Sunday, August 29, 2010

Norwegian Fjords

The main Bergen airport is on an island to the west (sea side) of the city. Having had a good day and since the airspace wasn't too busy when we approached, I requested a lap of the airport's control zone at low level over the city before landing. No problem, they said, just not above 1000 feet. 'Don't mind if we do', we said (or something more formal and internationally understood to that effect), chopped the throttle, held the nose up, stuck out one stage of flap for a nice slow docile scenic cruise configuration and out over Bergen at 800' we went.
Most picturesque VOR (radio navigation range) goes to Bergen;



The only affordabe thing in Norway is fuel. They are independant of the EU and hydrocarbon rich, with the higheset GPD per capita on the planet. We bough a sum total of one packet of potato chips, when the man at the supermarket register assumed a scornful frown and confiscated the 6 pack I brought to him. No beer sir, it is after 8pm. Hmmm. Great. No midnight 24 hr bottlo runs in Norway then. These northern countries keep their light deprived citizens sober most of the time through a combination of only selling light beer anywhere outside the central monopoly retailer, huge taxes and stunts like this one.

After a tough couple of days, we wanted to head back to Denmark to see meet some people that we had been emailing at gliding clubs. A straight course direct from Bergen to North West Denmark wasnt possible due to showers over the hills. Instead we flew down a fjord to the coast and skirted along to the west of the terrain. We were still stopped by a warm front's steady rain and foced to divet into Stavegner in SW Norway where we were given more cheap fuel, a cup of coffee and a briefing room with PC for a few hours to wait out the weather.

Walking back out to our plane with 10 minutes until our flight plannned departure time (required since we were flying OS) we saw a very unusual sight. Not having seen another Jabiru for a month, there were 5 in a row between two hangers. Out walks Mr Jabiru Scandinavia. He crawled under our plane to marvel at the model updates and congratulated us on a swift and neat build. It was sad that we couldn't stay longer to chat but had to board for departure to Denmark.



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