I left Canada on June 1st and since then I am all over the place.The hardest part leaving Canada was the last 2 weeks in Canada as I missed the kids already then (and of course Penny as well). Now since I am here things are moving along pretty fast.
On June 3rd, I arranged my phone and Internet connection plans and headed to Krumbach to meet Andreas Boehl. Andreas is a former Phantom fighter jet pilot and logs 3000 hours in glider flying. Andreas offered to help me out in exploring the route with the CT from www.flightDesign.com.
For everyone who wants to get into powered flying in Germany and or is considering to buy the "best" ultralight on the market, check out his website at www.flyingBoehl.de.The first day was very busy as we had to get the plane from Bagnang (airport near Stuttgart). We manged to get airborne from Bad Wörishofen at 6:00 pm and headed south into the Alps. We flew by the Schloss Neuschwanstein down to Innbruck and tried to get to Brixen over the Brenner Pass.
We had to turn around at the Brenner Pass due heavy rain showers, so we headed East and found a clearing where we could cross the main ridge of the Alps to check out the area around Brixen and up to Meran. In Meran the weather was terrible again and we had to turn around to the East. This way we could checked out the route backwards from Meran to Brixen, then south of Kronnen Platz to the Drei Zinnen (xAlps turn point) and then over Sillian to Lienz. Due the weather we decided to keep on flying east to Mauterndorf as we hoped to have a better chance to fly north across the main ridge of the Alps the next day. We landed at 9:00 pm just before dark and found a nice hotel for the night. Once we arrived at the hotel, it started to rain and kept raining hard the whole night. The next morning it was still a bit of rain, ground fog and dense overcast, not looking promising to get north over the main crest of the Alps. A local pilot told us about a pass where is always a approx. 50 m clearance to get to the north side or the Alps. We decided to give it a try and sure enough after circling up a valley between clouds we found the passage to bring us to the north side of the Alps.
The weather was good on the north side and we headed to the west and flew up to the Grossglockner. We where able to fly right up the Grossglockner pass but then the clouds stopped us to check out the higher elevations. From there we turned around and flew to the Dachstein Glacier (2nd turn point) and then to Salzburg and checked out the Gaisberg (first turn point of the xAlps). To get a better idea of the route, we flew from there again to the Dachstein and to the Grossglockner. It was well worth doing it and I got a much better idea about the route then just checking it out via Google Earth. From the Grossglockner we headed over Kufstein direct to Bad Wörishofen (Germany). The flight for this day was 3.5 hours.
The amazing part is, that we only burned about 72 liters of fuel for 6.5 hours (both days) of flying and flew an average of about 170 km/h (top 200km/h). Again, flying the CT is not the same you would think about flying an Ultralight, this plane outperforms a small Cessna, way more fuel efficient and you can fly through some pretty wild weather.
The next couple days I spend in Germany and I started to get back into my training routine. The first day I did a 4 hour climb up the "Gelbe Wand" via the new Klettersteig up to the Tegelberg. Wow, that was way more challenging then I expected. The climb itself took me just over an hour.
The day after I hiked from Immenstadt to Mittag, Steineberg and Stuiben (about 20 km) and ended up in a huge thunderstorm. The lightening show was fantastic and I was glad that we where not flying at all.
Today I hiked up Gruenten and had a fantastic view of the Allgaeur Alps right down to the Bodensee.
Tomorrows weather forecast looks promising as the thunderstorms are moving east and we have a chance to fly to Switzerland and then to France. Lets hope the weather will cooperate.
Max
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