Other planes from the air on the Czech rally

I had hoped to get a photo of each of the other planes from the air during the rally, as it's rare that you get a photo of your plane from the air, but of course that wasn't possible.  Here are a few though!

The lovely Symon

OK-KUR-02

OK-KUR-02

OK-KUR-03

And back again to idylically located Frydlant flying club

Czech-Polish air rally

We had great fun flying to 5 destinations on the Saturday and here are a few group pictures to commemorate the occasion

Maybe not my favourite beer, but definitely my favourite beer mug!

Renaissance gardens seem to be made to be seen from the sky, which was good as it was a really hot day and despite our best efforts we didn't manage to walk there...

We went past dozens of castles.

scenic routes around the area of one of our landing spots, if only we'd had more time!

Everyone warming up to leave our last landing

Polish flying rally to the Czech republic

At Kikity Syzgi told us that he was leading a weekend rally from Katowice to the Czech republic, so after a few moments' consideration we decided to miss the Elblag canal and our other plans for western Poland and go with them.

Katowice town

oops we forgot it was a landing competition until we saw the yellow markings

The rally started from Katowice a big industrial town, where we met to have some Polish specialties for lunch. After we'd eaten Jakob kindly explained what was in it :-(  Nah I don't mind some blood sausage or fermented soup.

An action packed pre rally briefing.

First stop, beautiful Frydlant in the Czech hills

Kikity airfield

Beautiful Kikity, also on the Masurian lake system

Even at the beginning of July you have to have bad weather sometimes.  We sat in the briefing office at Ketrzyn until 4pm, waiting for a weather window to go the 30km to Kikity airfield, recommended to us by Heiko Mueller of Aerokurier. When we called to check landing fees etc. they sounded a bit bemused to hear from us, but we figured it was a language problem.

It was so damp there were dozens of these little frogs on the airfield!

When we finally arrived at Kikity, we understood the confusion: the airfield wasn't really open yet, the hotel was 99% finished and we were their first guests in their 5 star facility.  And first guests naturally have to be toasted in vodka, beer, and local beer and lemon vodka, and the other vodka, and why not whisky, oh and what about the Johnnie Walker black.....

A really talented painter was hired to decorate the walls, the planes painted here on the wall to the kitchen are the airfield's founders' planes, with Syzgi's at the top and Slavek's in the middle (we didn't meet the third founder)

The next day we couldn't understand how everyone else was so perky...  Again the weather was not the best, so everyone else stayed until they could get out safely mid-afternoon, they were kind enough to let us stay another night on our own and nurse our heads.

Storks are the club's emblem and just down the road there was a big stork nest

The airfield and hotel were built by 3 guys from Warsaw, one of whom's most easily explicable business is hotels, which is what inspired them to build a luxury hotel.  It is not yet decided exactly what they're going to do with the property: keep it as a hotel for friends and aeroclub members, open it to the public, or make it into an airpark

the view out our window (not flying weather)

Syzgi is one of the three founders of the airfield and all round good guy.

Goodbye Josip and Ida

Visingsö, lake island

Visingsö is an island in Sweden's second biggest lake. Hopefully the coldest, as we had a dip at the end of the runway - I lasted 10sec and Ju 20.

It is a really beautiful location and you can camp on the shore of the lake (if you're not worried by the powerful cooling effect from the breeze over the cold water). It is also pretty much inside a golf course so is a great destination for flying golfers.

Lennart & Terry, fantastic guys we met at Eslov with their most awesome SeaMax flying boat

We cycled through town (there are hire bikes at the airfield for people who don't bring their own bikes) which was really very cute and had  little market where I bought a local lake salmon from the lady who had smoked it.

Then we tied up the bikes for the ferry to Gränaa (50kr return, bikes 30kr return), which is a nice journey. Aparently Gränaa is one of the oldest towns in Sweden, well we missed that because of all the candy cane shops, actually they're more the shape of Brighton Rock, though not so hard and come in all flavours you can imagine, plus some you probably can't (strawberry or raspberry salt licorice flavour candy canes anyone?)

That night Johan and Vanya from Stockholm/Siljansnäs arrived. Johan flew around the world when he was just out of university and managed to get sponsorship for.most of his equipment and much of the costs, brilliant!  They use scooters for getting around, which is a great space saving idea, allowing them to tour with their dog.  I'm thinking maybe in future we use scooters or just strap on roller skates.  It would make packing so easy!

Johan, Vanja and Vincent (little head in cockpit)

Syd Fyn Taasinge, a flying visit

Had to add this lovely picture of a yacht.  I was pleased that I managed to find the owner and send them a copy :-)

Sovdeborg, a very pretty little town, a bit sleepy on a Sunday

The club members were really lovely

Pannkosh, the big Danish pancake fly-in

flying into the farm

We weren't sure to do one gray Sunday and we wanted to catch up with Lars, who said why not come to the big pancake fly-in. At the mention of pancakes I was sold.

pancake house in former border control box

Pannkosh is held the last Sunday each month over summer and all proceeds go to a Danish childrens charity. There are two pans and a whole heap of batter and jam and you go for it.

It is held at Revninge airstrip, near Odense and we were given a very warm welcome by the owner and his wife (who gave me a lace Danish heart she.makes herself - currently adorning my jacket, although it needs a little more starch after a couple of weeks).

Erik and his wife, owners of Revninge airstrip

Pannkosh is the brainchild of Bo 'crazy dane' Ronnow, who does a lot of charity work as well as aviation work: when we met him it was a week before a trip of 30 microlights up to the Finnish islands off the Stockholm archipelago.

