My ride of the day - Piper PA-31T SE-LUB

Another new aircraft type for me this year. We maintain this 30+ year old vintage beauty here in Hannover. It was completely refurbished inside and out about two and a half years ago and did not move much since. Today we took her up to do some checks and see if everything was still working ok - and it did. A nice thirty-minute ride over snow and water covered lower saxony.

Sammler und Hobbywelten Alten-Buseck

Former Interflug Z-37 DM-SVQ, being painted to its former glory.

Mil Mi-8 in "UT-air" Colours, but don't be fooled: This is a former german Interflug/BSF helicopter.

Max Holste "Broussard"

Whata strange place: In Alten-Buseck a new museum of all kinds of stuff is located in a former furniture store. Among the exhibits are cameras, old furniture, toys, cars, trains and even aircraft. On the former parking lot this museum houses a colourful collection of planes. Some of them are quite rare: A Max Holste Broussard, Westland WS-55 Helicopter etc. I personally did not like, that some of them seem to be restored in a hurry with bright and flashy colours - sometimes hiding the real identity of them. Anyway - I think its better to preserve a plane in false markings than not at all. There are some more pics as usual on my flickr page. Enjoy!

Heli-Shopping

You may have heared about heli-skiing, but we had a different experience. We went heli-shopping today. From Hannover Katrin and myself flew to a little town in eastern Lower Saxony. From where the Bell 407 was conducting pleasure flights we walk to the "city-centre" to get some food and for shopping. Loaded with bags we climbed on board again and departed - what a fun jet-set-like experience. This was the first flight in a helicopter for Katrin and for me it was a new aircraft type.

Torben Time again!

It was Torbens last week before my little man started school, so I decided to treat us with some beach-time on the beautiful Oregon coast. Seaside was the place to go! We spend hours digging in the sand and of course some aviation adventures: We went to the great Tillamook Air Museum, which changed a bit since my last visit about two and a half year ago. We were even able to climb aboard the Erickson Guppy, which Torben enjoyed a lot.
Back in Seattle Torben showed me "his" house-beach" in Ballard, riding his bike proudly in front of me and leading the way. I miss you, Torben!

Airbus A-380 comes to Hannover

Quite a highlight at Hannover airport was the first and most likely the only visit for the next few years of an Airbus A-380. This visit attracted lots of people outside the fence (about 10.000) and also inside the apron-areal.
About 50 years ago my dad had a similar experience when Lufthansa took their - than new - Boeing 707 to Hannover for the first time.

Torben Time

What a nice way to spend some time with my little man! I flew over to Seattle for Torbens birthday and some "man-time". We visited the General Aviation Fly-In at Everett and drover over the Cascades to eastern Washington to spend some days around (and in) Lake Chelan.
Beautiful landscape, Aviation and at first a lot of time with Torben - what more could I ask for?

A real litte holiday for the both of us and lots of fun. I so much enjoyed driving around, seeing stuff and playing by the lake and I believe so did Torben. Can't wait to visit him again. I love you Torben!!

Brooklands

My recent business-trip to London resulted in some time to spare and visit the Brooklands Air Museum. This great Musum is on the grounds of a former car racetrack and the Vickers Aircraft factory. Almost all Vickers commercial aircraft and other british postwar airliners are displayed outdoors in great shape. This museum is also for the car enthusiast and features a great variety of historic high-class race cars and aiport related vehicles.
Three busy and appointment-packed days, lots of Guinness and a little bit of aviation - on those days I really like my job!

Wednesday night get-away!

It has been some time since I last flew in a Cessna 172. About 10 years ago I flew so may times in such planes with my friend Ingo throughout Germany on weekends, mostly discovering all the airfields in the former GDR - but since then I rarely get to fly in single-engined piston planes.
Today I got my fix again though. I accompanied an IFR training flight for about 2h around Hannover and two rounds at night over the city - with no clouds at all. My pilots were our pleasure flight expert Carsten and our Austrian instructor Andreas (who challenged Carsten a lot during this flight). Great way to end a days work!
An interresting side-note: This was my first flight in our diesel-engined 172, D-EDDV. The Cessna 172 series is the longest built and most successful civil aircraft ever built and in production since the late 1950s. About 50.000 of these reliable planes have been built so far and provided trainig and joy to millions of pilots. Our Cessna 172 (D-EDDV) is a new generation one, bulit 1999).

