Red and yellow hangars and club house – just the Swedish flair you would have hoped for
What do you do when you have never been to Sweden before, but am invited to a birthday party of somebody who was crazy enough to jump into a plane with you before (see “A sweet Swede in the Dutch sky“) and even still enthusiastic enough afterwards to try it herself during our club’s open day (see “VCR Open Day 2017 – sharing our flying enthusiasm“)? Well, quite simply: you use the chance to get into the air taking the birthday girl for a sight seeing flight around her own turfs.
Ready for take off @ESME 30
Having this idea and putting it into practise are usually just a few phone calls away, so I started googling flight clubs within the area and eventually found Eslöv, just half an hour North East of Malmö.
Malmö from the air – beautiful, impressive and just so relaxing
The local club has around 100 members of which 40 are fairly active. Seeing the size of the club, it will not come as a surprise that there is no secretary constantly watching the phone, so I just persistingly started to call different people from the training contacts list in the internet and finally ended with Andreas taking pitty on me and promising to take us up. As he is not an instructor himself it was clear that he can not act as a safety pilot with me as PIC and the first Swedish entry in my logbook…but hey, does this administrational necessity really make a difference when you can discover new grounds from the air? Not for me – I am flying for the fun of it, not to show off a full log book later (and believe me – there will always be somebody having more entries or fancier flights anyway…so stop the fuss about log book entries and simply enjoy the day and the experience!!!).
So that’s exactly what we did! With 10 kts cross wind and some rather heavy gusts we head from Eslöv towards the coast line and towards Malmö. 
Thankfully the turning torso which I could see from Eva’s house earlier gives me personally some sort of direction.It is an added value that we finally remember to call her parents and tell them that we are approaching. Sorry guys, I know you have waved to us but on 1.000 ft above ground we have not really been able to see you. Overflying the harbour with its yachts and ferries we have Oresund bridge connecting Sweden with Denmark ahead of us on the right hand side. Just a few hours ago we used it to get from Copenhagen airport to Malmö by train, a trip of just 20 minutes. What an impressive piece of architecture!
Passing Malmö on the East side
Flight planning from here is simple: follow Eva’s instructions on a walk down memory lane, overflying places she keeps dear in her memories. So we are heading even further South rounding of via the tip of the country with beautiful views on the lowe tide beaches and heading back inlands. The closer we get towards the field the worse the weather turns and we realize ones more that we have been lucky. Heading North from Eslöv would not have been an option today as big grey rain clouds are hanging in the skies.
No we did not miss the RW but simply went for the grass version running parallel to asphalt 30
Andreas is relaxed about it and just comments: “With these gusts and everything, well I rather do take the grass runway. Saving on the tyres as well, right?!” Really? Did I miss something earlier? Not flying yourself did make me a bit lazy in preparations I guess.
After an hour we are back again, impressed, a bit shaken by the wind and turbulences but positively happy with our little trip. And as usual there is more to come when we enter the hangar afterwards. Some experimental plane building is going on in this little club as well as some challenging restauration work. So as usual I do not only conclude that it is fun to discover a new location from the air, have pilot chit chats with the pilots who come along, but that there is always more to be discovered behind the scenes.
Having fun @ESME
Two happy girls
Thanks Andreas for the time spent with us, answering all our nosy questions, staying patient when we just had to make another orbit to find one of Eva’s memory locations and simply doing all this with fun and curiosity to hear our stories as well! It was great…and I am afraid I might be back 🙂
Some work to be found in Eslöv’s hangar
