Above the clouds

Hi guys!

I'm back from France, where I had the best weekend ever! I left from home on Thursday in a Cessna 170 from 1948. I flew untill a small airfield not far from Dijon. There was an oldtimers meeting there, and all my friends from the airport were attending the event. The aim was to meet there with the biggest number of aircraft possible, and have a nice time while flying as many hours as possible.

"My" little Cessna. She's not a fighter jet, but she's a good plane. You can notice, comparing with the plane behind her, the difference of maintenance between french and swiss aircraft :)

It was awesome. First of all, there was a lot of nice people there, a lot of them were experienced pilot with so many incredible stories to tell (like a corporate jet pilot whose job for a while was to bring a pedigree dog from Paris to Berlin in a 50 million $ jet, so that he could procreate with another expensive dog... crazy dog owners!). There was also a bunch of young guys, and I took many of them to fly with me. It is how I discovered aviation, and I want to make other people discover this pleasure (especially if they are guys, around 20, and cute ;) There was also 35 planes, from Switzerland and from France, a lot of wonderful material, the oldest one was from 1934.

Morane-Saulnier MS 317 from 1937, the best looking aircraft of the meeting, and a marvel to fly

During all our stay, we had incredible food. France is France :) Three courses meal two times a day, and french croissants for breakfast, so cool when you're in the middle of nowhere! Some wine producers also offered the drinks, and we tasted some very good bottles.

Chill out after a long day, it's time to serve the wine

I had some wonderful experiences in flight. The most exciting was to drop a guy from my plane. A friend of mine came with a friend of him, and he said he wanted to jump with a parachute, and that he had heard that it was possible to remove one door. I said yes, and asked an old pilot how to drop someone. It's totally illegal to do it without having an appropriate training, but whatever, we all wanted to do it. Five minutes explanations on a table corner, and we were starting the engine. The guy jumped from 3500 feet above the ground. It was a bit frightening to see him jump!

The weather was not perfect during two days, with a lot of clouds, but I could climb on top twice, and it is certainly what I prefer! It's like to be on an airliner, but with the liberty. I love to fly just on top of the clouds, with the wheels in the vapor, and the cockpit on the surface, wow, it's so beautiful! I took a 14 yo guy with me, and it was the first time that he was flying, and he was so amazed, it was such a pleasure to share that kind of moments! I'm sure that he's now begging his parents to let him take flying lessons ;)

This was just before diving in the canyon for a very low altitude flight. With cliffs all around, you have better to know your way out, there is no place for a mistake! So much fun though!

I'm still above the clouds, these four days were so wonderful that I haven't realised yet that it is the end untill next year.

See you!

PS: Some shots are two years old, because, for obvious reasons, I had no time to take pictures by myself :)