Denmark at the techncal forefront

Spoiler warning: This is an unashamed praise of a worldclass danish company.

Its called Vestergaard Company and produces service vehicles for the aviation industry. A visit to the company is at least as exciting as the Discovery series on US Fire fighting vehicles.

Its no coincidence as these truck bodies are supplied with tanks, burners, pumping systems, booms and outriggers controlled from a suspended operator cabin controlling the nozzles that spray deicing fluid on airplanes. not all that different from FFVs

I vent to Vestergaard yesterday for a jobinterview as a control engineer, being met by two very agreeable managers, very experienced about their product and the sub-assemblies going into making it, giving me a complete tour of the premises and showing me high motivation for the products and the company.

I have never been so excited in my life, or almost never, as this was quite my cup of tea (vand på min mølle), combining vehicle technology with mechanical and control engineering.

Even if the job should be offered to somebody else, I am just plain excited about being allowed to visit a danish company with Vestergaards workplace, skilled labour, engineering offices and products. What a friday !!!

How to do Birkebeinerrittet wintertime

How do You get from Rena to Lillehammer on Bike during dead of winter without leaving Denmark ?

Easy.
You take one Peugeot racerbike, one Mediacentre with Sony TV, one TACKX trainer,





The cheap mode bike trainer with no PC simulation added, but it can be fun too.

The trip is 90 kms from Rena to Lillehammer stadion, and last year NRK took a video of the whole cycletrip, which can be downloaded from NRK like the Bergensbanen or Flåmsbanen video.

Its a beatiful trip through nature, and while You dont forget quite where You really are the trip on bike and TV is thrilling enentertaining, even if on a trainer.

And thats probably a very good point keeping You in shape till spring.

Sjusjøen after 2 hours in an aerial view, just beatiful. I stayed on for the remaining 20 kms

Goalll . Mål finally.

Now, where do I go next time. Flåms banen maybe buts thats only one hour... Hmm :-)

Naval engineering and interest

Our media centre shows all our pictures in random selection and quite a lot are about ships large and small. Those pics gave me an idea for todays blog as looking over my old pictures made me think over how many pictures I have relating to my shipbuilding intrest.

My father was a Commander RDN and also a Mechanical engineer through what can be best compared to ROTC, graduating in 1932, so I have a long list of stories and recollections from his telling me about being in the danish navy and studying for engineer.

The Dock behind the mast-crane was filled with MTB s and submarines when I as a kid and my father visited Holmen the Naval Yard- Today the Danish Navy is mainly quartered at Korsør



Fortunately he was retired only when I was a small kid, and then continued working with naval business having agentures for Weinmann and

Secumar, so the trips to danish industry and yards continued. The Secumar life jacket in the picture is onboard Peder Skram and seeing it pleased me quite a lot as my father winning the order of Secumars to the Danish Navy was a celebration event in my family in 1972. I know its standard Nato issue today, but still...

Later I duly studied for naval engineering being able to learn a lot about numerical solutions for shipbuilding as the field was just beginning by 1983 when I graudated, taking lectures with Prof. Harvald and Juncher Jensen. By my graduation the danish shipbuilding industry was sinking fast so I pursued mechanical physics at FLS. But thats another story.

I've tried hard to pass the naval bug to my daughter, I wonder though how much of it will take.

I've some very nice pictures from Peder Skram 2005 , with Maria who for some reason enjoyed the berths and the engine room in particular.

Maria, her best friend Sofie and I two years later visited the Danish Naval Forces Museum during the fall vacation 2007 as they, commemorating the battle of Copenhagen had outdoor theatre with enacted hand to hand combat with sabre and pistol.

Maria and Sofie afterwards took up the battle up on in the kids playground in the basement, arranged with bowspit, part of cannon deck and privateer scuttle 'sailing' on the floor.

Also the Willemoes class mock-up bridge and aa-gun emplacement had them all lively and happy playing navy against warsaw pact.

Watch out for the girls. They are precise, able to handle several tasks, and never forgets a slight.