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.