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General information

Third Baltic tour is a story of a flying holiday. The flying holiday lasted for 3 days and included 4 different airfields. This page has pictures, videos and stories of the events that took place during the journey.
Photos and sometimes films were taken from airfields. You can go and see the those airfield specific photos and films by clicking the name of the airfield anywhere in the text. Use your web browsers back to previous page button to get back to this page.
Airfields visited during the journey in order of visit: Kärdla, Estonia (EEKA), Kihnu, Estonia (EEKU), Spilve, Latvia (EVRS) and Kuressaare, Estonia (EEKE)

Main reason to the trip was to took part to the Spring Cruise for Experimentally Minded Pilots event.

Start of this story contains general information of this journey. After the start, each day has its own chapter and in the end there are statistics gathered from the journey.

Time and weather

At the time of the journey, the weather in Southern Finland and in Baltic area was hot and sunny.
Photo below was taken at Finnish airspace. Best possible weather for cruising.

We where also pleased to notice that our journey was also well accepted by the higher level.

Route

Route took us first to Estonia and from there to Latvia and then back again to Finland via Estonia.

First day

During the first day we flew via Kärdla and Kihnu to Spilve Riga.
This meant that we had to cross the Gulf of Finland (photos below). Empty view, but at the same time very calming.

Kärdla airport is located at the sea shore. So when you fly there from Hanko, you will fly above the ground only two hundred yards before the runway starts. Photo below was taken about 15Nm (27km) before Kärdla airport. At that moment plane is still above the sea cruising with normal cruising power but at the same time decending towards the airport. Remaining flight time to airport is under 6 minutes, there is still 3500 feets of extra altitude to landing circuit and plane is decending around 900 feets/min. Therefore the landing circuit altitude is reached around 2 minutes before arrival.
Hind of the wind can be seen when looking at the ground speed that is shown by GPS. Ground speed is only 148Nm/h (274km/h) even plane is using cruising power and is decending around 900 feets/min.
RV-4's space miracle cabin had a 10inch tabled installed, that had a SkyDemon application running. All the maps where downloaded and route plan was programmed beforehand. Application turned out to be very handy source of information during cruising.
Landing to Kärdla was also recorded on video.

At the airport the gust wind speed was well above 20 Nm/h... luckily the wind was blowing almost exactly to the same direction as where the runway was pointing to. As you can see at the picture below, wind sock had no difficulties to remain straight and level.

After we had filled up the fuel tanks we started to get ready for next flight. At this point my second in command made a notice on the type of the flight. At the charter flight we must give the quality of service a highest priority.

Quality of journey did rise up or at least remained at the very pleasurable level.

We followed the Estonian coastline from Kärdla towards Kihnu island.

At Kihnu we only did a touch and go landing. The place itself looked so nice and tempting that we could have stopped there for a longer period. However, this time our aim was to fly to Riga.
Touch and go landing to Kihnu was also recorded on video.

Next we arrived to Riga. Photo below was taken towards Riga centrum just before joining base leg to Spilve.

Spilve was the place where we all joint together. Crew at the RV-4 OH-XKD was Tero and Noora. The following has all the crews and their planes introduced at the order of arrival:

RV-6 OH-XMT Lasse and Juha
Juha has taken many of the photos that are shown in this story.

PIK-25 Varttimarkka OH-XXV Jarmo and Heikki
Jarmo was the Spring Cruise for Experimentally Minded Pilots event's leader and originator.

Beechcraft Musketeer OH-BMH Johannes and Jaakko

After we had changed latest stories we started to calm down our planes. Their had had such a lot of fun that it took some time to calm them all down so their would remain still for next two nights.

Our, get to know Riga, trip started, by checking the locally build FlyBaby aircraft. Builder showed us the the plane that was almost finished.
This plane had already been once finished, but it had had a small accident, that caused a new round of building time to took place. Soon plane would start a new round of flying career. Hopefully this time a long accident free flying time.

Second day

Main target in Riga was to visit local Motor museum: Rigas Motormuzejs.
The museum itself is currently under fixing and extension so cars are shown in another place. However, to improve our general knowledge we first did go to see the actual construction site.

At the photo below, there is a negotiation going on, whether there exists another place where the cars are at show or not. There was.

We were moving at this point with two MBs. So our style to move had lowered from the previous night.
Last evening when we checked into hotel, we apparently where very humble. As when ordered a taxi from reception, we got a black 8 seat MB limousine with black windows. Well, it was a decent car to go to a restaurant that was less than a mile away.

Well, when we where cruising around the city while searching for that hided museum, we got to see some of the monuments of Riga.

Both OH-XXV and this car has a Volkswagen diesel engines. This car goes over 360km/h. It goes 250km/h while consuming less fuel than 47MPG (UK), 39 MPG (US) and 6L/100km. That is so good in terms of efficiency that even an airplane, like OH-XXV, has a challenge to beat that.