On the photo of the airport, my office is visible - it is the old barrak buliding to the right and on the small apron three of our aircraft are visible - the Piper Cheyenne, our Citation Encore+ and XLS+.

Visit of an old friend

I don`t know how many hours I spent on bord these beauties (during my time as a volunteer flight-manager at Ostend), but one ting is for sure: These Antonov AN-12s are real "man-airplanes"! Since the EU baned european airlines from flying those, such planes became a rare sight in western Europe.
This one is operated by russian enterprise "Kosmos" and came with some 16 tons of cargo from Athens to Hannover. Katrin and I decided to spend some time at the second of April at the airport, watching it arrive and beeing unloaded.

Eindhoven, Netherlands

On Sunday i took the chance and flew with the newest addition to our fleet from Hannover to Eindhoven and back. D-IDAX, a Cessna 425 "Conquest I" provided a smooth ride over a solid overcast along the way. Sometimes my job isn't that bad :-)

Being a Freight-Dog again

Sometimes I miss doing the dirty cargo-flights. It sounds strange, but since I am working for an airline, I rarly have any time to hop on a plane and acompany flights. This does not make it easier to reach my goal: having completed 1.000 flights by my 40th birthday. Last thursday though I sold a cargo flight to a customer, departing from our homebase Hannover exactly at the end of my work - so so need to think twice. I ordered our maintanance department to remove the passenger-seats from one of our Piper Cheyennes except for two and after a long time I joined our flight crew on their way from Dortmund to Liverpool - both airports being firsts for myself, at least to visit them by air. Everything went very smooth and we had minimum ground-time on both airports.
An interresting sight was an obviously crashed Cessna 411 at Dortmund which must have been at its last resting-place for many years. We departed Dortmund into the cloudless and star-clear night and only experienced some clouds and rain near our destination Liverpool.
What a great get-away.

Istanbul weekend-trip with a handicap

A few days after we booked our four day extended weekend trip in Febuary, I broke my right foot - and that three times! Katrin and I decided to fly there anyway. We departed from Hannover to Istanbuls new low-cost airport SAW / Sabhia Gökcen very early on saturtay morning 27FEB10 on one of Sun Express' B 737-800. If anyone ever asks me how I would describe so called ethno-traffic I would strongly recomend joining exactly this flight. About 70% of our fellow passengers where Turkish people of all ages bringing most their household with them.
What a busy city - our hotel was directly in the citycenter in walking-distance to all important sights such as the bazars, mosques and the Bosphorus. Despite my handicap we did walk to all the places to see - for miles and miles. Even though the weather was not so kind to us we did the full tourist programme anyway. Visiting the Turkish Air Force Museum, going on a boat-cruise and visiting all major attractions.
Over the next days, I will upload some pics to my flickr.com page - enjoy!

Torben Week!

After about two weeks after Torbens big move to Seattle, I also went ther for a week to spend time with him. We had so much fun! With Kenmore Air we flew in a Beaver to the San Juan Islands, which was Torbens first floatplane-trip. On one leg he even sat in the copilot-seat. We visited the Museum of Flight and Paul Allens superb Historic Flight Collection at Everett. We really did a lot of man-stuff and enjoyed every moment of everything. I really hope we can see each other as often as possible. On my flickr.com stite (click "mehr Fotos/more pictures" in the right corner of this page) there are more pics - enjoy!

Sad day!

As much as I like airplanes, today I hated them. My beloved son Torben moved from Hannover to Seattle with my ex-wife. Alltough I knew this day was comming since a few weeks, this hit me so hard, I can rarely find words.
During the last weeks I did spend so much time with my little guy trying to use his remaining time here in Germany as good as possible - I cannot describe the feelings I had when I kissed him good-bye at the gate and saw him walking through the finger into his plane with his little trolleycase. I was trying to act normal around him, trying to keep my sadness inside myself, because Torben likes flying and he was so excited.