Our next destination. Magadan UHMM in Siberia, a first for me

We are on our way home and the first stop in the US is Anchorage Alaska. There are not too many ways. The most used is the one going thru Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (UHPP)

This time this cannot be a stop for us, since they are finally repaving the taxiway and tarmac area. There are only open from 3 to 6 and do not allow overnight parking.

Alternative stop is Magadan in Siberia (UHMM). This is where we are going:

Going to Anchorage via UHPP is 2515 nautical miles

Going via UHMM is 2525 nautical miles.

The only problem is the weather for once UHPP is VFR and UHMM is shooing MVFR on the charts:

But these are Russian reporting station and their reading have to be taken with a grain of salt.

THE SAME WITH THE WIND

Different sources of TAF and METAR are reporting the same

The WSI weather chart, very nicely done and very accurate is given us a very wet flight (Icing???)

We made it

But what a flight, we were at FL390 in the soup the whole way. the Turbine aircraft were also in the soup and getting ice at FL250.

Then we did a full ILS approach and this was an amazing one, yes the ceiling was at 700 feet, yes under the cloud the visibility was 6 miles, yes it was raining and at a very good pace...But no where was mention the wind shear of 65kts coming at a 90 degree right angle at 3000 feet and slowly decreasing and changing direction ending at 110 at 14 kts.

Very happy to be on the ground 

Leaving Japan for our first Stop in Russia, Sakhalinsk

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk began as a small Russian settlement called Vladimirovka, founded by convicts in 1882.The Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, which brought an end to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, awarded the southern half of the Sakhalin Island to Japan. 

Vladimirovka was renamed Toyohara (meaning "bountiful plain"), and was the prefect capital of Japanese Karafuto Prefecture.

After the end of World War II, the Japanese portion of Sakhalin island was occupied by Soviet troops. Ownership of the city transferred back to the Soviet Union and it was renamed Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk ("Southern Sakhalin"). 

we have fans and with a lot of cameras

Mt Fuji

We have to use the metric system in Russia, the G1000 is doing a great job in a very helpful way

The co-pilot windshield heater connector failed...since one element is on the pilot side, we are breaking the boredom of flight with a game of Tic-Tac-Toe

The view of the UHSS airport, the weather is VFR but we still have to do the full arrival and the ILS and on the way down before the turn to intercept, the Garmin 1000 GPS stopped working...we continue for a visual and reset the WAAS to non-WAAS.

The Antonov is a really good looking airplane.

The TBM too

What a name for a hotel and the room are good

It was open by Medvedev back in 2007

On our way to Nagoya for some Sumo Match

Sumo is a competitive full-contact wrestling sport where a rikishi (wrestler) attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring (dohyō) or to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of the feet. The sport originated in Japan, the only country where it is practiced professionally. It is generally considered to be a gendai budō (a modern Japanese martial art), though this definition is misleading as the sport has a history spanning many centuries. 

Many ancient traditions have been preserved in sumo, and even today the sport includes many ritual elements, such as the use of salt purification, from the days when sumo was used in the Shinto religion. 

Life as a wrestler is highly regimented, with rules laid down by the Sumo Association. 

Most sumo wrestlers are required to live in communal "sumo training stables", known in Japanese as heya, where all aspects of their daily lives—from meals to their manner of dress—are dictated by strict tradition.