Am Vorabend waren Cevdet und seine Motorradgruppe vom Schwarzen Meer über Sivas und Nevsehir in Karaman angekommen. Sie hatten auf dem Weg von Kappadokien den Karadag zwar  gesehen, waren aber an der Auffahrt vorbei nach Dinek und dann links ab Richtung Madensehri gefahren , so dass wir uns an der verabredeten Abzweigung zum Karadag leider verpasst hatten.

Nach einer Vielzahl von Telefonaten im In- und Ausland sind am späten Montag endlich die letzten Flugtickets der Musiker und Piloten zur XC Paragliding Competition 2011 ausgestellt und von den zuständigen türkischen Auslandsvertretungen überreicht worden. Den Stress dieses so späten Zeitpunkts hätten wir allen Beteiligten gern erspart.

I'm flying paragliders since 1996. I was hooked from the moment when my feet lost contact to the ground for the first view seconds - I was flying!

Murat Iştın, who is a meteorologist and at the same time, paragliding pilot, was born in Balıkesir in 1980. After completing his primary and secondary education in Balıkesir, he graduated from Ankara Anadolu Meteorology Vocational High School in 1998 and started his professional meteorology career by working at Van Ferit Melen Airport.

I have been flying paragliders since 1986, before that hang gliders for several year. I started my paragliding school in Bright, Australia in 1988 and taught over 3,000 people to fly before moving on to specialise in paragliding XC Tours and XC skills development clinics.

We met Didem Irmak, Hasip Özhan and Gizem Ayhan during our preparations for the XC Paragliding Competition in Mut. They needed to travel a long distance from Izmir to arrive in Mut just for the weekend.

It was not a coincidence when I could beat Turkish Record with about 262 Kilometers in June 2010. Indeed, I fly since 20 years and my years of experience was a big part of this success.
Because a long distance flight requires of course strategic preparation, but also tactical choices.

I was born in June 14th 1977 in Istanbul. I’ve been living in Ankara since 1989. I’m a computer engineer. I was always interested in aviation and I was dreaming about flying, jumping off from a plane. I trained myself about flying with computer simulations.