At the same time it was a good opportunity to gather some experience with the ADL120 that we used for the first time.
The first leg was planned from LOWL to EPGD, Gdansk for refueling and then continue to Helsinki, EFHF. We departed LOWL on Thursday, 22nd at 07:35 UTC with a METAR for EPGD like this EPGD 220600Z VRB01KT 3000 BR BKN003 M02/M02 Q1019 R11/290095 and a TAF like EPGD 220530Z 2206/2306 VRB02KT 3000 BR BKN004 PROB40 TEMPO 2206/2209 0600 FZFG BKN002 BECMG 2209/2212 5000 BR BKN010 BECMG 2212/2215 8000 NSW BKN015
This weather was acceptable to us especially with a positive forecast, as an alternate we filed EPPO, Poznan with a METAR like EPPO 220600Z 07004KT 360V080 4000 BR BKN043 M02/M04 Q1018.
However, EPPO would have been almost one hour backwards, but all other possible airports were not much better than EPGD.
Flight conditions were very good, we stayed on top most of the time. We fired up the little ADL120 which is not yet integrated in the aircraft. We use a rechargeable battery and the antenna supplied with the unit. The antenna is for GPS and Iridium. The unit works out of the box and the iPad App is easy to understand and straight forward. The Wifi-antenna, however, is inside the ADL120 and it is a miracle that it connects since it is a completely closed aluminium box. Mr. Golze also supplies plastic sidewalls, which we already ordered to have a stronger Wifi signal. However, it worked okay so far. We are just concerned that it might be to weak once we have it behind the panels installed in the aircraft.
Sometimes we had some outages on the satellite signal, but it never took much longer than a couple minutes to receive fresh data.
The SMS function is a compromise. You can send the SMS to anyone, but it appears to the receiver with a German mobile phone number. You can only receive messages when you sent one in the first place or when the sender puts i.e. your call sign into the message and Mr. Golze has programmed this before.
Fortunately you receive the SMS also as an email to your email account which is useful when you receive an answer after you landed. All data is stored in the ADL120 and not in the iPad. This means that if you connect with another iPad or iPhone then you have the data in the new device automatically.
Anyways, when we were abeam EPPO we checked the weather again and it was below our possibilities => EPGD 221100Z 00000KT 0200 R29/0375U FZFG FEW001 M02/M02 Q1020 R11/290095.
We quickly checked all other possible airports, but then we decided to refuel in EPPO.
The first leg was 369NM and 2:14 total time.
The second leg from EPPO to EFHF was uneventful, mainly across the Baltic sea with a total time of 3:37 and a distance of 653 NM. EFHF has only a non precision GPS approach, but weather was okay and we did a circling above the city lights of Helsinki which was really quite beautiful. :-D
We spent a very nice evening in Helsinki with extremely good Reindeer fillet, but the temperature was already at -10° Celsius with light snow.
The next morning we had a meeting and then left around noon for Kiruna. But first we had to remove some snow and ice and refuel.
With some nice smoked salmon we had decent catering on board.
So we headed to the Icehotel and the taxi showed a temperature of -32° Celsius!
The ice hotel has cold and warm rooms. We booked cold rooms for the first night and warm rooms for the second night.
The cold rooms have a temperature of -5° and you use sleeping bags on top of a mattress on a bed of ice. Unfortunately I cannot add more pictures now, so I will make a second part.
