My original KLM flight on April 17th was cancelled, and as the best offer from the airline was to get me home on 27th I made some quick decisions while still on the San Francisco airport. As it was certain that there would be some days of delay, New York felt like the best place to wait for the dust to settle.

After a failed attempt to get across the Atlantic on an Indian airline, my current plan is to fly tonight to Moscow with Aeroflot, and then hopefully to continue to Helsinki from there, either by plane or train.

In the meanwhile, thanks to Gregor and Google for graciously providing me with office space while I'm stuck here!

As an afterthought: if such disruptions in flying would continue, that would be a huge boost for high-speed rail, fast ocean liners and telepresence. And that might not be such a bad thing for the future of mankind.

Here is a quick review:

• First impression: wow, quite a lot of cable to carry around. I got used to too good with the Bluetooth headphones which my iPhone 3G unfortunately doesn't support
• The noise cancelling unit is a bit big, but clips into belt and runs on two AAA batteries
• Sitting next to the engine, there is still quite a strong background hum, but still I'd estimate at least half of the noise is gone
• If I push the headphones on my ears, most of the hum disappears too
• I was amazed how loud planes are when I took the headphones off to buy lunch from the stewardess
• The bag that came with the headphones is very handy, and includes adapter for plugging the headphones into in-flight entertainment systems

All in all, the headphones are bit pricey, but will increase comfort of regular air travel quite a lot.

Written while flying over snow-capped mountains of Norway on a SAS flight, listening to Mahler's 6th symphony.

Watch the video presentation for more information. Everything old is new again! Via Slashdot.

In sailing-related news, I posted some photos of the 2001 Heimlösa Rus reconstructed viking ship trip from Russia to Finland to Flickr.

Technorati Tags: ecology, kite, oil, sailing

I was sitting in a meeting about three hours before the flight and suddenly got a message to my cell phone:

FINNAIR check-in: AY937 Helsinki-Manchester 17.07.2007 departure 16:00 seat 15A window. Confirm by replying A.

Since this seemed like a useful service I replied, and immediately got a confirmation for the seat.

At the airport I then dropped my bag to a luggage drop point, and just walked to the gate. No boarding passes or any other papers beside my passport were needed. And few hours later I was in central Manchester, looking for a hotel.

This is a very good way of providing an SMS service. The usual way these services work is that the user has to remember a number and an obscure syntax for typing the request. On Finnair's service this is not required as the SMS service is initiated from the service provider's end and user is clearly told what to do if they want to continue. Opting out is done by just ignoring the message.

And since probably most recipients of the message will find it useful, it doesn't get considered SMS spam.

Technorati Tags: aviation, finnair, sms, travel

I had bought a BGT-11 GPS data logger mainly for OpenStreetMap surveying usage, and this proved to be a nice trip to really test it. I placed the device on top of the plane's dashboard and just left it logging the whole trip. Later I converted the logs via GPSBabel to a format suitable for Google Earth. Here Google Earth is showing me take off from Malmi runway 36 and turn towards the DEGER reporting point:

Approach from Liperi and landing at Joensuu runway 28:

Since Google Earth can also place photos I took on the flight to the map and "play" the flight, the GPS logs become a very nice way to tell trip stories. I will definitely keep taking the logger with me on future trips. There even is a solar charger to keep it running.

The flight was very nice also without the techie aspect. Weather was clear and beautiful and the flight over the lake district with the sun hanging already low, gilding the numerous lakes was memorable. Here is the Joensuu airport at sunset:

Technorati Tags: aviation, efhf, googleearth

Because of time constraints I have not been flying as much as I should. However, if I want to keep my license current that has to change.

The first step in regaining my wings was taken last weekend, flying to Turku with Tigert in an amazingly clear winter weather.

Pajunen participated in the preparation of Helsinki's general land use plan 2002 in the Helsinki city council. At the same time he was also the president of the Malmin Nova company. The company had business in the Malmi shopping center. In addition the company was preparing an enlargement of the shopping center synchronized with the land use plan.

