| We made a quick decision to take my brothers family for a ride in the Sunday morning. It was going to be sunny day but in the afternoon it was forecasted that wind will raise to 9-15m/s (20-34mph). As we headed to hoverport from Pori there was no wind at all, -2C (17F) and really nice weather. I had to put sunglasses on while driving the car! | |||
| We agreed to meet at 11:00 at our parents house, that gave all of us hour to prepare and get there. I have about half and hour drive there so there wasn't too much time. | |||
| We got there on time and as my brother gang still weren't there we went to get more gasoline for the day. Not that it was really needed, but if i fill more often may be one day that 100liters(26gal) tank is filled. When we got back 15minutes later there was my brother, his girlfriend and their overnight guests Aleksi 6yrs and Sofia 5yrs. It was planned that kids should stay with our parents as we go out, but we planned the whole thing in such a rush that neither of us remembered that our parents were not at home. | |||
| Well there is no harm to take them with us as they were dressed properly and we had plenty of room in Explorer. | |||
| Windshield was again frozen, but otherwise there wasn't much of cleaning to before starting the engine. We filled the tank and unfortunately i spilled some gasoline to my brother brand new leather gloves in process. Now fuel gauge raised to ½-tank position - we are getting there. | |||
| We started by seating kids in the back seat and have my brother and his girlfriend sit there with them so that they could hold them incase i have to drop the craft off cushion abruptly. I soon realized that we were too tail heavy, but went right ahead because this was more secure for the kids anyway. They are city kids, so they haven't spend much time on ice or on water. | |||
| Actually it was easier to drive through the tight curves when i could easily drag the aft of the craft to keep speed in minimum. But as i throttled more and speed raised it was more difficult to steer because. Cushion air escaped from front causing snow to flow into my face and it was hard to keep eyes open as i was standing to be able to quicker dodging maneuvers. Sun was really shining and only occasional small clouds would throw in a tiny shadows. Weather was absolutely perfect, despite of the wind of course. We stopped in the middle of one of the biggest bays to let the kids take look around. We were afraid that they would be scared by the ride but they just loved it. We tried to check which of the fishermen out there was familiar to us, but we didn't recognize any. For sure there was one that we knew about, but all of them were so far from us that we could identify the one we knew. We shifted two of the passengers to middle of the craft to balance the craft better. I didn't want to closer to disturb others in order find the one we are looking for so we just took a large circle and drove to head wind. | |||
| At the same spot where my cell phone beeped few times on Saturday to notify new SMS-message i got a message again. This time it was my friend since scouting times asking if it was too windy for hovering ? Too bad he was little bit too late, because we had other plans for afternoon. | |||
| We explored some open waters and kids were astonished that we could move on ice and over water. We visited a small rocky island to see old cave paintings/engravings. Not that they were done by the cavemen, but still they impressed those kids. It was time to head back hoverport. We had small problems getting out from the dead end we parked the craft, but nothing that worried me. I later got a sharp comment from my girlfriend though, but she agreed my reasoning that we still were better off parking to lee side of island. On our way back tail wind did the trick on us and steering back was difficult. I ended up doing 180's to slow down the speed and to avoid collision with trees and stones. For the first time i got stuck so much that i had to step out of the craft and push the bow. My brother did the steering and throttling while i pushed the craft. He tried to take the craft to hoverport, but soon gave up (fortunately) and let me do the landing. He just briefly commented that it was not as simple as it seems... | |||
| Landing was not perfect, but i think i can easily take off without help from where the craft is right now. Total of 11,6km (7,2miles) was recorded by GPS today. We didn't have the camrecorder with us today as videos of operation at 2001-01-06 are still not ready. | |||