Bo 'Crazy Dane' Ronnow

Bonn Hangelar, destination extraordinaire, sanctuary for endangered species

Weeks later I realise that I neglected to post anything about Bonn Hangelar, outrageous!  We were met with an extremely warm welcome from Juergen who runs the airfield and he had organised that we were met by representatives of some of the clubs on the airfield - it is the second biggest general aviation airfield in Germany and has around 160 planes based there.  (General aviation or GA is people like ourselves, as opposed to commercial aviation or scheduled flights which is people like Ryan Air).

Christian in the middle, Juergen on the right

Juergen is a pilot himself and very kindly took the time to suggest local destinations, copy their information and contact their aeroclubs, which is incredibly kind in someone running such a busy airfield.

Christian who was Germany's ambassador to China in former times organised a meeting with a journalist from Aerokurier who wrote an article about our trip.  He also helped us with some ideas (and charts!) for our eastern block travels.

Julian and Heiko from Aerokurier, with a Fieseler Storch, owned by a member of his flying club

Bonn Hangelar is basically a very large field, which means that a special, endangered, flower grows well there, which it can't in the surrounding built up area.  Maybe not quite as sexy as the pouched marmot that lives on Brno's airfields, but preserving bio-diversity is an important, though little considered aspect of an airfield's role in its community.

This special flower meant that the pope was unable to hold his youth congress on the airfield in approx. 2000, I think the plants are much more important.

Bonn itself is a lovely, quiet town, with some beautiful buildings, its location makes it a good destination as there is a lot to be seen in the area, as evidenced by my previous posts!

Jam ideas from Silke in Neu Brandenburg

My favourite: apple juice infused with elderflower jelly.  (Silke gave me a jar, but it's all long gone 29/5)
Pumpkin and apple.
Elderberry orange and vanilla.
Zucchini and vanilla.
Yum.

Orienteering of the air in Neu Brandenburg

The joint military / civil airstrip of Neu Brandenburg

We were really happy when we discovered that there was an air rally in Neu Brandenburg on the weekend of the 9 - 12 May, right on our way to Denmark.
So naturally we asked whether we could camp on the airfield, which caused considerable consternation, it being a shared military / commercial air transport airfield.
Anyway everything ended up working out much better than just camping: Wolf a former DDR Mig pilot invited us to stay with him and his lovely wife, Silke.

This was not just a great opportunity to get to know some really lovely people, it had the added benefit (for us) of giving us an insight into the military and the DDR.
We felt a little unprepared for the competition, as we didn't have all the necessary equipment to do the course calculations etc., luckily we chose to join the tourist class! Next time we'll join the real competition. Though I don't know that I like our chances against all the ex-fighter and commercial pilots.

Precision landing box

 Anyway an excellent time was had by all, and we met a lot of interesting pilots at the gala dinner who had travelled to all sorts of places and gave us some good tips on travelling to the relatively uncharted East...
Did I mention that we won our class, I was so pleased!

Julian getting ready to test ride Wolf's 50s Czech motorbike...

Day flight from Berlin to Eberswalde Finow

68ha of solar cells, awesome MIG shelters, how cool is this place?

This isn't a really long trip from Berlin, but as usual the people are what made it great.  We landed on a 2540m asphalt runway thoughtfully provided by the Russians and weren't quite sure what to do.

Luckily after a short chat at the cafe next to our plane's parking spot, Matthias from the tower offered to give us a tour of thee airfield, with its three different types of MIG shelter, one of which now includes an apartment where the exhaust gas ducts once were.

We also scrambled on top of a shelter to assess the roof terrace potential. Fabulous. Each shelter cost the same as 10 DDR homes did, back in the day, and is now yours for only €30K. Bargain. The runway looks like soon being shortened  to 1000m as the 68ha solar array (we thought it was a lake when we were approaching it) is extended. We shall see.


Still to come, a photo of the famous boat lift in Finow.....

Morsoe: Danes bearing Danishes

In Denmark we have been really overwhelmed with kindness.  Not long  after we touched down in Morsoe Jens-Erich & Ewa arrived with some really superlative Danishes, apparently inspired by our account of the Danishes eaten at Endelave. We haven't heard from them yet, but we hope that they still look at our blogs from time to time and will see his and drop us an email.

Morsoe is a medium sized island in the north of Denmark, its connected to the mainland by a bridge but due to the island nature of the region it feels pretty isolated, or as people say about this area of northern Denmark, it's the 'wild West'.  In the past the farmland on this island wasn't very valuable, which allowed the gliding club in the 70s to purchase a swathe of farm land and move away from the nearest large airport to their own small strip.  For the first few years members who were themselves farmers took care of the harvest, but now they lease the land out, proceeds of which help fund their aircraft, what a brilliant way of organising a club to make it unaffected by governmental policy and financially independent.

Gratuitous shot of wind turbines from the air - the shadows are so lovely

The next day we cycled into Nykobing, the major town on the island, which being a pretty little port town should be quite similar to Lemvig, which by plane is pretty close by and completely overrun by German tourists.  But it seemed a lot quieter and a bit economically depressed.  Everywhere we go (e.g. McDonalds in Aarhus, don't ask) we see brochures for its major tourist attraction, Jesperhus, a big garden funpark, so it seems like it should be a major tourist destination.

Fantastic fountain in the town square

Town logo, on all the drain covers

Nykobing from the air, bridge to the  mainland in the back right

Nykobing harbour

We didn't make it there though, instead we did some hard work uphill on gravel mountain-biking on our extremely road specific bicycles through a fabulous forest and had a look at the great cast concrete bridges connecting the island to other landmasses.

With lovely Peder who lives next door and looks after the club