06 Mai 2009

No flight today, but a great one last Sunday...

Today was cancelled due to rain and strong wind. German television station BR visited us and filmed a short portrait about me at the German Open and Pre Worlds, they filmed the pitch measurements and the show will be on air tomorrow night at 7.20 pm on BR3.
As Charlie didn´t arrive in time to provide the team with some aerial shots, I had to go home to Munich to get great on board film footage from me flying at Greifenburg during the Europeans and Oli filming me from above, flying around me. Lot´s of driving for some three minutes of tv time, I hope it is a good advertisement for our sport and for Tegelberg and the next two weeks. Would be great to have some visitors during the weekends.

A short look back at the weekend – I arrived home from Buenos Aires late Saturday night, and the forecast for Sunday was for a nice flying day. We decided to go to Rauschberg and set up in the snow. I met good old friends up there, and soon I needed their help. When I wanted to put in the battens, I saw that five tips had been broken, and I remembered that I had had help packing up my glider after the course at Wasserkuppe a week ago... and I hadn´t checked the battens before I went to Rauschberg... first I thought that I have to pack up and take the cable car down again, but then Dieter Kamml asked every Moyes pilot for spare parts – four guys offered help, and I found three tips that fit! So I left the inner two batten ends open and took off quite late, around 3pm.
A good time to fly, the day had been overcast until then and only just opened up. Flying over to Hochfelln, I could easily try and make a crossing to Hochplatte. With base at around 2300m, it was possible to fly to Hochries – so good to see lots of paragliders and hanggliders there, since that cable car had nearly closed down some months ago. Later I heard that Guido and Steffen had started their xc flight from Hochries, so we must have met briefly.
It still looked good past the Inn valley and since Yves had offered to drive the car home, I could go on trying to head home. I had never crossed that big valley and gone on into the Bavarian flatlands along the autobahn towards Munich before, so I gave it a try. Got really low but found a save and had a few more cu´s that took me past Gmund where the DHV resides, past Regina´s place and finally I decided to land about 800m away from my friend Peter Achmuellers place. It would have been about 15km to go to my home (with nowhere to land), and 17km to go and land at Englischer Garden in the center of Munich, but I didnt want to hurt any air spaces, so I decided better to turn around at Neubiberg and land next to the Autobahn. Only about 100km, but a flight that hardly anybody had ever tried before ;)
Many thanks again to Dieter, Thomas and Achim for finding spareparts for me, and to Wolfi Genghammer from Skyline for providing me with new batten tips! And most of all to Yves for bringing the car and picking me up on the way home.

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