Where have you been? What have you seen?
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By akg1486
#1862278
On 19-23 July, our flying club "Aeroklubben i Göteborg" arranged the seventeenth consecutive multi-day open trip. "Open" means that anyone who is interested is welcome and, if interest is too big, gets a seat on a first-come-first-served basis. We then arrange the crews based on who wants to fly with whom but making every effort to spread out the newbies.

This year, the interest was higher than ever and we booked the whole fleet: two PA28 Cadets, one PA28 Archer III, one Cessna 172 and one Pipistrel Virus. (I don't count our electric aircraft as part of the fleet here.) Since three seats is max occupancy considering the luggage (two in the PiVi), we could be fourteen pilots. Those were booked in March already. Not bad for a club with just under a hundred active PPLs. Unfortunately one of our friends had a family emergency the day before the trip, so thirteen of us gathered on the Monday morning. It was the first club trip for three of them, the rest were veterans. Two of the newbies had been on three-day trips before, though.


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Before departure

Our mechanics deserve a huge thanks for making sure we had at least fifteen hours available in all aircraft. One of them came in from his holiday to do a 50h service on the Archer III on the Friday before.

Most of the seventeen trips have been to the continent, but this year, just as last year, we planned for a domestic route. Not all pilots were old enough to have been eligible for two shots of vaccine before the trip. Last summer, the virus situation didn't seem so bad, so I happily joined the trip. Since last autumn, however, I've flown more or less exclusively solo until I got my second shot in late June. Having a co-pilot, and a pilot in the back seat, for the first time in a long time felt really great.

We usually plan the night stops and one stop for lunch and possibly fuel. With thirteen people and a lot of domestic tourism, the hotel situation looked difficult. Contrary to what we normally do, we'd booked the accomodation for the first and third night in advance.

The first overnight destination was ESSV Visby on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The place is swarming with tourists, mainly from Stockholm, in July so we did the right thing in pre-booking little holiday chalets. The first stop was however ESMC Eksjö, a military town halfway between our base in Gothenburg and Visby. It's a lovely little town that I know quite well from my year as enlisted soldier 1984-85.

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Shortcut over ESGG Gothenburg Landvetter en route to ESMC Eksjö

The crossing to the island of Gotland is some 40 minutes, but we feel that life jackets are enough with the water temperature being 20 degrees. I wouldn't fly there in the winter.

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Leaving the Swedish East Coast en route to Gotland

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Approaching Gotland

Arriving at ESSV, a controlled airfield, we had to stay outside the CTR for quite a bit due to intensivt parachute activities.

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On the ground, some of us enjoyed a swim before the mandatory landing beer followed by dinner in town. Gotland really is a magical place, and the old Hanseatic town of Visby is very picturesque.

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Relaxing by the seaside after dinner

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The magic of summer nights in the north

The next overnight destination was to be Uppsala, a town that during pagan times was the holiest in the country. When the Christian church came in the 10th century, they naturally made Uppsala their base. The archbishop is based there to this day. Otherwise it's known as a university town. Carolus Linneaus is one of the more famous scientists based there.

But it's not overly far between Visby and Uppsala, so we had time for two stops in between. The first was at ESVB Bunge: less than fifteen minutes northeast of Visby, it's a former military base (Gotland was close to the Soviet Union) now privately owned. The family that owns it has a collection of military jets from the fifties and onwards. Small airfields in Sweden normally don't charge landing fees, but here we happily paid the suggested donation of 200 SEK (20 EUR) per aircraft for the privilege to see the old war birds.

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Saab 37 Viggen at Bunge

For lunch we aimed for ESVE Stegeborg on the Swedish east coast a bit south of Stockholm. Many of us had been there before and knew there is a nice little restaurant overlooking the sea less than a mile's walk from the airfield. Stegeborg is located at the eastern inlet to Göta Kanal: the 19th century channel that, via lakes and rivers, offers a navigable route between Stockholm and Gothenburg. The Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson (the propeller, the Monitor) was born and raised along the canal as his father was an engineer on the mega-project. (His brother Nils later helped make the canal obsolete by being in charge of building the Gothenburg-Stockholm railroad.)

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Back on the East Coast archipelago

During the one-hour flight from Stegeborg to ESKC Uppsala/Sundbro we passed some 500 feet below the only raincloud that we saw during the whole week. Some of us tried to get clearance to pass over Stockholm city, but no such luck. Sundbro is tricky for three reasons: it's very close to a military base, it has three runways and it has published approach routes due to noise reduction. Bue we made it ok.
Except a total of six years abroad, I've lived all my life in Sweden but I've never been to Uppsala: the fourth most populous in the country. As expected, it turned out to be a really nice place. The surprise was that managed to find a hotel that could accomodate all of us. Once at the hotel, the routine was as always: landing beer, dinner and weather check for the upcoming day.

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ESKC Sundbro (if you can spot it)

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Central Uppsala with the archbishop's church

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As close to Oxbridge as you'll get in Sweden

The plan was to continue with a flight quite far north to Lappland. Cloud-wise, the forecast was ok (if not really good) but the winds were really strong with gusts up to 25 knots. We all agreed that wasn't worth it, so we extended the hotel and made a plan to go to ESUM Mohed for fuel and lunch and then turn back with a stop at ESSK Gävle.

