3 are missing this time...

Time to head back home.
In formation with Andy in Peters plane on our way from Madrid to Ampuriabrava.
The Spanish nature looks nice with it's green color at this time of the year BUT in september you can't recognize this to the same place when you fly at the same point...And a closer look at Peters plane.Yes, sometimes the weather is on your side when you make your ferryflight.

David and Goliath

David is a man from Sweden and Goliath is a PBY Catalina from Spain (where Madrid is, correct ecki?).
Now after some years the Catalina will be put to flying condition and after an month or two the plane should be ready for the ferry trip to it's future homebase at Linkoping, Sweden.The hoses will be replaced (I saw one from January 1962) and midlife engines will be installed for the ferry flight while the new ones are waiting back home.
In my opinion planes like this should be flying so all the best for David, hopefully the weather favours along the French coastline on the trip home.

Madrid - in what country is it?

As you can see ecki is giving us a speach where Madrid is placed.
For those who don't know or can't read maybe the picture helps you ;-D

1 is still missing

from combat but she/he/it/that/something arrived today during the afternoon break.

Hamon Iberico II

The sequals seems to be the name of the week.
And as in many cases we have seen before they are worse than the original...

But here is the proof that the Hamon Iberico actually was eaten. Patrick and Adilson was given the honorary work and they were up to it. Thank you guys!

Beauty and the beast

and some sighting devices that stayed intact during the travel.And not to mislead anybody, here is the beauty and the beast!But they seem to follow the leader nicely :-D

Hamon Iberico

Yes, this is what we need to live on for the next week. No other food is available ;-D
The dish or "roadkill" is presented by Ecki and the other eaters are Adilson and Peter.

Time before the device story...

During my ride to the airport I heard from the news some "nice" information, the safety check personnel had walked out of the airport as protest. So now with the foremen running the safety check there where lines waiting at the airport. The feeling wasn't to great by the time I came to the airport. Fortunately I had an electronic ticket so I headed directly to the baggage drop.
Here is a view from the safety check line, still have an hour and 15 minutes until the flight departs... And the entry was not through door 3 or 2 but number 1 which hides somewhere behind the white bus!Long story short, managed to get on the flight 10 minutes before the pushback was started, belive that there was only 5 persons who managed to get on the plane after me.

Homework before leaving to Madrid

Yes that's what I have to do. I'm going to Madrid and checked how I would get my sighting devices with me. Well the kind people at the baggage drop put me forward to the security check who kindly asked me to go to the ticket office since they see airplane parts made from carbonfiber as weapons. Yes you read that right, weapons...

So at the ticket office they looked at the sighting devices and told me that they will fit nicely (after some phone calls) in the cargo. But as all aerobatic pilots know that these are precision devices that will be crushed if they are wrapped only in plastic or cardboard and put in the same space as the baggage. There was only one solution left.
To build a sighting devices box!So here the box is after some cutting and screwing (not in the good old fashion way). Tomorrow I'll know how good my box came out, keeping my fingers crossed.

Back to school

Well that was not my first thought when I graduated with my degree as a bachelor of science in engineering (many many years ago). But for some reason I sit on the bench with a small grin on my face. Maybe it's the subject that we focus on, the aerodynamical design factors of an airplane.

Even if you don't need to build your own plane, since we can buy them factorybuilt, it's always good to know some basic stuff of the theory side so you know what influences what. But I'll not bore you more with this stuff.

Evening activities

When you fly and teach inside the plane in the morning you can take it easy and stay on the ground in the evening...
So the "plane" that needed some help was my old warbird, the Ultimate. It's still an awesome plane to look at. Too many hours put into the rebuild that I could say anything else. Yes, for you nitpickers I know there are some details that can be made better. Offtopic, I think that these pictures will be one of last one's with my name on the plane.But away Sami (Nikulainen) goes, that plane is just so impressive with two wings and everything. It doesn't leave you cold, specially when you play chicken with a car...And two happy Samis after the flight. The sighting device got it's "annual check" and it was OK. The same happend to the vertical roll that we had worked on last season, everything was good on that department too. So now it's time for more pratice and for me to get offline for a while. More to come later...

Morning activities

We meet again with Mikko in the Extra 300 office at EFHF to see how he has progressed with the training.Time to taxi out infront of Malmi tower to holdingpoint 18.Just going south outbound Nokka reporting point towards our designated training area D20.Mikko on the vertical with a slip over the sea. We got that worked out. And I can tell you that an old dog can learn new things and with an remarkable speed! It's always rewarding to work with people who listen what you have to say, they don't let their ego come in the way and work hard and passionately. And with Mikko you can add his athletic youth in the combination and you have an person who wants to progress and he is truly much younger than he's age lets you belive. There are far too many young pilots I know who are much older than Mikko by their state of mind. After our workout it was time to head back to Malmi. Here you can see our practice "lines" at the Finnish coastline, lots of small islands to aim at or to get confused by.Yes, it was a nice way to start the day.

Back at EFHF for basic stuff

Spain is left behind and I'm back on home turf. Blue skies are waiting and this is visible at EFHF airport as the planes are being pushed out of the hangars with ever increasing speed.

And since my plane is faithfully waiting for me in Spain I took the opportunity to help some local pilots with their flying. The tool was an Extra 300 and while Mikko Teerilahti wanted to get some basic stuff put together Tapio Pitkänen asked me to learn him some tumbles and gyroscopic maneuvers.Both took the lessons well and seemed to get the hang off it but I'll know the next time I see them fly how fast or slow they learn new issues.

They both have still some way to go to master the maneuvers we practised but they will eventually get it sorted out. How fast or slow that remains to be seen.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and at the same time it was an excellent way to start to enjoy the Labor Day.

Picture by Juha Klemettinen