Hi guys and gals.
Some travel to Thailand or Bali.........I did this instead - to finally ascertain, if I wanted to go forward with getting a license and with my build.
I just had a great gyro week-end. The Danish Gyrocopter Association had invited pilots from Denmark, Sweden and Germany to participate in an island-hopping event.
But, as there are no club owned gyros for hire in Denmark, I had turned to Sweden, where "Skånska Gyrokopterklubben" owns a few
open gyros for schooling and certified members can also rent them. So I ended up becoming a short time member to be able to rent
an MTO open gyro for the trip - estimated to be 5 tacho hours (you see, the Swedish instructor Roman Tadic had kindly offered to be in the
backseat, if any students wanted to go on the trip). And I asked for two of those hours to be with instruction.
When the day arrived, I took the early morning ferry and Roman picked me up - we had to take off in a hurry because of a strong headwind.
It turned out to be hard work, as soon as we were in the air he transferred the stick to me, and I had 1½ hours of trying to fly in formation
with the other Swedish gyro, an open Magni. In a strong headwind.
We landed on a small airfield on a Danish island, waited for the rest of the pilots to arrive and when we were all there we went for some lunch nearby.
I believe we were 11 gyros and two planes. Quite a turnout, as there are just 14 gyros registered in Denmark. One German (MTO), 4 Swedish (MTO,
Cavalon and Xenon) and then it must've been 6 Danish gyros (Cavalon and Calidus).
Then in the air again and some sightseeing and landing on another, larger airfield to get some fuel. Then onto a small island named "Femø",
where the restaurant has its own landing strip - no landing fee if you buy food. We had booked rooms there beforehand, so we had a good meal
and some beers before letting our heads fall onto our pillows - quite late, of course.
Next day away we went to the island "Ærø" where we rented bicycles, so we could get to the nearest city, where our chairman had ordered "open faced sandwiches" (called "smörgåsbord" in Sweden - "smørrebrød" in Denmark). No beers for the pilots, just sodapop.
From Ærø we then went directly "home" to Sweden, about 1½ hour of flight with the strong wind at our back this time.
So my first time with stick in hand was 6+ hours - and I had one landing and one start also. I was mentally unprepared, but it looks like we survived.
The experience was like I expected - great. So now I'll plough on getting a fixed wing license and then convert to gyro.
All while building my own Gyrobee.
Cheers
Erik
