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One Saturday afternoon…

Well, what happens, if you are a pilot and you don’t know what you should do on your Saturday afternoon? Maybe I should go flying… But I’ve been to the nearby airfields a little bit to often lately…

I do need an idea, what I could do in the local area! Boy, lets draw our flying clubs logo right overhead our home airfield just with a GPS track! So I prepared my GPS as I did already describe in Skywriting in a non-aerobatic airplane? and jumped into 90B. After almost an our twisting and turning, the work was done. What do you think?

By the way, after the “F” I had to land again and start a new track because due to other traffic in the area I couldn’t maintain the needed headings.

Florian

Florian and Hugo

Helgoland reopens after Corona!

As you all know, travailing in times of Corona virus is heavily restricted. So for general aviation as well. In times it went even as far as to close entire airfields!

But at least in Germany thing started to open up again and travailing and flying becomes more and more possible. That said, Helgoland was the first German island to reopen for daytrippers again and so our family decided to head there on Whitmonday.

It was beautiful weather with no clouds and light winds from the north east. While climbing 90B to FL65 we went just above a small inversion layer and headed towards the North Sea. As expected Helgoland was quite busy so we checked in early for landing and after a busy approach we got almost the last parking sport available.

With the ferry we than set over to the main island and it became time to hunt for a fish sandwich and after lunch we began the ascend of the rock. And since Hugo and I had been on Helgoland before, we could act as a guide for Mom and Dirk and show them around a little bit.

Gannets and guillemots on the Helgoland rock face

Gannets and guillemots on the Helgoland rock face

On top of the rock we decided to do the grand hike all around it which would also bring us along the “Lange Anna” (long Anna) and the many bird breading colonies.

Helgoland has a to rich history to tell all. But I one does the hike along the cliff edge foot path, he or she will learn a lot! Long Story short, Helgoland is worth a visit!

New Extension for SkyDemon available!

For a couple of days there is a video circulating on social media about an airplane almost hitting the tow rope of a paraglider being winch launched. Understandably discussions erupted what could be done to prevent similar situations from happening again, or worse, ending in a crash.

On the SkyDemon Users Facebook Page we discussed why SkyDemon is not showing these launch sites in their charts. My wild guess, SkyDemon uses mainly the publicly available AIP IFR of the countries they want to provide data for. And at least in Germany §25 LuftVG airfields for paragliding and hanggliding are not even governed by the CAA (LBA, Luftfahrt Bundesamt) but by multiple Aviation Associations and so are not showing up on “official” documentation.

To fill this gap, we compiled the airfield database of the DHV (Deutscher Hängegeleiterverband) into SkyDemon CustomData files and do provide them for download.

Feel free to uses these files and if you should encounter an error, please let me know.

To the Download…

3dairspace.org.uk

3DAirspace now supporting Discovering Eagle

Getting navigational data for foreign countries can be a challenge. This is even more true if we speak about the third world!

Lloyd Bailey was kind enough to me our here and provided me with airspace data for almost entire Africa from his project 3DAirspace. On his website 3dairspace.org.uk you can download airspaces for almost every country in the world for GoogleEarth.

Thank you Lloyd!

Information Evening at Celle-Arloh

Hi there,

almost two weeks ago I gave a presentation in the clubhouse of the Flugsportvereinigung Celle e.V. Motorflug about my flight around the British Isles this summer. The club hosts various protagonists to entertain and at the same time teach their members on flying subjects. This year is about leaving you home airport and embarking on a multi day and probably multi country journey.

Since all members of the club are german, the presentation was held in that language, too.

Unfortunately I was not able to properly synchronize my audio recorder with the video so that you have to life with the GoPro’s internal audio stream.

GPS-Skywriting

Skywriting in a non-aerobatic airplane?

Can you really do skywriting in a non-aerobatic airplane like my Luscombe? Yes, sort off!

What is ADS-B Skywriting?

Where in traditional skywriting one uses the airplanes smoker as a pen, ADS-B Skywriting or GPS Skywriting utilizes the airplanes GPS track. In that manner ADS-B Skywriting could be seen as a subset of GPS skywriting since it uses GPS as well but also the transponder to send the track to the ground Continue reading

Arbeit macht frei

Weekend in Auschwitz

Things you need to see

There are things you have to see at least once in your life. The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland is one of these! But why?

I assume by now it is well-known that the Nazis did horrible mass murder on the Jews and other minorities. And since it has happened already, it can happen again! There is only one way to prevent it: Remember!

Do to that better Tim and I decided to spend a weekend in Oswiecim / Poland and to visit the remains of the Auschwitz Concentration and Extermination Camp.

Continue reading