Flemming and I wanted to leave Siljansnäs early in the morning, but the cloud base was so low, we had to return back.
It was going to get better later, and we had nothing else to do than hang out in the club house:
Our second attempt hours later was much better:
And we were happy we could fly again:
Bad weather was on its way from Scotland, and in a couple of days it would reach Southern Sweden. We didn’t want to spend the last week of our vacation under the rain waiting for a chance to fly. We knew the weather was going to be very nice and stable on Gotland, a big island in the Baltic sea, and our intention was to get to Gotland in a day or two.
Our first flight that day was to Norrköping, for refuelling:
Flying in Sweden, we often saw river dams and hydroelectric power plants:
We also noticed that the rivers after dams were sometimes completely dried out. And we wondered what biological effect it had? Everything has its price, the same as with many other good inventions…
Norrköping seemed to be quite a big city:
The airport from a bird view:
Although we had been in touch both with the tower and with the flying club regarding refuelling, some misunderstanding took place anyway. First we had to taxi a couple of km to the fuel station at the airport – just to realise it was the wrong one. The air traffic controller on duty didn’t know anything about our agreement. After some time the miscommunication was solved, we backtracked a couple of km to another taxiway that took us to the flying club.
We were expected, and got a warm welcome.
Coffee in the club house after refuelling, and pilot tales.
After that we had to taxi, again some kilometres, to the terminal building of the airport – to pay the take-off fee of 250 SEK. An officer there asked us to take a picture of him in front of our Aeroprakt – it was first time, he saw this type of ultralight. And we asked him to take a picture of us, with the Swedish Air Force in the background:
The wind direction changed whilst were taxiing around there, refuelling and drinking coffee. Backtrack a couple of kilometres to another runway… We felt we knew the entire airport in and out! The Swedish Air Force aircraft got first priority, of course – they took off in tail wind! Soon we also were airborne, and headed for Stegeborg. It was a very short (and scenic) flight:
Before going on this trip to Sweden, I asked Jon, a friend of mine from Värnamö flying club, whether he could recommend any special places to visit. Among others, he mentioned Stegeborg – it was his and his wife’s favourite. And now we had a chance to make a stop there.
The approach was very beautiful:
We parked our aircraft and could finally relax.