... The Administrative Court sees that the company's fortunes were closely tied to how the land of the Malmi Airport was utilized.

The part on destroying the Helsinki-Malmi airport has now been removed from the land use plan. Another win for The Friends of Malmi Airport Society!

Updated 2006-11-08: I have to agree with Phil that Mr. Pajunen's behavior is definitely corruption.

Kerttu had her entry exams to the Biological faculty of University of Helsinki yesterday, and therefore she is now free to enjoy the summer.

To mark that, we decided to go flying a bit around Espoo and Porvoo. The runway 27 was in use so we took the plane out through Nokka and returned later through Deger.

The wind was a bit bumpy, but otherwise it was nice to fly again after the long winter break, made even longer by my trips to the US and Brazil.

BTW, this is first post from my Flickr account. Flickr supports the common blogging APIs and so can communicate with Midgard without problems.

The documentary tells the story of this historic airport well, and outlines how important general aviation is to the whole aviation industry. It also shows several beautiful historic airplanes flying from Van Nuys.

Something similar could help the other historic and endangered airport, Helsinki-Malmi. The MIK videos are of course a good start.

Just watching the video makes me really want to go flying again. Luckily the weather is improving all the time.

Video link via Tigert.

Updated 2006-03-22: Seems that the movie isn't available any more. For some reason I'm getting nasty lawyer letters about this blog post...

Posting movies on the Internet is illegal, and promoting them or linking to them is also in violation of International copyright law and is prosecutable if no action if taken.

Malmin lentoasemasta kysyttiin, pitäisikö lentokenttä ottaa asuntorakentamiseen edellyttäen, että lentoasemarakennukset säilytetään. Vaihtoehtona oli alueen säilyminen lentokenttänä kuten nyt. Kaikissa kaupungeissa selvä enemmistö oli lentokentän säilyttämisen puolella. Helsingin, Espoon ja Vantaan asukkaiden välillä ei ollut juuri eroja.

Another victory for the The Friends of Malmi Airport Society!

I've written about the issue, and the shady tactics City of Helsinki has been employing before:

Helsinki-Malmi was rented to the Civil Aviation Administration for 99 years back in the 30s. Now the City of Helsinki wants to evict them on the clause that the airport must be used for civil aviation. For some reason City of Helsinki chooses not to recognize that private aviation and flight training are also counted as civil aviation. This is a very dubious legal standpoint.

The democratic commitment of the city must also be questioned. The decision and talks about the future of Malmi were pointedly scheduled after the recent city council elections, and all major parties declined to comment the issue. This is understandable as the city wants to close the airfield against the will of a vast majority of residents of Helsinki. This is not how democracy is supposed to work, but then again we live in another system called "representational democracy".

Some interesting blog posts found in my NetNewsWire summary while waiting for tonight's beach barbeque and tomorrow's OpenBeach...

Jon Udell is dreaming about Peer-to-Peer air travel:

Fallows invites us to imagine a fleet of air taxis -- essentially winged SUVs, safe, ultra-reliable, highly-automated, super-efficient -- that redistribute some of the traffic away from our failing hubs to a network of smaller airports. If this is going to work, the air taxi itself, which companies like Eclipse Aviation are busily inventing, is only half the technological challenge. The other half lies in the information systems. You'd need to be able to aggregate demand in real-time, so that if two passengers in Keene, NH, two in Rutland, VT, and two in Albany NY are headed to LA (say, to Pomona's Ontario airport) on a given day, you can allocate an air taxi to make those three pickups and then fly direct to the destination. These air taxis would need to be able to steer clear of conventional air traffic, as well as each other.

Could make a very interesting DBE business case.

Joe Suicide wants to route next summer's Death Monkey tour through the Pamplona bull run:

...Just by moving our starting date by four days, we will be able to run with the bulls at Pamplona. Some of us, including all current full members, have already done it at least once, but since the adrenaline rush you get by running is incredible and we happen to be there at the right time, we will do it again.

Last time at San Fermin all my dirty underwear were stolen by spanish while our group slept in a park. 2006 I will be prepared. I won't take any underwear with me. That should solve the problem.

