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The Grumpy Gang

The Grumman Aircraft Pilots Association European Branch

Well, what can I say, GUBAT, (Great Unplanned BAltic Tour), was a great success.

Having missed the 2005 AYA Annual meeting in Valdera, Italy, due to a temporary medical problem, I was determined to make my own GUST, planning on Malta or Greece as a final destination. There was no response on the Grumpy website for such a plan, but André Everaert invited me to join him, visiting Lauri Mattila, our Finish friend, who we met at the annual AYA Europe meeting in Greena (Denmark) last year, for the Jämijärvi Fly In in Finland.

Peter Romeikat intended to come, but his US flying partner, Ed Manning, wanted to go to the AYA meeting in the USA and so at the last minute he joined André in OO-GAZ. Paul Newton (Grumpy Cow) has sold his AA1 and deserted us for a fast and sexy Italian piece, but he promised to meet up with us at Jämijärvi. Jorge Trauboth also promised to be there, flying from southern Germany with his friend Peter Pfeiffer.
My very old friend John Jefferis was able to join me in G-MALC and so we set off on the adventure.

As in previous years, our objectives were:

>To have some fun flying.
>To stretch the boundaries of our aviating.
>To educate Air Traffic Controllers in as many countries as possible.
>To make any Grumpies who were not with us jealous.

So much for Unplanned tours. The only unplanned bit is deciding when we will go, where we will land and how long we stay. The latter depends on the reception we receive and the abundance of Blond Barmaids, sorry Ni if I have let the cat out of the bag. We all spent a Kings ransom and many hours getting the charts and airfield information.
The trip beggars belief, (eat your heart out Ni). I will not try to describe the wonders of northern Europe, we were expecting charts with large blank spaces annotated 'Here Be Dragons; we found great difficulty in getting all the charts I needed, and André, who had been more successful, kindly photocopied the important details for us.

The rest I will only outline as a diary, leaving out the delightful details to tantalise Ni.