The Nomadic Aviator

To get paid to fly is probably one of the best feelings in the world. Some people call us pilot. Some people even squeez in a “real” in front of pilot. I call my self a nomadic aviator…

This mean that I will do some recreation of this blogg. The company I work for have a healthy and strict non-disclosure policy which mean I can’t write about work. On the other hand, I can write about another thing. One thing I’m good at. Write about my travels around the continent. About nice hotels and such. All blogg posts will be on a time delay from it happens so the readers can’t connect my writings to my work.

So here’s the standing points.

• I work as a pilot somewhere in Europe
• I will hopefully see the most part of Europe and maybe some other continents if I’m lucky.
• I will write about my trips, visits to nice places and if your lucky and I find time to it. I’ll publish smal travel guides that can help fellow nomads on your jorney.

Sounds like a deal?

If you have any feedback you want to share, please mail me. I have had some problem with spam in the comment fields. Check contact for email.

Talk soon,
C

The clock is two am in the moring and the sun is slowly starting to come to life over the southern suburbs if Stockholm while I am getting of the last buss back home.

Twenty-four hour earlier. I’m lying on a parachute on a grasfield, watching the sunrise over Bunge. On those twenty-four hours quite much has happened. My mind has been on high rpm thinking of noting and everything since.

We start of in the grass on the parachute. It is still the same grass that got me grass allergy three years ago. I lie there and see how the clouds move by and we listen to calm music and just enjoying the moment with the knowledge of that tomorrow it will all be gone, we are going home. The night is our, nobody can take our time under the night sky away from us. I consider myself pretty lucky to be lying there on the parachute with greatest company luckily unknown with the fact that a fox is going to start nibbling on shoes any second from now. We all start to stare at the fox and observe it without making any sudden move. And yes. It is nibbling on our shoes. I can’t stop thinking of how surreal this is. That’s not the only thing that’s surreal in my mind.

Three participants of “I Have A dream 2011″ at Bunge airfield with Search and Rescue chopper performing an exercise.

I am back were it all started! I cant believe that i am walking the holy ground again. A lot of the kids on the camp asked me why I loved this place that much. I just smiled at them.
- this is why! To be at an small airfield with thirty enthusiastic people around my age that starts to share the same passion I have. It’s a dream come true! I can’t describe how unique this is!

They all think I’m crazy but we’ll see who will miss the place when they are home…

The white buck is still there. The one making a border between landside and airside. It is still huge amount of inspired young teenageers deciding their career choice just as I did four years ago. It is strange how time flies away and how you certainly feel old when you actually just are twenty and three years older than the most of the kids. Ohh sorry, I meant teenagers.

After a couple of hours of sleep and a terrific ending cermony I waive them goodbye and walk over the grass field to my aircraft and head back for the big city and reality. To make that walk. Only three years since last time. Thats as surreal as it gets. I can’t believe that I became a pilot under so short time!

A pretty uneventful flight across the pond later I’m on the commuter train again. The train I’ve been catching for the past year now. I know my rutines by now. I even helped a lost traveller to get her ticket. It felt like the last train, a chapter in my six o’ clock. It’s time for the next chapter of my life. Getting the job.

And now we come to the most scary and frustrating part. I thought last summer were frustrating when everyone asked what happens now and all i Gould answer were that I waited. This year is a whole new story. Now everyone expects something more.

“But your done now, why aren’t you working as a pilot then?”

The only ones not related to me that understands are my friends from up north. We still have all the greate memories to talk about and it were a blast to meet everybody again straight away after the train ride. I had a major cold, a major loss of sleep and a major lack of energy after the flight. But I went anyway. And I didn’t regret it for anything in the world. It were so nice to chat will all of them again. All the memories, all the new life plans and all joy. It couldn’t be a better end to my one week nano vacation.

So here I stand, watching the apartment complex while the sun rises over the south suburbs of Stockholm. Back to real life, back from parallel universe. It’s time to walk the pavement I walked three years ago and hope my feet shows me the path imhave walked for three years. The path that have been straighter than the borderlines of africa.

Talk soon!

/C

So, I flew down to Berlin and stayed there for almost a week. It was great fun. We saw a lot, in the name of aviation. It’s a lot of fun and I can recommend it strongly. This text will hopefully help general aviation pilots to get a feeling of how it could be to fly to Berlin.

