet

Temperature was a balmy 41C

After a rather hot but quick refueling, and $$$$ sandwiches and water we are on our way to Dubai World Airport also snowed as Al Maktoum. The largest general aviation airport in the world.

But Bahrain was well aware of our arrival:

in order to take some view of Bahrain, we had to come back to the airport right after take-off. With the onboard Spidertrack, this return did raise some concern back at home and at the office.

But soon we were back up in the air and limited at FL280 since we had traffic above:

Same speed as the Mustang, we stayed in formation for 30 mn 2000 feet above

Then the arrival and ILS to Dubai was an experience:

We did get a shortcut but we where asked to maintain high speed.

Then came the fun part, the runway in use was 30, facing west and with the sun in our face, but also the blowing dust.

As a pilot we learn to fly IFR, on instrument to the runway, but during training we think clouds, fogs, precipitations etc...a blowing dust with 1500m visibility and unrestricted ceiling in an other experience.

we saw the runway at 400 feet above the ground.

Happy to be in Dubai