A Norwegian 2-ship New Year RV-trip to a mountain, around it and return.

Hi.

Happy New RV- Year to all of you!

The wifey, a friend of mine, Per Strømmen, and I decided that flying a 2-ship mission to a nearby mountain, named "Gaustadtoppen", was the right way to start off 2011.
Today, the weather was truly great, so we launched alittle after noon and had a great trip.

Here's a few pics:

First, one of the wifey at the controls:



She was doing most of the flying so I could take the pics. As you can see, the sun is pretty low over the horizon even though this pic are taken just after noon.


Here, we are approaching the mountain from the south:






And here's two of the ones I took when we passed along the mountain:





By the way: more pics and info of this mountain can you find in this tread:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=42550&highlight=norway





Per is the co-owner of the -4 on the pics and he also co-owns and flies a Vampire veteran jet. (!)

More pics of the Vamp in this tread: http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=63848&highlight=vampire




Anyway; having a RV is a great way of life!

Alf,

Thanks for the post and photos. That's a beautiful green/gold airplane!

cheers,
greg

More pics..

Hi again.

Here's another few pics from the trip above. You see, just after takeoff, before setting course towards the mountain, we joined on a Cessna 172 from our local aeroclub who was flying a training mission.
The IP onboard that plane wanted a few pics of the RV's and ofcourse we couldn't say no to a request like that.

Here's a couple of the ones he took:






It's alittle sad he zoomed in too close on the last pic, because that one would've been a great one had all of the noses and the tails been on the pic... oh well... another time...

Anyway; hope you enjoyed them.

That's a short day!

Wow! Nice photos, but I'm happy to live further south. Must be short days right now.

Yep...

.... the days are short all right at this time of year:

Today, for example, the sun rises at 09:14 and settles at 15:30, so it's not a great many hours for daylight flying.
(Here, it's not allowed to fly night-VFR or any IFR with homebuilt airplanes)

It looks alittle bit better if you add those hrs within the VFR-day time-span:
Today VFR-day starts at 08:20 and ends at 16:25...

But we're "lucky" in this part of the country compared to further north, because they don't see the sun at all at this time of year.

But the GOOD news is that each day now, the sun stays up 5-7 minutes longer, and soon we have those long, beautiful Scandinavian summer days when the sun hardly goes beneath the horizon at all...

I wouldn't trade this country with it's pile of frozen rocks for anything else...

Alf, on my globe...

...it looks like you're up in lattitude 65*-70* or thereabout....brrrrr.

I'm down here at 33*

Best,

Actually...

... it's abit further south:

Gaustadtoppen is located at 59.51N 008.39E and my home airport, Rygge (ENRY) is at 59.23N 010.47 E

BUT... the island-group "Svalbard" is the point in Norway which is farthest north.

It's main town, "Longyearbyen" is located at 78.13N 015.39E.
It's northern point is located at 80.50N 020.25E and THAT's pretty far north! (The North Pole is at 90N as you know...)

Here a few pics taken in the summer (June) to give you an idea








Before they constructed an airport with it's concrete runway, they landed on a flat section of frozen ground. (the ground is frozen all through the year) with both DC-3 and DC-4. Check out the airport terminal and the tower!



I bet you could easily land a RV there today...



The only industry used to be mining for coal deep inside the mountains:



The coal was moved from the mine entrance and down to the cableway pickup by a covered track:



The track had to be covered due to the harsh weather.



Here's the old cableway:



Now, it's only a couple of mines still in use and nowadays the main income for the islands is tourism.




You'll see signs warning you for polar bears in the streets:



The text says: "Applies to all of Svalbard"



And you can see reindeers almost everywhere:




The weather is VERY harsh up there, so the people had to invent many things to able to live up there.

Here's how the kids got from their school building to their gymnasium: the walkway had to be completely built in so they wouldn't be blown away or freeze to death during the frequent snowstorms...



Up in the hillside in the background, you can see an old cable way.



And finally an glimpse of the town Longyearbyen.

All the houses are built ABOVE the ground because of ground is aways frozen. So you can't have basement under your house...
You can see the same thing underneath the school and the gymanasium on the pic above.



In the foreground, you can see the "digger" they used inside the mines. It carved the coal loose so it could be transported out of the mine.
When you see how low that digger is; think about those brave men who where operating these suckers in narrow, dark caves deep, deep, DEEP inside those mountains...


Anyway; guess this wasn't exactly RV-releated so far (hope the moderators doesn't delete it!) but if any of you want a REALLY remote place to go to with your RV's, Svalbard is the place!

A few years back, Jan Johanson (hope I spelled his name right?) landed his RV-4 there when he was on his round-the-world tour.
He then continued with his RV down to the mainland and landed in Tromsø.
Just north of Tromsø, he was met by a Norwegian RV-4, which was built and flown by Bjørnar Vollstad, president of EAA Chapter 573 Norway.
Bjørnar escorted him to Tromsø for landing and over the next few days the two RV's flew together southwards, all through Norway from north to south.
(Norway is a very long country: the total length of the mainland is the same distance as it is from Norway's most southern point to Rome...)

Then Jan continued his tour alone.

Anyway, guess I got carried away alittle here, but hope you liked it anyway...

Spectacular countryside...

...Alf.

Thanks a lot....it's great to see where our brothers live and play

Regards,

Terrific! I've spent time in Tromso, Bodo, and Andoya...some spectacular flying I must say. Beautiful country...hope to come back some day soon...hard to find a more beautiful place to fly in---the cables across the fjords are a little daunting though!!

Lee...

Great Photos!

I had the opportunity to visit some very unique places in the Arctic courtesy of the USAF. I spent Nov. 71 to Nov. 72 at Thule Air Base, 76˚ 31' N.

Your photos of the above ground construction are similar to what was built at Thule. All construction was designed above ground to insure the integrity of the permafrost, buildings were anchored with large steel cables to withstand the high winds.

A few highlights of the stay were a trip to Nord 81˚ 36' N on a Danish DC-6 and Alert 82˚ 28' N on a Canadian C-130 during resupply missions.

8 Mar 72, a day I remember very well as we experienced winds over 205 MPH, not sure if it is still a record but must be in the top three.

http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm

Beautiful shots! They remind me of the place in Sweden where I will soon take my glider again. Two weeks of wave flying from a frozen lake close to the Norwegian border, at around the same latitude as Trondheim.

I'll have to visit you some day ...

Nice pics

Geez! I live in Canada, another northern clime, but have nothing to deal with compared to those pics. Of course, like 98% of all Canadians, I live in "Southern Canada" and believe if I pointed my 6 north and burned a tank of gas or two, I'd see similar vistas (I need to do that sometime!)

Your pics are beautiful. The RV's look awesome.