The Grumpy Gang

The Grumman Aircraft Pilots Association European Branch

Home > On Tour > Tour 2003

Grand Unplanned Southern Trek Germany Hungary and other Southern Territories

You are welcome to join, please start at DAHLEMER BINZ

This time we have two travel reports, one group started at Bournemouth U.K.(EGHH) and returned across the Genoa bay into France (blue circuit). A report by Nigel Thomas.
The second group began the tour at Kortrijk Belgium (EBKT) and preferred the challenge of the Brenner Pass crossing through the Alps (red circuit).Danny Debrandt has drawn up a report.
The purple section has been covered together. The direction of the tour is clockwise, enjoy it!.

Those signing up for the adventurous trip were the redoubtable:

Brian Hogan           

Danny Debrandt

Dave Barratt

Ed Manning

Johan Wimberg

John Jeffris

Nigel Thomas

Paul Vickrage

Pauline Barratt

Peter Colley

Peter Curley

Peter Romeikat

Danny report:

German translation by  Yogi Beck

Somewhere in November 2002 we decided that we would try and see if our glued aluminium Grummans could withstand the crossing of what used to be named the "Iron Curtain".
We gave it a name: Grand Unplanned Southern Trek Germany Hungary and Other Southern Territories, GUST-GHOST was born.

Etwa im November 2002 beschlossen wir, zu versuchen ob unsere aus verklebtem Aluminium bestehenden Grummans das überqueren könnten, was ehemals der „Eiserne Vorhang" (Grenze Warschauer Pakt / Nato, Anm. d. Übersetzers) war.
Wir, das ist eine Gruppe liebenswert verrückter Piloten und Copiloten die mehr (oder eher weniger) zufällig ein Flugzeug der Marke Grumman fliegen. Wir gaben der Tour wieder einen Namen: Grand Unplanned Southern Trek Germany Hungary and Other Southern Territories. GUST-GHOST war geboren. (Zu deutsch ungefähr: die große, ungeplante südliche Tour durch Deutschland, Ungarn und andere südeuropäische Länder. )

Nigel report:

The European Grumpies check out the Czechs and nearly go hungry in Hungary.
This written tale of adventure was started during the idyllic days of last summer, became bogged down in the distant days of dank, dismal, dreary, drizzly days of autumn and now hopefully, serves as a boost and hopeful reminder that the better flying days are once again getting ever nearer.
The Grumpy Grumman flyers of Europe have enlightened the air traffic controllers of most of Europe during our previous tours of adventures and daring-do. Remember GUST, GUST-RAC and GUST-RIP? Therefore scope for further improvement was getting pretty thin on the ground until someone pulled out an old atlas (it was so old, it showed Great Britain as a colonial power in the Americas!!) It also showed that the lands to the east remained to be civilised by their exposure to the delights of Grummans. Hasty plans were made and a rough route decided as our aim was to retrain the Czech Republic and Hungarian natives in the ways of bespoken pilots and for us to sample their beverages. There were a variety of ideas on how to accomplish this onerous task, members offered assistance in accommodation and contacts, a list of required charts concocted and a date set.

The first crack in the plans showed itself pretty quickly. It was the aeronautical charts of Hungary that were the problem. We found that we risked falling off the edge of the world somewhere just beyond the western border of Hungary, south of Vienna (or Wien as the Austrians insist on calling it!) It was all very disconcerting and caused us to partake of oodles of beer whilst we mulled over the consequences of innocently straying into Hungarian militarised zones whose weaponry could only be imagined. It wasn't until we were well on our way, that Johannes Wimberg produced some taped-up sheets of a map he'd found, which adequately covered the missing portions of our route.