In 2006, together with our friends from the Förderverein für Allgemeine Luftfahrt Zweibrücken/Homburg, we flew to Toulouse and visited EADS and Airbus. This time the journey went to Rostock/Laage to visit the Jagdgeschwader 73 "Steinhoff", where, since february 2004, pilots are introduced to the EF 2000 Eurofighter.
The visit of the Eurofighters was scheduled for Wednesday, 15th of August 2007, but since the meeting was fixed for 11 o'clock and we calculated that we would need at least three hours of flight with our Cirrus SR-20, Laurent, Luc and I (as well as other crews) decided to leave already one day earlier.
The flight was devided into two legs. Luc was the first one to fly. We left Luxembourg at 09:30 and headed east, direction Nattenheim VOR and continued along the military bases Spangdahlem and Buchel. The base of Mendig is closed, so we could take some photos of it.
The next waypoint was Siegerland. From there we turned North and headed directly to Paderborn (EDLP), where we planned to make our first break.
Luc was flying the plane...
..or was he making photos?
And Laurent...?
...was reading his book!
Finally we reached Paderborn after 1:30 hours of flight.
We stayed in Paderborn for about one hour and had a drink in the terminal. After that I took control of the plane and we continued torwards our destination.
We flew direction Braunschweig and then turned North-East, directly to Rostock/Laage (ETNL), a joint military and civil aerodrome. We landed at 13:30 after three hours of flight (375 nm, +/-700 km).
Immediately after landing we saw the first fighter jets making touch-and-gos and low passes.
Even an AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System) was making touch-and-gos.
After their training the Eurofighters passed by in front of us. It is impressive sight, especially when you compare the size of an Eurofighter and the one of our plane.
After securing the aircraft, we all went to the airport restaurant to have a little snack and continued observing some planes.
Later on we called a taxi and drove to our hotel in Rostock. We left our luggage there and visited the harbour of Rostock. We ate in an Italian restaurant and went to bed early.
