Berlin Tempelhof airport.

Ready for the final takeoff.

Here I go!

Over northern Germany.

Kalmar. The island of Oland to the right.

Sunset over the Baltic Sea.

Heading to darkness and home.

Approaching Helsinki in light snowfall.

First lights of Helsinki-Vantaa airport.

Home sweet home.

There I come.

Perfect landing.

A flight around the world: done that.

Day 21, Flight 083

The Final Flight. I would now end my long journey around the world and return back to home. I had been all the way in Far East and South America, seen vast oceans and the highest of mountains, flown over deserts and glaciers, navigated via hundreds of VORs, and finally I was to get back to the airport I left almost a year and a half ago.

It was snowing in Berlin. I've always been fond of snow, so it was a good start for the final flight. But because of reduced visibility the flight was IFR. The shortest route back to Finland would take me directly over the Baltic Sea. However, to make navigation easier I decided to follow the coast of Sweden. During the first flight I followed the opposite (eastern) coast of the sea.

The snow layer was relatively thin and I was soon in clear air. There was some noticeable western wind. I climbed to 12 000 feet and headed north toward the sea. It took 20 minutes until I reached the coast, and an hour more until I reached Kalmar via Ronne. The weather wasn't calm and I suffered from constant turbulence. I had decided, though, that I wouldn't use autopilot during this last flight.

The sun was nearing the horizon for the last time during my journey as I turned from Kalmar to Visby island and to the Baltic Sea. 15 minutes after passing Visby I vitnessed the last sunset I'd see until home. I wasn't particularly pleased with the fact that it'd soon get dark and I couldn't see much any longer (well who told to wreck the plane in Spain and fall behind schedule...). I was also a bit uneasy with the remaining fuel. I still had some distance to go over the sea, and to make sure I'd make it I leaned the mixture a bit, trading some knots of speed.

After about three hours into the flight I contacted Tampere center. Shortly after that I barely saw the Finnish coast ahead of me. I tuned to Helsinki VOR frequency and picked the signal immediately. After 15 minutes I noticed I had crossed the coastline and was now flying over mainland Finland!

Sunna VOR was the final waypoint until I headed to Helsinki. Soon after the turn to east I ran into slight snowfall, up at 12 000 feet. I noticed thick clouds ahead, and as I descended inside them for the approach, visibility turned bad below 8 000 feet.

The very last part of the flight, about 5 minutes or so, I had fly completely by instruments. Although I couldn't enjoy seeing familiar places because of the darkness and clouds, I was very happy to see approach lights of the good old runway 4R at Helsinki-Vantaa airport!

I was happy that the final landing was extremely smooth and clean. Well, I knew there would be plenty of runway to use, and I really didn't want to crash at this point! I taxied to parking, and... Well, cut off engines, made log entries, set parking brakes, and turned power off from everything.

I had now come to back to the beginning point of the 56 000 kilometer long path around the Earth.