PajalaKolari Woodshipmeet 2015

The story

Two heliguys “far away up north” decided to put up a heli-camp this summer. And really glad they did, it was a great fun. Well, almost…

PajalaKolari Woodshipmeet 2015 was held at Aavahelukka airport (for small planes) near Ylläs ski-resort 5-7.6.2015. I had a drive of 850 km one-way there but it was just fun. Unsurprisingly it’s the most north red dot in the map. Blue dot is Tampere, my hometown.

One of the greatest advantages of being north of polar circle this time a year is the “nightless night”, that means sun don’t set at all. Picture below is taken a little bit over three in the morning.

We had a great place to sleep in, the service-building had some sofa’s and it was warm. Also the food-service was running all weekend, I didn’t get my own coffee-maker even out of the car during whole weekend. (Those who know me knows that I do not function well without coffee…) And since we are in Finland there was of course a sauna we used in the night. Day. Well, late in the day.

The airstrip was of course great to fly on, at least it was not cramped, there really was space to use.

Unfortunately it was not my day.

First flight with my maniac TRex 500 resulted in crash due uncontrolled “piro from hell”. After collecting the wreck this is what we saw:

Apparently 3400 rpm in head puts “quite a lot rpm” in tail and one bladeholder’s screw thought “screw it, I’m going home”.

Well. Out with the 800 and enjoy the flight on this magnificent scenery. Until the 800 also developed a “piro from hell”. I knew immediately what happened. Tail gears stripped, happened once before.

We can see in the picture the mesh is really bad, too large. The fun fact is that it wasn’t in the beginning of the flight. More on this on a dedicated “Logo 800 tail”-post.

Crash was hard. Really hard.

Gotta hand it to Mikado’s plastic, it’s hard when metal breaks before the links do….

Thankfully I had a spare-kit at home. All that was usable after the crash was electrics, everything else was wrecked.

So left of the camp-time went into enjoying of others flying, eating and having a few beers.

Nevertheless, I’ll be there next year! Great bunch of people, great place, really well organized and somewhat exotic trip :) Huge thanks to “338federal” and “janiz78” for creating this gathering!

Some pictures

Pretty far from home now…

Never driven to a helicamp before where food is walking on roads…

Ok, i know it’s a helicamp but this is just a too beautiful, really fast and well flying jet:

Since the location is close to sweden it was mentioned in sweden also. Impeller came from skellefteå and it was fun to have a chat with him. Nice guy, flew really good with his Logo 800 and we got good laughs during weekend :)

See you all next year!