Flying with the Zephyr!

A very nice anticyclone has decided to rest and stay over Finland and for a long time now I have enjoyed beautiful early spring weathers. Every day there's a clear beautiful sky with cirrus clouds, and the weather is mild and very calm. So with a sports licence in my pocket why wait for the beginning of the flying period in my flight school?

So I've now been flying with the ultralights in my aviation club..

Mäntsälä Aviation Club's Atec 122 Zephyr, OH-U645 at Utti military airport. With this, you can almost land on the runway... ...sideways!

So I've been flying the Atec 122 Zephyr ultralight, which is a quite fast two-seater airplane with a low-wing configuration. This is the same type of plane I flew when training for my licence so it's quite familiar to me. I've logged about 70 to 80 hours with the Zephyr.

At Lahti-Vesivehmaa EFLA, this time flying the U635.

Since my last flight with this type was over three months ago, according to my clubs regulations I had to book a review flight with an instructor. So we took off and did some basic stuff like stalls and coordinated turns in the training area near Helsinki-Malmi after which I embarked on a solo flight circling the city of Helsinki. A few days after that I went cross-country flying for the first time this year. I planned a flight to Hyvinkää airfield and from there to Utti military airport and back to Malmi. I've also now flown again to Hyvinkää to train landings on a slippery runway.

My most recent flight was to Lahti-Vesivehmaa. There I came across a little incident when brakes on the left wheel of the main undergarriage decided to freeze and I had to call the maintenance people form our club to help since there was no suitable tools onboard the airplane. The Result: three hours of waiting in very cold and windy conditions at the airfield. Fortunately I came across some flight instructor of the local flight school and I got access to the airfields "tower" where there was warm.