Tommi Rissanen from DBE is talking about Christopher Columbus -style management:

In short, SME Business Management is sadly similar to Christopher Columbus deeds:

• He left but didn't know where he was going
• He got there, but didn't know where he was
• He came back but didn't know where he had been
• And he did it 3 times in 7 years.

Pekka Pekkala from Helsingin Sanomat is analyzing some blog reader statistics (in Finnish, sorry):

Uskollisia lukijoita löytyy esimerkiksi yhtiöistä Andritz-Ahlstrom, Suomalainen Kirjakauppa, Raha-automaattiyhdistys, Suomen Lakimiesliitto, Amnesty International, Alliance Capital Limited, Patentti- ja rekisterihallitus, Smartner Information Systems Oy, Hantro Products Oy, Sampo, VVO-Yhtyma Oy ja Verohallitus (hui!). Eli ainakin joku on onneksi löytänyt säännöllisesti seuraamisen arvoista sisältöä täältä.

Obviously, the Google Analytics stats are not very accurate for blogs, as they do not carry information on RSS subscribers.

Edd Dumbill is thinking about opinionated software:

Desktop environments -- GNOME 2.0: The move from GNOME 1.0 to version 2.0 was highly opinionated (Mac users, think OS 9 to OS X). Complexity of user interface was thrown out in favour of sensible defaults.

Web standards -- CSS, RDF, XHTML: not only is there a right way to do things, but it turns out to be better too! I don't automatically fall in love with everything that emerges from the W3C, but some things are so obviously the right way it's impossible not to love them -- warts and all.

Good stuff to think about as we prepare for Midgard 2.

The check flight took hour and half, during which we did some navigation and stall practices, as well as simulated forced landing and engine malfunction. The result of all this was that the check flight passed. Now the Flight Safety Authority will analyze my papers, and if everything is OK I should have my license within next two weeks.

I'll post more about my path to becoming a pilot later.

Helsinki south harbor:

The island fortress of Suomenlinna:

The village of Rosala, with the Viking Centre in the bottom-right corner:

The island of Lövö with Kasnäs on the foreground:

More pictures in my gallery. See also some old Viking re-enactment photos from Rosala in 1997 and 1998.

The flight was in traffic circuit of RWY 36 of the Helsinki-Malmi airport with Cessna 152 OH-COF. As the weather was smooth the 6 landings were quite easy.

This was an important step in the training program. I have now 21h35 in my log book. More solo flights are planned for the weekend...

Updated 2005-05-07: I did two more solo flights today, on OH-KLS and OH-CTH respectively. There was quite heavy traffic including gliders and a DC-3 on EFHF, and so both flights were to the practice area on Sipoo bay. Very nice weather with about 6 knots of wind from east and the runway 09 in use.

I got to practice some VOR navigation using to PORVOO beacon to circle the Kilpilahti oil refinery and HEL beacon to pinpoint correct angle to the NOKKA reporting point. The photo above is from the first flight and was taken above Kalkkiranta.

As the bike dealership didn't seem much concerned about the problem, I came up with another idea. My friend Jose bought a nice fifties-style Royal Enfield motorcycle from his Indian adventure last spring, but unfortunately broke his leg shortly afterwards and so the bike was built into running state but never registered.

Yesterday afternoon I then went to Rambo's garage, and started the engine without any problems. The Engine ran fine while I rode it to an inspection station near to the Helsinki-Malmi airport, and yet again fine when riding to another inspection station after a flying lesson.

However, the inspectors had very little sympathy for the machine. They said it wouldn't pass into Finnish registry because its chassis lacked some EU stamps, even though similar bikes are being sold constantly by the Enfield Finnish importer. No final conclusions were reached, though, as some members of Bullets MCC, the Finnish Royal Enfield Club claimed to have the required certificates acquired from the Indian factory.

A bit taken back but not yet accepting defeat, I started the bike at the station. It started on the first kick, but when I took it off the centre stand, it stopped. The fifties look of the bike quickly gathered several helpers, but the bike refused to start in the half hour we spent playing with it. After a while we figure out that the batter was empty, and that in turn had fouled the spark plug. Changing the plug we were able to get the bike running in a way, and return to the airport.

