Aviation Tour - Maps on www.bankleft.com

No one was there that early so we pushed on for Viborg where we had arranged to catch up with Orla.

Orla, Lars, Mercedes and us :)

I missed the chance to ask Orla about his Stinson when we met on Endelava so it was great to have a few hours with him to look at it. He described is as a Cadillac of the air – it has bearing raced pushrod controls and no supporting brace wires for the tailplane as was requried for similar planes of the era. The air vent and door handles are streamlines deco designs and the control yokes are funky large lying down 'D' shapes.

Love that 30's panel!

When Orla offered to take us for a fly, we jumped at the chance! What a lovely plane, light and low powerd, needing only 90 hp to lift its tail after a few meters of the excellent Viborg grass runway, the Stinson exhibited unusual directness of connection to the airflow through the smooth light controls. Orla deftly held it within a few feet of the ground to accellerate for a few seconds before petting the nose rise for a slow climb out over conifers and a lake.

After letting me fly a large orbit around Viborg town with a few steep turns and speed changes to investigate the plane further, Orla made a touch and go and a low level circuit over the lake before three pointing us back on the grass to taxi up to the club house with the Stinson wagging its tail occasionally, as tail draggers do to catch the plane from swinging around on the ground due to their instability (CG behind main wheels, not in front as in a nose wheel plane – once the tail starts to go, you have to catch it sharpish or you ground loop. They are fun to taxi, feeling a little like a powerslide in a rear wheel drive car).

Wow. I am so impressed with this aeroplane. In basic terms, it seems that by the late 30's, the single engine piston plane was a mature design which hasn't improved since. Lars flew up to Viborg to meet us for a chat and he took Helen for a spin in his STOL. She agrees that the lack of ground run and climb rate is amazing. As always, Lars was accompanied by his daughter's poodle, Mercedes who sits on the parcel shelf of his plane with mini dog ear muffs on in flight. When Lars and I were flying his STOL over Stauning a few days earlier, I was interested to feel the small dog looking over my shoulder as he applied landing flap – she know from expereince that that means arrival at a new destination and looks out the windscreen to see where we are! Totally unfazed, she seems to quite like flying.

Note Mercedes behind me in Lars' STOL;

Lars and Mercedes sitting on warm cowl of Lars built Savanna STOL;

The Danes have a clever rainfall radar overlaid on a synoptic chart depicting hourly forecasts for three days ahead and this showed that we has about an hour before the heavens were to open in a serious fashion. Someone (not us) must have been failing in their tributes to Thor and we were about to wear the consequences. The good news was that our destination, Arhus, was somewhat in the direction that the rain was moving in from, so we planned to depart as it started, outrun it and unload and tie down quickly upon arrival. Orla brough up the best Danish I've tasted yet – a 'heavy' pie they call it, with dense sweet custardy pastry goodness and a spotted combination of chocolate and vanilla icing. We all sat around with coffees and looked through a photo log of Orla's restoration of a larger 4 seater Stinson in the 70s. He described the fabric covering techniques used for these tubular frame planes which includes dope to tighten, then reflective silver paint before undercoat and topcoats. Having worked in airforce helicopter search and rescue for many years, Orla could give us a few tips on emergency procedures for ditching in water, should the need ever arise. He told us about the trade off when briefing passengers between making them aware of what they should do in an emergency and making them irrationally scared which was interesting in light of my experience with Clare in the plane. She felt much better once I talked her through our emergency landing procedure. I'll have to keep that in mind in future when I'm flying with people that usually don't.

Private box hedge maze! ROFL, those neighbours must be GREEN;

Finally - all the KZs in one place - Danish plane heaven;