Our association was the initiator for the first navigation contest in Turkey in 1988 and the members of our association, Sozer Ozel and Safak Benadam won the first prize with MAULE MX 7 plane and Mehmet Atay and Iklim Menekse won the second prize with Piper Dakota plane. In 1997, in the I. World Air Games, which is organized by Turkey, Sozel Ozel and Erdogan Menekse won the first prize in the Long Range Race Branch, which was started from Reycavik and included French, Spain, Italy, Israel, Amman and Turkey.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/fairault/longran.htm

       In the same contest, the oldest pilot of our association, Mehmet Kum, aged 74, also participated in the navigation branch with his own plane, L-18 Piper Cup.

International Affairs;

        In 1989, French Club D’Annemasse came to Turkey with their  4 planes and a tour is organized with the leadership of Erdogan Menekse’s plane MAULE MX 7 including Ephesus, Bodrum, Antalya, Capadocia, Ankara, Istanbul. This travel turned into a documentary for TRT by Turkish Radio Television Association.

        In 2003, Erdogan Menekse, Emin TEZEL, Prof.Dr.M.Rıza Ozbek, Mehmet Kum with Mooney M2OJ; Mahmut sevimli,Volkan Helvacı ,Osman Gurbuz, Halit Akkasoglu with Cessna 172, participated in Wings Over Aegean FLYING organization which is arranged by  Greek AOPA on Icarus Island.

        In 2003, TURKEY FLYING 2003 took place with the common enterprises of Israeli and Greek AOPAs under the title of AOPA Turkey including the cities of Ephesus, Ankara, Capadocia, Adana and İstanbul.

        In this tour, landing competition took place in Ephesus and medals and plaquettes were given to those who got into certain degrees;

1.Nikos Letsos

2.Dror Artzi

3.Kyprianos Biris

4.David Gorodetzky

5.Mustafa R. Ozbek

        Erdogan Menekse, was the pioneer with his TC-VOR registered C172 plane in Turkey Flying 2003.

         In 2004, Erdogan Menekse, M.Rıza Ozbek, Mehmet ve Nebahat Kum with c172 plane, and Ahmet Izgi, Onder Bulbuloglu, İsmail Gur, Mehmet Konyalı again with c172 plane from our association participated in AOPA Hellas upon their invitation.

          Both of the two planes participated in navigation contest in this organization, which took place on Santorini Island.

         In this organization, Istanbul Aviation Club participated with its 4 planes. We are grateful to Yioli Kalafati from AOPA Hellas and Korhan Abay from Istanbul Aviation Club and to all participants with many thanks.