Schmuddelwetter - Grotty, damp, dirty weather. What a perfect word for the first 3 days. Pilots are groaning about the rain. The weather-mans analysis every morning in the briefing is extensive and detailed, explaining, in German, exactly why it is obviously not soarable, followed by the terse summary in English 'we do not fly today'. Their soaring weather forecasting system (www.wetterflug.de) is an excellent forecasting system but is subscription only - 100Euro per year - ($140) - so I make do with German blipmaps and free German satellite views and meteo sites, plus a little common sense.
Sunday July 3
Was woken this morning at 6.30am by a thunderstorm directly overhead. Donner und Blitzen! Torrential rain and gusting winds. I cant remember ever having ridden out a thunderstorm in a small tent before. Another 'first'. It was bad enough that I went out to check the tiedowns – all good but I got drenched. I came back to the clubhouse to dry out and get some breakfast. Mercifully my borrowed tent has stayed dry and I can hole up in the clubhouse to dry out coats and stay warm. During a 20 minute break in the rain I managed to dry the glider and get it quickly back in the box with help from the Dingel guys.
The weather forecast is for rain and unsettled weather for the next 2 days as well – not optimum from a flying experience point of view (!) – currently the expectation is that we will get 3, maybe 4 contest days in the first week.
However I hope to make the most of some (wet) sightseeing opportunities today. We plan to into Berlin with one of the club members (Giessebad) who lives there – I will be driving in and Giessebad will provide local parking spot knowledge. I particularly want to see the ReichStag and the remains and site of the Berlin wall, the Brandenburg Gate etc. Camera at the ready. Time to make lemonade.
Monday July 4
Independence Day – The visit to Berlin yesterday was interesting – both from a historical perspective (as a unified country it is relatively young) and of course its recent history as a focal point of the Cold War.
The ReichStag was built in the 1800's by the last Emperor (Kaiser?) of Germany in response to the peoples demands for a parliamentary system – hence the large inscription above the main portal 'Dem Deutsche Volke' (For the German People).
Haro, Me, Franzi, Johannes, Ole, Ulrike and Till. Franzi, who is 17 and flies LS-3 and LS-8 in her club, is uncannily similar to Emma, my own daughter, when she was the same age. Many people here at the contest have assumed I am her Dad! Haro is Ulrikes father, a retired surgeon who is wonderful company.
The area around the wall (particularly on the East side) has been built up since the fall of the Wall – it was a wasteland - minefield before then. The wall itself was not physically large - but what was on the east side of it was – layers of barriers, minefields, armed guards, dogs – and it is a close and sinister reminder of how dangerous ideology can be when it turns on its own people.
We spent a happy 3 hours in the Teknik Museum which was well worth visiting. With a natural emphasis on German aviation, the exhibits were stunning. Many rare and unusual aircraft from WWII . Photo below gives some sense of how packed the exhibit was.
Mig15, ME109, Fieseler Storch, with a ME110 (rare twin engine fighter/bomber) below.
The LX9000
This is proving to be a very useful instrument - if you can imagine a SN10 and SeeYouMobile and FLARM combined in one integrated unit with a large sunlight visible display - similar to and maybe slightly larger than, the ClearNav. It is extremely flexible and configurable and the interface works very well in the air once you have decided how to configure it on the ground.
The menu system follows existing LX interface methods and once you 'get it' its quite simple and easy to remember. SD card for loading data and configuration files and downloading flights - extremely convenient. It also uses a USB port but this is in the back of the instrument and less accessible. Configuration files are generated with the LX Styler software which runs on your laptop, and there is a LXSim package to allow you to familiarize yourself with the device before hand.
The physical format is extremely tidy - there is not much depth to the unit and there are no clumsy daughter boards sticking out of the back. The buttons are all very high quality as is the all-important display. The FLARM targets are displayed on the screen together with ID , airspace warnings and FLARM collision warnings. On the main screen these targets are a little small and I havent yet figured out how to configure the size and information better. The standard FLARM LED Rose display is also used for mounting front and center in the panel - this is small and unobtrusive but very easy to read. Potential collision warnings are also highlighted in red at the top of the main LX9000 screen.
The unit fits *just* into a very slightly widened LS instrument panel - The LS10 has the same narrow panel as my LS8a - and really seems to be an optimum size in terms of ease of viewing without causing massive panel layout headaches when installing.
The photo below shows the unit that was installed in the ASH 25 I flew with Andreas. The push-turn knows in the corner are used for most commonly used manipulation while the buttons around the edge trigger visual cues to their function and are mostly used for data entry functions.
The unit fits *just* into a very slightly widened LS instrument panel - The LS10 has the same narrow panel as my LS8a - and really seems to be an optimum size in terms of ease of viewing without causing massive panel layout headaches when installing.
The photo below shows the unit that was installed in the ASH 25 I flew with Andreas. The push-turn knows in the corner are used for most commonly used manipulation while the buttons around the edge trigger visual cues to their function and are mostly used for data entry functions.
Hopefully we fly tomorrow - I'm ready.......
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