Yesterday we saw it far away, today it almost flew over our heads: earlier, the brand new WDL Blimp made a tour over the inner city for the first time. It does look somewhat like a freshly peeled egg, because now the hull is not silver like on the previous WDL airships, but completely white.

The Blimp is back in town! Back in June 2014, our area was hit by a horrible storm, which not only flattened thousands of trees and did a lot of other damage, but also destroyed our local WDL Blimp. It was moored at its mast at the airport and could not be moved into its hangar because the storm hit so quickly. But the company who owns it and has been operating airships from our local airport since over 40 years and they built a brand-new ‘Zeppelin’ over the course of the last year. The inaugural flight was already a few days ago, but today we were able to see it fly from our home for the first time. This new airship is called Theo in honour of the late company founder Theodor Wüllenkämper, who started his business in the 1950s by flying advertising banners with small biplanes.

We haven’t seen this plane for a long time here – it’s called the Red Baron because of its distinct paintjob, but actually this is an Antonov AN2, a huge, single-enigne biplane. It belongs to Albatros Air, a company that does sightseeing flights with it from airports in our region.

I could swear that about two thirds of all planes flying over here are from Air Berlin!

This is the perspective you see most of the small planes buzzing around here from :-).

All politics aside, I still think Aeroflot has one of the most elegant airplane liveries out there.

Sometimes something unusual comes along in the sky, like this vintage red biplane that made a very unfamiliar noise. It’s actually a CASA 1.131E, a spanish version of the Bücker BÜ-131, of which so many were produced since the mid-1930s that lots of them are still around in airworthy condition.

The deep rumbling noise came closer and closer and then the Junkers JU-52 visiting our local airport almost flew directly over my head from behind the house, so I was only able to get this belly shot from behind! TIt’s a perspective of this plane I had never seen before :-).

The Airbus A330 from Air China flies daily, but I rarely get a chanche for a good shot – and this is finally one with an unobscured tail logo, although it was still a bit further away.

I may be out of moons, but not out of planes. Here’s a nice side view of the Dreamliner from ANA!