ESSI

First weekend of August Visingsö holds its annual and one of the biggest fly-ins in Sweden. I visited it together with pilots from Värnamo and Jönköping flying clubs who I met on a trip to Krakow in May 2018.

Our group from left to right: Daniel, Håkan, Anders, Tomas, me, Jon, and Carl Philip.

Visingsö is an island in lake Vätten. The island is 14 km long, 3 km wide, with an area of 24 km2. According to a legend, a giant named Vist created Visingsö by throwing a lump of soil into the lake so that his wife could use it to step over the lake.

The airport on Visingsö has an interesting background. In 1932 the Swedish parliament decided to expand the air routes. Help-airfields were constructed every tenth km to primarily create better conditions for night mail flight between Stockholm and Amsterdam. On the Stockholm-Malmö route airports in Vängsö, Stigtomta, Norrköping, Hästholmen Visingsö, Jönköping, Hagshult, Feringe, Exen, Fagerhult and Eslöv were built. Together with the airport expansion a number of optical flight lighthouses were set up about every 15 km along the flight path.

Although the airfield in Visingsö has long been abandoned for that purpose, it is a well-preserved place with 2 grass airstrips. Jönköping Flying Club manages operation of the airfield since 1991.

There was a nice relaxing atmosphere, and we just walked around, looked at the aeroplanes, and chatted with their owners.
An MFI-9B from 1966:

Anders in front of his P-51 D Mustang:

Saab 91B Safir from 1960:

Yak-52 also attracted attention:

It was a bit windy, and a couple of tents with no roof were set up – so that the guests could see the apron and also flying aircraft. We had our food & drink break there. There were grilled sausages, freshly baked waffles, coffee, juice, and other good things.