Ana Bolika

Nice one! This is the only AN-28 in western Europe. She belongs to MD Skydive / Mitteldeutsches Fallschirmzentrum and usually lives at the Magdeburg airfield since late 2007. Her name is ANA BOLIKA. I flew in this colourful bird from Cochstedt, about 20 km to the south of Magdeburg on a paradrop mission. Along with 20 skydivers and birdmen we departed and climed up to 4400m. I was supplied with a parachute for myself but was told not to use it "unless the pilots are running past you".
Waht a great flight on a near cloudless noon in the wild east. Slowly my list of the Antonov aircraft I have flown in is becomming more and more complete. Actually it was planned to use an Antonov 72 jet aircraft for this boogie, but unfortunately legal issues kept it at home in Moldova.
Thanks again to Olaf for several useful infos that day!

Männer-Tag!

With Torben - seen here at the controls of an Antonov AN-2 (or whats left of it) - my Dad and my brother Guido we drove to Wunstorf about 40km to the west of Hannover. In the "JU-52 Halle" Museum the star is an original Junkers JU-52 which was raised from a lake in northern Norway about 20 years ago and restored to pristine contition. The plane landed on the "Hartvikvann"-lake in the early fourties and as most of the others sunk in the following summer when the ice melted.

Over the years a nice little museum developed around this centerpiece with various planes and helicopters and this cockpit section which Torben is about to inspect in detail.  

Horses!

What an interesting and challenging task - on wednesday we were contracted to fly 29 of these beauties from Munster-Osnabrueck Airport (FMO) in northwest Germany to a tournament in Lisbon. 

Each of these horses is worth more than the 38 year old airplane we chartered for this flight. Despite a much longer loading process than expected, in the end everything worked out fine.

The handling guys in FMO did a great job and did help a lot to minimize my worries.

This airline -African International - is one of the last DC-8 operators regularly flying with in Europe.