Every year, Värnamo flying club goes on a flying trip during the Ascension holidays that are normally four days somewhere in May or June. This year was no exception, and the planned tour was to Oban in Scotland. The group before departure from Värnamo, photo taken by Johan Wallstén, from left to right – Peter, Jan, Stefan, John, Anders, Henric, Christian, Carl Philip, Inge, Svante, Lena Maria, Jan, Sven, Robert, Celie, Erik, Weine, Håkan, and Jon in front of the group on the ground:
In fact, I met the pilots from this club on the last year’s Ascension holidays tour to Krakow. We stayed in touch since then, I visited their club afterwords, and went on a couple of other flying trips together with them.
This year we hoped to go to Scotland, but unfortunately the weather decided otherwise. A warm front approaching from the south-west forced us to change direction. After considering several other options, we agreed to fly to Braunschweig in Germany, and to assess the weather situation from there. Seven aircraft headed for EDVE (photo by Hans Pålsson):
The eighth aircraft, SE-GPH with Peter who was supposed to pick me up in Denmark, headed for Roskilde. I followed him up on the flightradar24:
After re-fuelling, we also headed for Braunschweig:
We flew somewhat on the edge of the front. On the western side there was poor visibility, on the eastern side it was VFR. Crossing over Elbe river in Germany:
Re-fuelling in Braunschweig-Wolfsburg airport:
Taxiing to apron. Peter asked for a parking place as close to the food as possible.
We were parked at the very end though. Peter – pilot in command leaving the aircraft as the last one of our crew of two:
The airport in Braunschweig has a very good restaurant; I remembered it from the tour to Colmar last year with the Roskilde flying club. Peter and I were the last ones to arrive, and the rest of the group were already finished with their lunch. We had to abandon our plan to go to Scotland due to bad weather, and find a warm and sunny place to go to.
We agreed to fly to Letnany in Czechia, and to visit Prague. Lena Maria and Svante, planning their route:
Peter and I went for a desert after lunch, and after filing of our flight plan:
Lena Maria and Svante preparing for the departure:
Flying south-east, the weather became very nice:
We landed in Letnany late afternoon:
One of the aircraft from our group had some communication challenges on approach, and on landing in Letnany we were handed over a hand-made plate of the approach chart from the staff (photo by Anders Svensson):
It is quite normal with communication challenges – the languages we speak are different, and pronunciation can go wrong, thus causing misunderstandings.
We enjoyed the +23C in Letnany, and a beautiful sunset. However, the next challenge was finding a hotel, and it wasn’t easy. None of those we called to, could accommodate 20 people.
We decided to go by small groups, and I ended up with Celie, Robert, Anders, John, and Johan. Robert booked us rooms in Novotel hotel. By the time we got there it was late, and we had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant:
All except me went for a burger, and they said it was very good. I had two starters: a tomato soup, and grilled prawns with garlic – both dishes were truly delicious.
We looked forward to get a good sleep, and to explore Prague the day after.