My last time flying the Cessna..

..Well not, actually. But today I've flown my last remaining solo cross-country flight in our CPL flight training syllabus, which is also my last solo flight in the school program. Actually we still have one Cessna flight left, which is the VFR navigation progress check we're supposed to fly after flying five hours in the Piper. For some reason our syllabus doesn't give us the required 50 hours of cross-country PIC needed for the instrument rating so in reality we'll be flying some cross-country with the Cessna's off-syllabus after receiving our licences until we get the total of 50 hours.

Heading to Kuopio at 3000 feet. Some stratocumulus is starting to build up from the morning fog.

So, since a few of our 152's were standing at Kuopio because of the night flying training, my objective was to fly there in the backseat of our C172 and then take a Cessna and fly it back to Malmi. So off we went with a plane fully loaded with three students (with the same objective) and a PPL-licence holding student in the captains seat. I was clearly in the role of cabin crew since I bought everyone some drinks and food for the flight from Malmi's restaurant.

The flight to Kuopio was totally epic since the whole middle-Finland was overcast with radiation fog that had convected to very low stratocumulus. Flying on top of such a layer gives you a strong illusion of being very high, the view is almost the same as one would see from an airliner. Very nice..!

"Oscar Oscar Kilo, Flight level 360 established.."

Landing to the destination was a little tough because of low clouds but luckily we found an opening from which we could dive into the airport. Flying at 5000 feet, we saw that the cloud layer was open from all sides except the south so we would definately get safely to the ground in VMC. It was only that we were lucky to be able to fly straight to the airport without flying further north in order to get down from the cloud top.

After having landed to Kuopio, it was quite clear that I could'nt get back into the air again due to the low cloud base and our extended student minimums (8km visibility, 1500ft cloud base). The visibility was great but clouds were at 800 feet so we headed to the canteen to plan things out... ...but after two hours all the clouds had gone and it was total CAVOK at Kuopio, so off we went!

All of our four planes lined up at the holding point, me being number two. A Finnair E170 landed before us.

I headed to Tampere in order to gain a little more flight time. It was fun to fly to the same place with three planes and discuss everything via radio. There's a frequency one can use for normal conversation where RTF phraseology is not required and ATC isn't present.

Jyväskylä Airport EFJY. I've never landed there and saw this one from the air for the first time.

Flying was very easy since I had plotted my route from VOR to VOR and just followed the radials checking the map every now and then. The weather was absolutely perfect and the plane required almost no control at all...

Tampere EFTP. A military C-17 Globemaster in the background.

After refueling at Tampere, it was time to head back to a very uneventful last leg back to Malmi. A nice cross-country experience, and a perfect closure to my Cessna-flying... ...at least for a while :)