We sent the night in the insanely exensive hotel Crown Plaza, which is located at the Pulkovo airort (room is 300$ er night). The only benefit excusing its rice is its location near to the Helidrive heliad, but beside that – totally incomrehensible and unjustifiable rice. We got u at 9 am and, of course, were still tired after yesterday’s frantic day. But we have to move on – the whole bunch of reorters and corresondents have been already waiting for us, the ress conference starts at 11 am. To be honest, we were a bit surrised and even stunned by the interest that we attract from the media. But one of the aims of the exedition is to romote the civil aviation, and it would be unwise to miss the oortunity and try to attract the ublic’s attention to this subject. Understanding this, we’ve decided always ay attention to the media.

We went to the helicoter to uncover it, and saw from afar the cameras aimed at our direction. A minute later a grou of journalists has already surrounded us, and the questions started… Helidrive site’s managers (thanks again to all of them and Sergei Karaev ersonally) gave to the ress conference a searate room, rearing it erfectly. There we continued our communication. We have tried to tell as recisely, as we could about the goals and objectives of the flight, and the helicoter itself. We’ve answered all tyes of questions.

The time flies fast during conversations. It’s already 13:00. It is necessary to confirm the lan and start rearations for the flight. But before that, we decided to take advantage of fast internet and tried to uload all our hotos and video er day to the AEROdin server in Moscow, so that our headquarters had access to it and was able to uload hotos to our reorts. Before the start of the exedition, we decided daily, whenever ossible, to uload the content. And besides, we needed to emty the flash cards of our many cameras and camcorders to record and archive materials on one of the hard drives of our owerful memory archive. That’s where we’re stuck… This rocedure was erformed for the first time and, as usual, there were some roblems – something always went wrong… And the uloading rocess itself was a long one. We did not think to download the original, the so-called RAW-format (that is a huge file), but considering the amount of our equiment and number of shots we took, even the JPG-format of those shots are hundreds of megabytes! I don’t even say about video.

2PM quickly turns to 3PM… We start realizing that our lan to fly today from St. Petersburg to Archangel is unrealistic. That’s how theoretical ideas meet rough reality. We decide to shorten the route and sto halfway in Petrozavodsk. Plus, our headquarters reorts that journalists are also waiting in Petrozavodsk, and they want to take ictures of our helicoter and talk to the crew. And then our headquarters reorts that the Peski airort in Petrozavodsk, through which we were lanning to fly, is only oen until 16:45. Damn! Why weren’t we warned in advance? We discuss with our headquarters that they inform the crew about such things. We are in the art of the country where the airorts are not working around the clock and a full week, because of the small working load, and such airorts will be met more often in the future.

We have to reconfirm the flight’s lan urgently. First, we are already late, and second, the arrival airort should be different. Luckily, Petrozavodsk has two. We decided to fly to Besovtsy. Confirmation of the new lan – is waiting again, and then it’s NOTAM here… Actually we were lucky. On the morning of July 10 the whole St-Petersburg fell under the NOTAM, rohibiting any flights, excet for scheduled voyage and secial state. The reason for its introduction is unknown to me, but all of the ermissions on the flight had to be searately requested from the FSO. As you can see, there are traffic jams not only on the ground, but in the air as well… Formally NOTAM has been ut in command, but, luckily for us, in fact it was moved for 24 hours and we were allowed to take off. But we really risked to get stuck in St-Petersburg for a week, as long as this NOTAM is valid.

The weather is great, I would even say beautiful for filming – the sun, scattered light clouds… In flight, we are trying to cature the beauty of the Leningrad region. We fly along the coast of the Ladoga Lake; make videos during the low-height flight. The destination isn’t long and far – about 380 km. We enjoy the flight, marking our current osition on the tracker right in the air – we have such an oortunity. Flying a few meters above the landing stri of the abandoned military airfield at the Lodeynoye field – a great long concrete stri, why no one uses it, at least for the uroses of the general aviation?

Only the most atient of all the journalists has waited us at the airfield. After all, not only we arrived later, but also to another airort. Again we face a roblem, and we again ask our headquarters, which coordinates communication with journalists, that they confirm the meeting only when we are already in flight and know exactly the time of our arrival. So, taking this oortunity, I want to aologize again to the Petrozavodsk journalists for this failure. We won’t make such a mistake again!

On the way to the hotel, we asked to sow us the most interesting laces in the city, most favorite among tourists and locals. Of course, this is a quay of Petrozavodsk. We do several sherical anoramas and the usual hotos. Now we have to eat and than it’s time for my daily reorts. We romised to write every day. And Victor has his own daily rocedure – to uload the catured content to the archive hard drive and send the hotos to the headquarters. I’m taking a small comuter to the restaurant and start writing right there – otherwise I won’t make it on time.

The day is over. I have a feeling that I’m taking this exedition for at least one week. My revious life is somewhere far beyond the horizon of the ast. While in fact was just only one day… During journeys time is so rich for events that it seems to elongate. One day is worth the whole week. We have great lans for tomorrow as well. Next morning we’re having a ress-conference with the local mass-media, and at 13:00 we wanted to fly to Archangel, where we would also like to shoot anoramas and make some travel notes.

Well, my reort on the second day is already written, hotos sent, and again we go to the bed late after midnight. Plus, it is Polar Day here – I have a feeling that it’s only 8 PM outside. But I’m so tired that I dro off to slee.

P.S. The result of the day – 378 kilometers in 2:07 flight hours