At the airport cafeteria we sat down with Erkki, the pilot of the huge Soviet forties An-2 biplane freighter owner by the Lennuklubi. He had helped me back at the inspection station together with Matti from HHRA, and as my second flying lesson of the day got cancelled because of hail, we took a look at the Antonov.

A fire extinguisher pipe in the plane had to be replaced, and after that and the other startup rituals, we went for a short spin together with two Russian mechanics. As the Antonov is very expensive to operate, we only flew a very short route, but even with that I was amazed at the stability of the big plane, and even got to take a short turn at the controls.

After the flight we cleaned up the plane from the liters of oil that the engine had spewed out, and I returned to try again starting the Enfield. Unfortunately it again had issues with getting the ammeter to the positive side, and when it finally started, it happened with a loud bang that shot the airbox cover open and the headlight off. With this setup I limped the bike to the nearest gas station, drained the gas tank and cleaned the carburetor.

With new gas in tank the bike finally ran acceptably, as long as I kept the electricity usage as down as possible. For example, if I wanted to use both braking light and turn indicators at the same time, I had to rev up the engine or it would die. But even then, I got the bike home without incident.

Now the battery is charging, and I hope that this will cure the ignition problems. Once they're fixed it is time to change the speedo broken by the shipping company, and then return to the inspection station with loads of more papers.

Here's our home from the air:

Tigert has more good pictures.

Thanks to Ilkka and Tuomas for inviting us!

Nummijärvi Fly-in

On saturday we flew to the Nummijärvi Fly-In meeting with the Alpha-Yankee C172. Very interesting event arranged on a airport built on lake ice, I even got on a short spin in a Morane Rally. Tigert has again a bunch of pictures.

In the other news...

This is my first blog post using the new Midgard support for the Markdown syntax. Really nice and productive! It is even possible to configure MarsEdit to use Markdown for previews.

I've been attending a Private Pilot's License theory course arranged by MIK and Finnair Flying Club since November, and I was originally planning to fly the required 45 hours with them as well. But when it started to seem like the amount of students would make for some capacity issues with MIK I accepted an offer from BF-lento, a private flight school. This enabled me to start flying already now, instead of waiting until I finish the ground exam.

The first flight was quite simple. We took off from EFHF, and the instructor flew us out of the DEGER reporting point, and gave the control to me. I then flew around for 20 minutes off the shore of Porvoo before taking us back to DEGER. I was surprised how small movements were needed for controlling the plane, and of how easy it was to follow the airspace with the radio. The plane felt easier to keep going in right directions than the simulator.

The snow sparkled in the late February sunshine, and the world looked really nice. While the flight was short it made me very enthusiastic about the training, and about hopefully attaining the pilot's license in the future.

The secondary airport of Helsinki and an important historical monument, Helsinki-Malmi (EFHF) is now under threat of demolition from the City planning council. This would rid Helsinki of its only airport accessible to smaller planes and effectively kill a whole branch of Finnish aviation industry.

Threat to aviation and security

Closing Helsinki-Malmi would remove Finland of its second-busiest airport. In addition to being a busy private and small aviation airport, Helsinki-Malmi is also the main center for pilot training in Finland. In the unifying Europe travel and communications are increasing in importance. Especially to remote countries like Finland it is very urgent to ensure a smoothly operating flight industry in order to not get isolated from centers of politics and commerce. This is not viable if flight training has to be dispersed to more remote and expensive locations.

Helsinki-Malmi also operates as the secondary airport to Helsinki-Vantaa in case of strikes or catastrophes. If Helsinki-Vantaa would be temporarily closed for some reason, like it was during a strike in late 80s, Helsinki-Malmi provides a convenient location. Routing the flights in such situation to Pirkkala or some other airport would make air travel difficult.

In addition to the hard values, Helsinki-Malmi is an important recreational area for citizens of Helsinki. Parachutists, private aviators and flight enthusiasts would lose the only location for their hobby near the capital. Closing Malmi would make Helsinki one of the few major European cities not accessible by smaller aircraft.

