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The Grumpy Gang

The Grumman Aircraft Pilots Association European Branch

We set off for the Northern latitudes on Monday morning, July 26, our destination Stagsted in northern Denmark. Because we were going to cross some international borders, this entailed getting customs clearance and filing of flight plans at another German airfield, Kassel.
The fact that eight Grumman planes appeared unannounced at his zone boundary appeared to put the Kassel ATC controller off his breakfast!

Now I grant you, the early morning mist made conditions a trifle difficult for us, but he wasn't too pleased to have to sort us all out! Personally, I thought we were very gentle with him.

From Kassel, we set off to Denmark.
The weather quickly improved as we droned north to become severe VMC and a million miles visibility.
During that flight we were pleased to hear Grumpy Airbus calling! He was piloting a flight from Frankfurt to Istanbul. Heaven only knows how he explained his radio chat to his Lufthansa copilot.

Our chosen port of call was Sonderborg, an airfield of entry which is just over the border from Germany. A wonderful, well-equipped, and efficient airfield it was too, right on the banks of the Baltic Sea.

Once customs, coffee, Mars bars, and loos had been visited, supped, chewed, and partaken of, we made for the private airfield of Stagsted, near Aalborg, which belongs to one of our AYA members, Jens Neergaard.

It's grass, approximately 2,120 feet long and 50 feet wide, with 40-to 50-foot trees at the southern end, and it's terraced like a Chinese rice paddy! We made some highly individualistic landings. Our Grumman undercarriage is strong.

All safely landed,we broke out our tents and sleeping bags and camped alongside our planes for the night.

During the night, Paul Vickrage had a close encounter of the animal kind. He heard scratching on his tent during the night and dreamt that it was the local lovelies trying to gain entry to seduce him, but in reality he found the culprit to be a mole digging beneath his ground sheet.I suppose you could say the earth moved for him that night.

The Neergaard family made us extremely welcome and produced a most sumptuous dinner and an equally delicious and fulfilling breakfast.

As expected, the take-off from Stagsted was equally interesting, and the videos taken proved the point.
Getting to Norway meant yet another visit to a customs airfield, Sindal, and then a 70-mile flight across the Skage