Henri Bergius - Flying

On volcanic ashes and international travel

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The past two weeks have been pretty hectic for me - Midgard Gathering in Poland, some meetings in Berlin, and the Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. And then, thanks to the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland and the resulting flight cancellations, the trip back became a little bit more complicated.

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.

Quick review: Sennheiser PXC 300 noise-cancelling headphones

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

As a frequent traveler, I've been long thinking about getting proper noise-cancelling headphones. Now, en-route to a Haedong Kumdo seminar in Ireland I managed to forget my usual headphones home, and so it was time to take the plunge.

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.

The returning Age of Sail

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It seems that with the rising oil prices the Age of Sail is returning, even if in a modified format. SkySails is a system that enables freighters to tap into high-altitude winds with a power kite to reduce fuel consumption.

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

Finnair's excellent SMS check-in service

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This is probably old news to most, but since I usually fly SAS my flight yesterday to Manchester for the State of the Map and GUADEC conferences was the first time I ran into Finnair’s check-in SMS service.

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

Flight visualization with Google Earth

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This is probably old news to many, but Google Earth is a very nice tool for visualizing flight track logs. I went yesterday to the Helsinki-Malmi airport, intending to go to the traffic circuit for some landing practice with the club’s “moped Cessna”. Instead, through the magic of the old airport, my plan was changed into flying another plane for maintenance to Joensuu, 500 kilometers away.

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

Regaining my wings

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Court rules against Helsinki's disastrous Malmi plans

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that Lord Mayor Jussi Pajunen was disqualified to decide the fate of the historic Helsinki-Malmi airport. Helsingin Sanomat reports:

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.

Remembering how to fly

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Suomenlinna island fortress

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.

One Six Right on Google Video

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

One Six Right, the documentary about the Van Nuys General Aviation airport in Los Angeles is available on Google Video (Updated: not available)

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.

Majority of Greater Helsinki inhabitants want to keep Malmi Airport

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Helsingin Sanomat, which originally had a very aggressive stance against the airport, has now published its gallup results saying majority of Greater Helsinki inhabitants want to keep Malmi Airport as-is:

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”.