Helsinki-Malmi is also an important base for rescue helicopters and the Finnish border guard. The state has recently made huge investments into the border guard helicopter base in EFHF, and these investments would now be lost.

Historical value

As one of the few operational examples of 30s functionalist architecture, and such is listed as one of the 100 most endangered sites by the World Monuments Fund.

As the previous main airport of Helsinki, Helsinki-Malmi has also played its part in several events in Finnish history. It has housed Finnish and German fighters protecting Helsinki from Soviet bombers in WWII, and was the site where Mannerheim's funeral procession started.

The value of Helsinki-Malmi is not only in the round terminal building, but in the whole, functioning airport milieu. Destroying that would be irreversible and completely pointless. It reminds of other cases where regimes have destroyed important heritage for the purpose of vanity.

Unrealistic housing plans

Malmi was originally selected as the site of the new Helsinki airport contrary to recommendation from pilot hero Charles Lindbergh because of its unsuitability for housing. The whole airport has been built on top of a swamp, making the construction process very expensive. In the end a new main airport had to be constructed to Pakkala because the landing strips couldn't take the weight of new, heavier passenger aircraft.

The swamp would make house construction too expensive to be viable still today. The city planning council is proposing development of small private apartments to the area. The heavy-duty foundations required when building on such area to prevent houses from sinking would make the apartments very expensive.

At the same time there are several far more suitable locations available nearby. Only few kilometers northeast of the airport begin the drier forests of Sipoo. In addition, the city is gaining new housing areas as Port of Helsinki moves to the new Vuosaari harbour. There are also plans to evict the military from the Santahamina island just few kilometers from the center.

This all proves that Helsinki is not running out of viable construction space. And it has to be also noted that the population numbers in the capital have been shrinking lately, even further removing the need for new housing.

Dubious legality

Helsinki-Malmi was rented to the Civil Aviation Administration for 99 years back in the 30s. Now the City of Helsinki wants to evict them on the clause that the airport must be used for civil aviation. For some reason City of Helsinki chooses not to recognize that private aviation and flight training are also counted as civil aviation. This is a very dubious legal standpoint.

The democratic commitment of the city must also be questioned. The decision and talks about the future of Malmi were pointedly scheduled after the recent city council elections, and all major parties declined to comment the issue. This is understandable as the city wants to close the airfield against the will of a vast majority of residents of Helsinki. This is not how democracy is supposed to work, but then again we live in another system called "representational democracy".

Not too late to act

The current decision was only been a recommendation from the city planning council. The actual actions still have to be ratified by the city council. Apparently the decision will be made before Christmas.

It is not too late to save Malmi. Sign the petition, contact your city councillor and follow the news on the matter. Closing the Helsinki-Malmi airport would be an irreversible action affecting aviation safety and training possibilities, and destroying an important historical milieu.

Sign up now

Note: I have some bias on the matter as I'm currently attending a Private Pilot License course arranged by Malmi Aviation Club and Flying Club of Finnair. I also enjoy going to Helsinki-Malmi to watch vintage aircraft like AN-2 and Tiger Moth which make EFHF their home airport.

Updated 12:37: Helsinki City council will decide the fate of Helsinki-Malmi on Monday Dec 20th. There will be a demonstration at 15:30 in front of the City hall.

Updated 2004-12-20 12:47: I got a reply about this post from Sakari Pulkkinen from the Malmi project team in city planning department. He suggested that I should contact the city council about this which I have now done.

He also made a comment regarding one of the claims in my post. This is a quick translation from finnish:

"The whole airport has been built on top of a swamp" is not true. The area has a clay basis and can be used as regular construction area. The basis is better than soil for exaple in Pikku-Huopalahti or Arabianranta.

Regarding this I have to admit I don't know the truth. My sources were the statement of earlier chief major of Helsinki, Raimo Ilaskivi and the description in History of Helsinki-Malmi.

Anyway, the next point of action is the demonstration starting in 45 minutes.