Thursday, June 23, 2011
Lakeside airstrip sauna fishing action with diggers. Yeah!
Krapperup Castle, Skaane, Sweden. How much good weather can you handle?
We flew into a highly recommended airfield, Skaana Fagerhults right on a lake to stay at a log cabin with a sauna for us to warm up after fishing on the lake. Bo, the owner is a road work machinery nut and he let the four of us loose on his collection of vintage 'diggers'. We 'helped' build a gravel wall around his digger fun zone. His 11 year old daughter taught us how to drive.
These classic Swedish mid wing planes are lovely - we saw several in our two weeks in the southern part of the country.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Danish micro Brewery, lunch at dragsholm castle
There is nothing like stumbling upon a micro brewery after a day of cycling around the Roskilde Fjord.
Helen's ability to read German as well as English enabled her to decipher the Danish term for Brew House on the sign out the front.
Cris and I chipped in with our beer drinking ability ;)
Here, Casper talks us through the history of the brewery while we inspect the setup and chug some specialties.
Danish royal summer residence.
Happy aviators :)
This is the previously mentioned birthday crew celebrating by driving classic American cars and having thei rphoto taken with us. Each to their own I suppose.
Helen in flight training.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Viking ships and Roskilde aero club
To meet our Australian friends Cris and Ros, we bombed into Roskilde near Copenhagen in Denmark. The club held a season opening flag raising ceremony and we had the chance to meet the local pilots.
We had read about a Danish castle with a historic kitchen garden restaurant in an Australian newspaper over winter so the four of us flew to the grass strip near it to attend lunch. When we landed, while waiting for a taxi, two american classic cars rolled up to the airfield as part of the birthday celebrations of a local. They insisted upon driving out onto the airstrip to photograph the cast with our plane! Why not? The castle, Dragholt, is a lovely place, very simple natural fresh food. Wandering around the gardens and snoozing under a tree completed the afternoon.
Roskilde is the original capital of Denmark and the vast Fjord to the north of town has been the scene of much viking action in the past. The old kings of Denmark are buried in huge elaborate marble tombs in this cathedral;
Copenhagen! Boo ya!
With with Cris and Ros we visited the viking ship museum where traditional methods and materials are used to recreate and restore boats from hundreds of years ago. Several have been retrieved from the bottom of the Fjord.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
New baby in Berlin
Congratulations Oliver and Petra on the birth of your first daughter last night!!
We will toast with dark Estonian ale tonight.
Oli is a clever and enthusiastic aviator based at Strausberg near Berlin. He operates businesses involved in interesting things - cars and planes! We look forward to seeing them again in a few weeks time upon our return to Germany.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Mig fighter jet bunkers and microlight repair garages
While visiting the CT aeroplane repair facility at Egesdorf airfield in Brandenburg, east of Berlin, (don't say that I don't take you to the most interesting places Clare and G Man), I recognised this Swiss plane that recently flew around the world. The two airline pilots that flew together in two of such machines took four years planning the trip.
The is a thick walled concrete bunker to protect Migs from being bombed on the ground, at Finow airport north east of Berlin. It is sited in a sea of photovoltaics, next to the vast runway. These bunkers were built in response to the 6 day war in the 60s when Israel destroyed many Arab fighters that weren't adequately protected on the ground. These bunkers have blast corridors out the back so the fighter jets can start up and taxi straight out under their own power. One man has constructed an office and residential apartment in the blast corridor at the back of his bunker/hanger!
Upon returning to Strausberg airport at Berlin, the German Jabiru dealer approached us on the apron with his son to say hi. It was great to meet him and chat about our plane. As he said, 'Jabirus are my life'!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Rally flying competition
To sharpen up our dead reckoning nav skills and to see how the Germans undertake such things, we took part in a precision flying event at Neubrandenburg. This is like orienteering in the air, the aim being to fly exactly on track and on time around a course, while identifying ground features from a sheet of photos received 30 minutes before take off time. Good fun. Wolf, who organised the event and extremely kindly invited us to stay with him and his wife Silka, is a former DDR Mig fighter pilot and now trains the German federal police in shooting and assault tactics. It was excellent to hear his stories about flying jets around East Germany before reunification.
The other competitors were slightly bemused by the appearance of two Australians and they presented us with an award for having attended from the farthest place, plus we won our division (because the precision landing part of the event that I totally bolloxed up wasn't counted in the final score). We'll have to post the trophies home and pick out some charts to spend our pilot shop voucher prize on :)
This nice old Czech two stroke was great to boot around the street on. Wolf found it in a barn and fixed it up recently.
The other competitors were slightly bemused by the appearance of two Australians and they presented us with an award for having attended from the farthest place, plus we won our division (because the precision landing part of the event that I totally bolloxed up wasn't counted in the final score). We'll have to post the trophies home and pick out some charts to spend our pilot shop voucher prize on :)
This nice old Czech two stroke was great to boot around the street on. Wolf found it in a barn and fixed it up recently.
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