The next leg was going to be a 3 1/2 - 4hr flight so I was keen to depart before the thunderstorms started to build in the heat of the day. Formalities and clearance to depart a busy airport like Addis meant several 4.30am wake up calls to get to the airport early to catch a weather window. Unfortunately there were several false alarms as updated forecasts at the airport indicated poor weather. Eventually a weather window arrived and I departed for Lokichogio (Kenya).
I sat at the hold for 30 minutes burning my precious fuel reserve waiting for clearance in between the airliners to depart. As I lined up on the 3.7km runway, I had leaned the mixture on the engine but it was still a tentative departure after the engine stopped on my previous flight. It was really noticable the effect of the altitude on the aircraft performance and took several hundred meters of runway before I left the ground.