Mohed/Söderhamn is beautifully located between forests, lakes and rivers. There's a campsite with a basic restaurant less than 10 minutes walk away. The club sells fuel, but a phone call the day before revealed that nobody would be able to help us. Instead, the club secretary "hid" the key to the club house so that I could access it and the keys to the fuel station. He also made a trip to the airfield, made a video explaining how the fuel station worked and gave instructions for how to pay. Being shown such trust from a complete stranger in these cynical days is really heartwarming. The pilot notes in Skydemon showed testimonials from other visitors as well.

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The biggest GA fleet to have visited ESUM Mohed?

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Leaving Mohed to go back south

During our coffee break stop at Gävle, we arrived just as the local club's training session in precision landing started. That club is the best in the country, so the pressure was on to make a nice landing. Of course I failed miserably: the landing was ok, but longer than I planned. Sadly, the airfield is under threat: as so often, there are many who think that the land could be better used for industrial purposes.

During the week's best dinner in the old station house in Uppsala, we started to look at the final overnight destination. We had already from the start the plan to stay "somewhere in Dalecarlia", the Swedish "county" that's the epitomy of everything Swedish. Except that there is no coast. There are many airfields, but again there was the issue of accomodation. Whether from skill or dumb luck I don't know, but one of the pilots found an old ironworks mansion that's been converted to an upscale hostel. They weren't running at 100% capacity, but they did manage to find rooms for all of us.

Again, the total distance to fly during the fourth day wasn't that long, so we aimed for three legs. During the first to the lunch stop at ESVQ Köping, the PIC in "my" aircraft wanted to yet again try to get clearance over Stockholm city. This time we were luckier! Even after almost twenty years of flying I still find circling over a big city quite exciting.

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Our excursion over Stockholm

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Stockholm Old Town

Our second short stop was ESSG Ludvika. The small town is dominated by a fantastic landscape with lakes and by the industrial conglomorate ABB. The airfield is, as is often the case, a bit outside and we had no plans to leave it. The arrival became somewhat chaotic when we arrived with a bit too little separation, and when the first aircraft that landed reported that they had a tailwind it became even more so. Safety wasn't compromised, but we took full advantage of the airwaves trying to co-ordinate who was where. Sadly there was no-one from the local club on site, so the stop was a short one.

At the final destination for the day, ESKD Dala Järna, preparations were under way for the next day's glider competition, so the airfield was teeming with nice people who helped us refuel and park.

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Approach to ESKD Dala Järna. Yes: Sweden is that beautiful on a good day!

When we were done with the ground procedures, three promised cars from the hostel arrived and ferried us away. My roommate and myself went for a swim followed by the usual activities of landing beer, dinner and plans for the next day.

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Arriving at the Dala Järna hostel

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The nearby lake for the afternoon swim; dinner was eaten just across it

During breakfast we planned the day: coffee break at ESSM Brattforsheden first, then lunch with a fellow club member at ESTF Fjällbacka. During the war, Brattforsheden was a secret air base with hangars disguised as barns and a round field for takeoff and landing. It's the only remaining such airfield in the country and is an open-air museum. It's also home to a flying club. Sadly, the museum and the flying club have a tense relationship: the museum doesn't like the runway markers since "they weren't there in the 1940s". Sad: by cooperating the already nice place could be even better.

At our final stop at Fjällbacka we almost felt as if we were home: it's a common destination for one-day outings less than an hour north of Gothenburg. It's also a fantastic place with a welcoming and helpful airfield manager. You can borrow bikes (for a nominal donation), but this time our friend, who has his summer house close by, drove us to the nearby golf course restaurant in three separate trips. There's better food to be had in Fjällbacka proper, in particular in the harbour, but we all knew that the chance to find a table for fourteen people were nil.

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Final leg south along the West Coast

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Aircraft washed, crew is happy

As always, the last leg home was flown with mixed emotion: happiness from a fantastic trip combined with sadness that it was over. Well, not completely over: washing the aircraft after five days flying took a bit of time.

These trips always leave my brain a bit confused: it's hard to grasp that all the experiences we'd just had really all happened during only five days. I don't think the human brain is equipped for so many different places in such a short time. It took me about a week (until now, basically) to get the impressions sorted out.

The trip was among the shortest we have done, but shorter distances allow for more stops per day and therefore more places. I've done these trips sixteen times since 2005 (only missed one trip) and it's impossible to say which was best or which was worst: all of them have such high points. Still, I'm really looking forward to be able to go to the continent again in 2022.

I'll close with a bit of statistics: since 2005, no fewer than 52 members/pilots (and a few friends and family members) have joined these trips. Thirty of them have joined at least twice: proof positive that people enjoy them. In fact, nobody has ever said that they wish they didn't go. There are sometimes threads on this forum about what to do post-PPL and how to keep motivated. In my opinion, trips like these with friends and fellow pilots is definitely one of the answers.

Only a few of the pictures shown here were taken by me, most were shared with the whole fleet in our WhatsApp group. So the photo credits go to the whole group.
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