In museum Stalin himself was sitting at the back seat of an armored car that weights over 14000 pounds (6500kg). He did no say anything nor did he smile. He was just sulk. He was probably annoyed because his title was changed from the great leader of USSR to guilty of genocide.

On the other hand, his car was parked so close to another car, that that poor fellow could not have left his can even he would have wanted to. Door was open but there was not enough room to get out. So he could be feeling irritated just for a old joke.


Also Brezhnev, the Former General Secretary of the Communist Party, had brought his cars to museum. Nixon had given him a very nice special build Lincoln Town Car in 1973. That was still a nice car.
Brezhnev himself was sitting as a driver in Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Brezhnev had driven around streets of Moscow in past with his Rolls. Unfortunately the Brezhnev had had a traffic accident with his Rolls-Royce. Rolls was never fixed after an accident so it still had a front badly damaged.
We didn't know the cause of the accident, but we where quite sure which of the parties in accident where found guilty.
Brezhnev didn't talk or smile either. He seemed to be as lost in the world as he was when his was at the office. So nothing had changed with him within last few decades.

ZIL and Zaika cars from the time when style was still copied (for reason) from west.

This car can also go faster than 186mph (300km/h). This was also build in glorious USSR. Having two 80hp engines, the achieved speed isn't actually that bad.

Everybody has their own taste...

Some just look around when others get to work.

Also Grandma Duck's car's horn was tested. Horn did sound good but we where not quite sure if the sound had a outcome we where wishing for.


Next we returned to Riga to fix our liquid balance, fill our tummies with food and look around at the beautiful city of Riga.
In Latvia their clearly look the career in long term. For example in this building when you get enought service years in downstairs, you are promoted to work upstairs.

When temperature reached 30, we where very careful not get dehydrated.
One inexperienced and young member of our group suspected, that we are exaggerating the danger when we limit the displacement distance between stoppages to 200 yards. Young people never take dangers seriously.

All this hard work had brought hunger to our minds. Food was again excellent. For some strange reason, the waitress asked if we would like to have potatoes or something similar with this food. Why?

There was also a hint to my old home town in the wall of that restaurant.

Again the city of Riga showed us beautifull buildings to look at.

After the city tour every body went to where their liked.
Crew of OH-XKD went to a spa. It was pretty cool to play around in pools in 9th floor where there where large windows opening the scenery to city. Even Sauna had two walls with floor to roof windows.
Not before long, hunger was again in our minds. Hotel's tenth floor restaurant was a place to satisfy needs.
Photo below shows the scenery from our table towards to city. Food was again excellent.

Third day

It was again time to clime up to our flying machines and heap towards home.
Route to Kuressaare followed the coast line of Gulf of Riga. Sand beaches everywhere and some small cities.

At Kuressaare we bind our planes enought to have a peaceful mind while we go and... what else, eat.

Do I have to say it? Food and company was again excellent.

From here on everybody continued towards their home airports. However, we didn't have that much of hurry, that we could not still exchange some stories before we go.

One more group photo from happy travelers and off we go.

OH-XMT left first ad took a photo where you can see OH-XKD and OH-BMH waiting for clearance for taxi and takeoff in pair.

Now the wind was directly from behind so by climbing up an excellent tail wind was in place when crossing the sea. Thre was about 30Nm/h of tailwind at FL80.
Photo below was taken just when leaving Hiidenmaa to fly above the sea. GPS has calculated a crossing time to Hanko to take around 10 minutes. Ground speed is 186Nm/h (344km/h).

There was a nice spiral in sea made out of pollen. In photo it is quite difficult to see, but hopefully you can see it just next to the wing.
Where is the horizont?

Photo below was taken just before arriving to Hanko. Plane is slowly descending to get below airways with FL65 lower limit that are just few minutes away.
Wind is still pushing nicely from behind and therefore the ground speed is nicely 192Nm/h (356km/h).
Another benefit from wind direction was that all the thunder areas where of the coast and deep inland.

After about 20 minutes of more flying started active avoiding of thunder and rain areas.

We did managed to find a dry route to home airport so we could enjoy the views of lightning and heavy rain from fair distance.
At foremost we where about 12Nm (23km) off the route and our heading was about 25 degrees off from planned so we managed to avoid rain and thunder fairly easily.

Statistics

Summary:

Table below has all the flights and their statistics.


To get an average speed that is higher than 162Nm/h (186mph, 300km/h) is rare, but this time our home route gave us that.
Effect of wind can easily been seen when comparing first and last flight. Flight time is exactly the same but there is a 22% (99km) difference in distance.

Summary

Weather was excellent all around. Time of our event was already once changed because of bad weather, but this time weather turned out to be excellent.

Anyhow, yet again absolutely a great tour with an excellent fellow crews.