Photography

I had my first solo flights a week ago, phew. All went well and I have done the required 10 solo flights now for my final flight test. I was even a bit surprised how easy I felt about the first solo flight, not much anxiety at all. As such the flying itself I feel I can handle well, its any unexpected situations especially during landing that I feel anxious about.

I took some video clips and pics with the Mobius action camera I had with me on a few longer flights, they are below. Next up for me is the final flight test, then I should get my glider license and then at some point I should man up for some cross-country flying. The “standard” easy route in our club seems to be to fly from Rautavaara to Iisalmi and back which is about 100km total. Not a difficult task in good weather but you need to be prepared for an outlanding on a field and the first time doing that feels like a huge challenge.

When weather is not so good it is good time to go do some geocaching. I went to “Kaivannonkierto” trail which is on a peninsula (if thats what it is called) that you can see on the last two flying images above. It is about 3km long looping path with some 15 geocaches and water on both sides.

The nature was nice and I enjoyed the walk, though I found the idea of geocaching trails – where you place as many geocaches as you can next to some path – a bit boring. Stopping every 150m to find a cache identical to the previous one is not too exciting.

Some photos from Prague, Czech Republic. Avoiding the almost-cliche photos of Charles Bridge with Prague castle in the background ;)

Also visited Butovicke Hradiste near Prague and the National Technical Museum. Buovicke Hradiste is a hill where a fortification used to stand, nowdays nothing appears to be left of the fort except a flat hill offering a nice view to the surroundings.

Geocaching is at its best when it takes you to some awesome location you would never have though to visit otherwise. Here’s a few recent examples of mine:

Never finished & abandoned aircraft hangar at Halli (GCYQJ6):

Abandoned underground structure near Jyväskylä (Mystery cache):

Abandoned house, this one is quite close to where I live:

Lookout tower at Karttula (GC2D63Q):

Misc locations: