Tour de Scandinavia
Faeta´s northern flight expedition
UL Faeta´s flight around Scandinavia
performed by Petr Volejník and Klára Kudrnová
First of all, we would like to say big THANK YOU to our scandinavian friends who helped us to realize such an amazing expedition around their wonderful countries and enabled us to spend a pleasant stay in their home.
The object of our trip wasn´t to conquest the north pole and to break records. We used our plane for fast, safe and economical tourism. Flying in Sweden and Norway is certainly the worth experience and scandinavian airports are well equipped to make it comfortable. In total, we had been flying for 16 days, 31hod. 45min and passed the route of 5875 km. The GPS displayed an average speed of 185 km/h with an average consumption of 12,6 l/hod. So another „test" of our aircraft´s reliability passed very well.
1. stage - Sweden
The flight and visit of our friends (and our aircrafts owners as well) in Scandinavia was originally planned for the month of June as we were supposed to participate the GAP aviation meeting in Elverun, the biggest UL meeting in Norway. Unfortunatelly, the weather wasn´t friendly to us, so we decided to put our flight off till a later date. Just only to search for the scandinavian aeronautical maps is an adventurous action. Finally, we reach them from our swedish and norwegian friends. Especially the norwegian aeronautical chart is a big rearness also for local pilots, so they mostly use military charts, sometimes „historical". We finally took-off in the morning on the 30th of August from Czech republic (Nymburk). The sky was clear, no wind, so we flew directly to Sweden - Höganäs AD and finally started the 1st part of our amazing scandinavian trip. After a 700 km, 3 hours and 45 minutes of the flight we landed on the grassy runway in Höganäs AD, having about 20 l of fuel in the tank as a rest of 70 l in original.
After being friendly welcomed, taking lodge just at the aerodrome and landing bicycles (as usual in Sweden, free of charge), we planned flight, boat and ground trips. With our friends Pawel and his wife Beata, on their yacht accompanied with jumping dolphins, we realized our first boat trip to small danish picturesque fishers town called Gilleleje. The next day, we filled a flight plan and flew across the sea to small „seal´s" island called Anholt. After 3 hours of walking round that windy island without meeting any people, we could finally watching a plenty of lovely wild seals. As to have a rest from flying, the 3rd day we took advantage of excellent and comfortable scandinavian public transport and went by bus, boat and train to visit Kobenhagen, the capital of Denmark. We finished our swedish adventure by wonderful flight to Visingsö island, situated in the middle of Vättern, the 2nd largest lake of Sweden. This island represents the traditional swedish culture by typical swedish houses, famous medieval castle and church, all surrounded with the beautiful nature. We discovered this 15km long island on bicycles landed at the local aerodrome as usual.
2. stage - Norway
Thursday morning the 4th of September we flew backwind among the swedish cost to Norway. The flight was planned with one stop at Torp international airport and destination Rakkestad. Just before landing in Torp we had lost our competition with cold front and during pouring rain and bad visibility we landed as the second aircraft on the runway 18. After we found out that the customs procedure is not necessary and the rain stopped, we departed „zigcag between Boeings" and crossing Oslofjord direction Rakkestad.
After 2 days relaxing in the cottage of our friend Bjorn (the winner of norwegian UL championship in flying with his Zephyr), which is situated at the sea-coast of Oslofjord, we started the last stage of our flight. During the light rain and clouds base of 1000ft we departed direction Hamar. In this olympic town we met our friends Ole Anton and Jan with their Zephyrs. Ole accompanied us to his home, the town of Stryn, where we spent the rest of our adventurous trip. The weather was much more better than before, so there was nothing to discourage us from continuing to north-west to see the highest part of Norway with its highest peak Galdhøpiggen (2469m) and the area of the largest continental glacier called Jostedalsbreen.
After 1 hour 30 min. of flight above beautiful nature, we finally landed on small „modeller" aerodrome of Stryn, where some few domestic UL planes are tolerated to land. The grassy runway, enclosed between high mountains with waterfalls, is only 280 meters long and cold winding river flows on its both ends. This aerodrome became our home for one nice week. We got used to aerodrome conditions early and its short runway didn´t cause any problems to our Faeta having stall speed of 58 km/h. Just that first evening, we decided to see more of fascinating fjords, glaciers, waterfalls and lakes under evening sunshine, so we left (with a heavy heart) the „welcome barbecue" and 1 hour before sunset we took-off again to discover all Nordfjord to the coast of Atlantic ocean. We could really certify that we stayed in the heart of Norway.
All the sunny week we could discover this nice part of the country and realize the flight trips to Bergen and Trondheim and also many others by car and boat.
3. stage - flying home
Once everything must end and we planned the flight home. Due to a stiff head wind, we had to change the original plan, which was to fly above the coast to Kristiansand and then to Denmark. The new plan was to fly inland with one stop in Torp, which we already knew well and then to continue via Höganäs again. As we found out later, this alternate plan was the best solution. After the stopover in Torp, we landed in swedish Höganäs afternoon. Even thought the sky was clear, we were too tired after 6 hours of flight. We decided to delay the 700 km´s way home to Sunday morning and stayed overnight in Höganäs. Lately, this decision turned out as wrong, but we had no choice.. Sunday morning, after we had put away the ice off the plane, we hurried up to depart before the cold front, which went unusually from Austria to northern Czechia, will have crossed our way. The conditions for take-off at 8:00 a.m. were ideal. We consulted all with the forecast service to be sure that all aerodromes announced CAVOK. Everything went well by the time we had passed about 100 km over Baltic sea. For the first time, after 2 weeks of flying on nice weather, just in front of German coast we had to turn back to Sweden and cancel the flight plan. Low clouds base and pouring rain forced us to land at the nearest swedish aerodrome. The same situation repeated once more. The meteorologist made us sure that the rain should stop early and that the problem was not serious. After refuelling, actually assured of the clouds base in 300m over the German coast, we filled a new flight plan and started up again. The native pilotes clarified us the situation. The influence of cold and humid air which supported us by blowing to our back paradoxically stopped us. That is to say that once the air comes to the coast, the cloudiness precipitates and the rain starts. Some pilots underestimated that conditions... Finally, the conditions didn´t change so we had to plan the flight over Denmark and german Lübeck. We succeeded with this last route, althought we had to „zigzag" between the clouds again as far up as home aerodrome in Nymburk.
