Goodwood 2017

For The Revival 2017 the plan was to charter the perfectly kept and incredibly shiny Douglas Dakota DC-3 that resides at Torp Airport in Norway, fill it up with friends and land on the green at Goodwood, just in time for some flat out action.

At a pace of 250 km/h just 300 feet above ground life takes an almost weightless dimension. Everything becomes light, afloat and very unlike any modern air-freighter. The twin engines vibrates with a safe and comforting hum, telling stories of meticulous maintenance and hours and hours of care. You can feel every gust of wind as the plane moves across the sky like a small sailboat on a very big ocean. As soon as the airport behind us dropped out of sight we realised that the next six hours were going to be pure magic.

The Douglas DC-3 was constructed as a passenger plane in the mid thirties and produced in vast numbers due to its effectiveness and strength. Some 16 000 planes were built between 1935 and 1946, including license built Japanese and Soviet versions, a testament to the rightness of the construction. Our plane, LN-WND, was built for USAF in 1942, and later saw service as passenger and even presidential transport in Finland.

Travelling with a 77 year old airplane is neither time nor cost effective, and is obviously not the point. To experience real flying and to feel present at every vertical and horizontal inch all the way from Norway to south of England certaintly is, and on top of that you can add a pretty good view. In short: Magic.

To top this trip next year it has been suggested that we ride dolphins across the north sea.

We'll see.