I was relieved to find that leaving Agra was easier than getting there. While I was eating my lunch, the weather had closed in quite a bit (visibility was now 1/4 mile in fog, with the cloud ceiling down to just 400 feet), but VECC is well-equipped for IFR landings, so I didn't worry about the arrival end of the flight...if I could just get airborne.

Turns out that clearance was easy to get...the weather was just at minimums. We started engines at 13:30, ran through all the check lists and got rolling at 13:38. In the sim, there are no taxiways at Agra, so we bounced over the grass alongside the runway for the short distance to the runway. To save wear and tear on the props, I held off on the run up until we were on the runway, and getting on the runway requires clearance...so timing was critical. At 13:42, we got clearance for takeoff, and I held the brakes a few moments longer than usual to be sure I got through my run up checks, released the brakes and we were off from Runway 12.

Climbing through FL080, it got cold enough to worry about icing, and since we were still in the clouds, I deployed the ice vanes and considered lowering the nose to hold 160 KIAS, but it turned out that I didn't need to. We'd accellerated to over 170 anyhow, and we popped out of the clouds at FL090 again, so I retracted the ice vanes and we were back at full power. We leveled off at FL270, 22 minutes after takeoff, and found that we had a very strong tail wind: 67 knots almost directly off our tail. The GPS very quickly had our ground speed as 335 knots.

For a while, it got a little bumpy, but not enough for me to think about asking for a different altitude...I wanted to ride that tail wind!

Just about 15:30, Kolkata Center had us start down to FL240, then cleared us to descend at pilot's discretion to FL140. Before we got that far down, ATC cleared us down to FL080 and wanted us down in 30 miles or less, so I pulled the power all the way back and set the autopilot for a 1,500 fpm descent...made for a nice 220 KIAS descent, just like the books say it does.

At 15:44, we were at FL080 and 175 KIAS when Kolkata Center passed us off to Kolkata Approach, and we were again headed down. We were told to expect Runway 19L, and accepted vectors for the ILS. Visibility was reported as 1/2 mile with a 600 foot measured ceiling.

I carefully flew the approach...gear down when the glideslope was one tick above center, pull the power to hold 120 KIAS down the glideslope, though we were still a bit fast passing the middle marker. We spotted the runway just at decision height and touched down at 16:00 on the nose...about the best greaser landing I've ever done. As the nose settled, I pulled the throttles back into reverse pitch and we took the second turnoff.

There was almost no activity at all...almost all the gates were full, but I didn't see any other aircraft taxiing, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since the visibility was so low.

Next up...Bangkok.