We start of at the smal grassfield southwest of Stockholm, ESSZ (Vängsö), a sunday in may. The weather forecast isn’t that good and the previous night we were checking four different aviation authority websites and discussing our options. The best we could come up with were to fly between the two fronts. The first one passing in the morning and the other one at late afternoon.

The thing is that in a front, it often comes rain. That means a wet runway. So the next morning we waited out the first front and came to the hangar just after it stopped raining. But then we realized that the runway wasn’t just wet, it were also high grass on the runway that we wanted to use due to the wind. What to do?!

We cut the grass. Well, I cut the grass while the other guys prepared the airplanes for flight!

The take-off were nice and smooth and with the extra meter we added in the beginning it were a lot of runway left when we retracted the landing gear.

Well on our way it were a lot of clouds but also lots of sun rays. We crossed between and under clouds all the way down to Kristianstad (ESMK). We passed the beautiful archipelago of St. Anna and the woods of Småland. A true trip in the name of Nils Holgersson but in the other direction! I’ll show you a picture from somewhere over Småland.

At Kristianstand we stoped for some refueling and a cup of coffee. We had called earlier to the flying club to let them know we’re comming. They were really helpfull and told us a bit about the club and so on. Skåne is the region to be in when it comes to general aviation. A lot of good things is going on down there!

So then we headed to Eggersdorf. The second front were closing in on us and it became a bit cloudy but still VFR. Over the ocean it became quite tricky to keep the references when ocean and land looked like one big pieces of failed cappuccino. Heres a picture just after entering german land somewhere over Rügen.

The handover from Sweden Control to Bremen Information were really smooth and I really like the system of having same frequency of a huge area for all the vfr traffic. The biggest difference on Bremen, compair to sweden, where that Bremen loves to hand over to others without care. For example.
- Bremen, Delta Lima Mike request leave for Strausberg.
- Delta Lima Mike,change to strausberg and squwak seven thousand, tschüüüüüs.

Okej, I am buying when the controller don’t know the frequency for Strausberg but we had at least one hour on the frequency and they did a lot of handovers to Sweden control and other nation fir with same tone,
- Switch to sweden and squwak vfr tschüüüüüüüs.

No frequencies, not remaining on same squawk, no nothing. Just a big tschüüüüüs in the end. This did get us some problems on the way back.

So after almost an hour we also got the “switch to eggersdorf and squwak seven thousand, tschüüüüüüs” And we switched to Eggersdorf.

Now the interesting part begins. First time on a smal filed in germany. German fraselogy could be interesting and is for sure not my thing at the moment. Fortunate for us, thers a law in Germany that says there have to be someone at the airport if you are going to land. Unfortunate for us, that person don’t have to talk english. In our case, he knew enough to tell us “please use runway 24″ and “runways free”. So it was a really smooth transition down to the ground.

Eggersdorf is an small airfield just east of Berlin and have 2200 meters of runway and the both ends of the runways are paved. It took some time to figure it out but then I realized that it’s quite smart. You can make the landing on hard surface and when you get the speed down, you are rolling in the grass. Also, taildraggers have 1500+ meter to use.

So after landing, we asked about were to park. The respon were “eehhhh” *silence on frequency* “eeehhhh, restaurant”.

We figured that we just parked somewhere and then we’ll have to move if it’s wrong. After all, one of the pilots were german, and it is his former home filed.

So after parking and loading the cars we hit the restaurant 200 meters away. A landning beer is always a landing beer, right?!

Due to our big group they didn’t have that much to offer since it were sunday and everything is closed in Germany on sundays. So we ordered everything they got. It turend out pretty good.

With that said, the journey to Berlin have come to and end. In the next post I will write about what to do and see in Berlin for aviation enthusiasts!

Talk soon!

/C

It wouldn’t be the nomadic aviator if he wasn’t a nomad traveling around and exploring. Past week have been absolutely perfect! Almost one hour in the blue book for every night away. Berlin and Eslöv were the targets and I have a lot to tell you guys. Unfurtunaly did I forgot my camera in the hangar so the pics will have to wait a couple of days. Be ware. The nomadic aviator is back from the dead with new creative ideas for this little piece of webpage. Hold short for a new interesting start of the nomadic aviator, the nomad that tries to catch as many hours in the blue book as possible!

I’ll leave you with a teaser somewhere over Småland…

Talk soon!

/C