A visit to the Wasserkuppe
To those who know
a little about the history of sailplanes, the Wasserkuppe, will be a very
familiar name. For those who don't know the name : The
Wasserkuppe is a hill in the'Rhoen" a hilly region in central Germany, close to
the town of Fulda.
It was on the Wasserkuppe, where the germans, who were banned from designing amd
building powered aircraft by the Versailles treaty, made big advances in
the design of sailplanes. It was also here, in the Rhoen, where it was
discovered that there were such things as thermals, and that sailplanes could
very well use
them and become independent of the slope lift.
On the Wasserkuppe is a small museum, which contains some of the famous
sailplanes of the era: Minimoa, Habicht ( one of the first fully aerobatic
sailplanes )
rhoensperber, etc.
Habicht Rhoenbussard Rhoensperber
Minimoa Go1 "Wolf"
The only drawback
is that the museum is somewhat small, and the airplanes are displayed very
tightly grouped, which does not let you really appreciate their
size or the elegance of their lines. But even so, it is quite impressive.
Some pictures from the flight line :
ASK21 ready for takeoff on tow
approach landing
Of course, I also
wanted to fly in one of these beauties, however, there were some folks in line
before me, so I went to se the museum first. After that, it was
my turn, and the guys told, that they might not be able to stay up very long,
because conditions were not that great, and they offered me to go on one of the
powered sailplanes, a Rotax-Falke. But I waated the "real thing" aero-tow and
all.
Well, OK, next thing I know, they hand me a parachute, which they are requiered
to give to passengers on sailplanes, and the instruction goes like this :
If anything goes wrong, pull the 2 levers to relase the canopy, release your
harness, jump out of the plane, count to 3, and pull the rip chord. Piece of
cake.......
Well the chute
turned out not to be necessary.
Aftre having released from the towplane at approx. 3000 ft AGL, the pilot even
managed to find a little wave lift, and we stayed up for almost 30 minutes, it
was great.
The only bad thing is, now I'm hooked.....
before takeoff
on tow
in flight