Mariehamn Revisited

Don't feel like plotting a new route and calculating all the distances and true courses for every waypoint? No problem, just use an old route!

I had two excersies, which hadn't been flown yet and decided to combine them together and fly to Mariehamn again. The first leg from Malmi to Turku would be a 1.5 hour diversion excersise in which I would divert from Lohja to Tammisaari and then fly back to the original route to Salo and from there to the airport. Then I'd fly a 2.5 hour normal cross-country flight from Turku to Mariehamn and back to Malmi. All went quite well and I actually don't have that much more to comment about the flight, so I'll just give you some nice scenery to enjoy.. :)

Over the Sea

Thousands of islands..

Kumlinge

Finnlines

A Flight to Joensuu

I've now flown the longest flight I've ever flown with the Cessna's. Since I had the airplane for the whole day, I decided to integrate two different air excersises and fly all the way to Joensuu and back. The flight there would give me one cross-country excersise and the flight back would be the other one. I decided to fly via Mikkeli on my way back home to get a little extra fuel due to wind conditions.

Mikkeli airport from air.

Rantasalmi airfield EFRN. I first thought of making a touch and go here but ended up just flying over it.

The flight was nice and I was able to cruise at an altitude high enough to avoid all the exta turbulence and thermals. It was nice to fly this route since I've driven to Joensuu countless times with a car and could now see all the familiar places from air. I've actually never flown to this airport before so it was a fun new experience. At the end of the day I had clocked about five hours of flight time. Very nice! :)

OH-CAP @ EFJO

Jämi Fly In 2013

Last sunday we decided to attend Jämi Fly In and fly there with an ultralight airplane with my father. Jämi is situated not too far away from Tampere and the flight time from Nummela airfield is about one hour depending on the wind. Jämi Fly In has traditionally been a very good event which started out as a gathering for experimental airplane pilots and has now evolved into a family event with an airshow and lots of food and aviation related shops and stalls.

Our ultralight parked at Jämi airfield.

The flight to Jämi was nice. We cruised at about 2500 feet and the wind was all the time very light so it was an easy go. I had carefully read through the arrival procedures and made the appropriate user waypoints to the GPS beforehands so navigating and arriving at the airfield didn't pose a problem. There was a certain predefined route, which you had to follow unless instructed otherwise. This was to keep the traffic situation under control although the airfield stayed as an uncontrolled aerodrome for the whole event.

Some aerobatics :)

The airshow included lots of model airplanes, glider aerobatics, other aerobatic performances with a Pitts Special and Su-26, for example, parachuting, experimental airplanes, the Tuulia Team (which flies the same Tuulia's I have a licence for) and the Fouga Magister. My favourite was of course the Fokker DVII, which was flown by a Swedish airline pilot Mikael Carlson. I love WWI fighters and it was very nice to see this one flying!

The Fokker DVII

Another interesting airplane we saw was the Tiira, which is an illegally built experimental aircraft made out of home materials. It uses greenhouse plastic for covering material and has no ailerons. A certain Finnish gentleman built this plane in the 70's and flew many years without a licence until the police came and took the airplane away (he has built at least two new ones after that and continues illegal flying). It now stays in a museum. What's also interesting is that this one hasn't got a single instrument on board. What an aircraft!

I'd like to give this one a go... or maybe not!

I guess this rules out instrument flying?

Flights to Mariehamn

"Route at least 540km (300NM) with two full-stop landings at two aerodromes different than departure aerodrome."

FL065

This is a requirement for a CPL licence. You must have flown at least one flight, that meets the mentioned requirements and so we have two of these flights in our CPL syllabus. I've now flown them both and planned both of them to Mariehamn. The first one was from Malmi straight to Turku, then to Mariehamn and back, but since the second flight in the syllabus also mentioned a flight to an uncontrolled aerodrome in its tasks, I flew a slightly longer flight, flying from Mariehamn to Hanko aerodrome and from there back to Malmi. So four legs in total and about 4h 30min block time.

Notice the life vest we use when crossing large bodies of sea. Try not to notice the reflection from my aviator's. ;)

Mariehamn is one of my favourite airports in Finland and flying there is always fun because of the great scenery and crossing the sea and its many islands. Today I decided to fly slightly higher than usual, at FL065 due to cumulus clouds that had bases at about 2500 feet and extended up to 4500 feet. I could now fly "VFR on Top" well above the clouds free from all bumpiness and turbulence.

Clouds & Islands

All in all, the flight went quite well without any complications. I was happy to get this one behind me since the autumn comes one day and weather starts getting worse and so I'm trying to fly as much of these "high requirement" flights now and leave the traffic circuit excersises to the fall.

Refueling at Mariehamn Airport.