By now I guess you'll all know that we've arrived in Finland OK. The flights over from Oz were completely uneventful. No surprises.
Which is more than I can say for the weather. Apparently, Finland had been blessed with days to 25C and I guess heaps of sunshine. That all stopped when we arrived.
Well, OK, it had gone sour a bit earlier, probably around the start of 27 May. I've chucked in a graphic of the Helsinki temperature by hour which kinda says it all.
27 May is the part of the graph in the middle. As you can see the temperature was LOW when we arrived (0600)… and got lower throughout the day. It's still around 6 degrees.
The wind is from the north-east, and if you visualise the weather systems here then you can work out that winds come out of a high-pressures system clockwise, and of they're from the NE then they can only come from a lot further north, which accounts for the temperature!
We spent yesterday getting a tour around the gliding area - which houses several clubs apparently - and have a look in their main hangar, which holds about 15 aircraft, from a Duo Discus XL to a Pik3 which is probably about 50 years old. There's also a yellow Pik20 there!
The hangar's construction is interesting, but probably has features common to a lot of buildings here. There's PLENTY of wood to go around, and the Finns aren't backward about using it. The main support beams of the hangar are wooden, made from many layers of carefully formed and bent wood - by the look of it cut straight and then steam-bent to shape - all glued together. I'll try to get a picture of it sometime. Steel seems to be used mainly for roofs. (Ah, but I *do* have to admit that there is in fact a large steel hangar which is about 3 years old on the site…)
Wood. Finland seems to be noted for (a) forests, and (b) lakes. Occasionally there are paddocks some of which are actually big enough to outland in.
Anyway, here are some pictures from the flights over to here.
FLying to Melbourne.
Enroute to Singapore.
At Changi Airport, we had 7 hours to spare!
Just before boarding.
Just after arriving at Helsinki. Colder than Adelaide in winter!
Driving to Rayskala airfield. We were met by Tapani Laakso who had very kindly offered to collect us and take us to the airfield motel. He's also lent us a car and a fair amount of gear to play with!
A farmhouse on the way.
Quite a few of the forests are on rocky outcrops, it seems.
More forest in the distance.
Forest closing in...
Nearly there!
View along one of the runways.
Some of the gliders and trailers.
More trailers, next to one of the hangars.
Control tower! Not sure if it's used these days...
After all this, we spent the ret of the day getting used to the area… and freezing in the process… and buying a few supplies.
Today, Eric'll be sorting out a few things with the glider, and setting up his preferred instrumentation in it. Tablet running XCSoar, bluetooth GPS, tons of nice electronic stuff, you know how it goes… There won't be any flying, that's for sure. Still total cloud cover, yesterday it was from a few hundred feet to 3000 ft, and it looks the same today. Probably Saturday or more likely Sunday before we can fly.
Cheers
No comments:
Post a Comment