A couple of photos from my trip to Europe in Sept. 2003.

Flying with Malaysian airlines has its advantages. If you are lucky, the copilot never been in Australia before and captain takes a little detour to show him Ayers Rock.            

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

You also know in which direction and how far Mecca is. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Germany I met a friend of mine, Gerrit, who showed me around the Austrian and German Alps. He was a great company to me for about a week during which we flew every day at the best sites in  the Alps.

The beauty of Tanheim was, we could get to the takeoff by cable car and  land just a 100 or so meters from the station in the valley. In case it was needed, that is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The landing area was generous. The number of cars at the car park indicated how busy the place was. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took a while to get tired of good thermaling conditions. Unfortunately inversion was capping the sky and it was impossible to leave the valley. This was the only negative aspect of my whole trip thru the Alps.

 

 

 

 

 

Another place in Austria, quite a long drive from Tanheim, was less busy. The local PG school operator and a restaurant owner was the only permit-holder to take a car to the takeoff - 1700 ms above the valley. Gerrit, I and two Swiss pilots were the only ones in the sky. Again, the inversion capping just 200 ms or so above the peaks stopped us from flying anywhere. Later in the day the sky started to look rather menacing and we've given up trying to get above the nearby glacier. We landed just before the wind picked up. 

 

 

 

 

 

For a variety of reasons, financial not the last of them, I decided to go to Macedonia by bus. A great mistake, never to be repeated. The trip took over 30 hours - but at least there was some live entertainment on that bus of horrors...

 

 

      

 

 

 

 

Macedonia was a bit of a bummer. The weather in Ohrid refused to cooperate and I couldn't stay more than 5 days. The timing was perfect. Just when crossing the Hungarian border on my way to Czech Republic I got a message from Ohrid: "The conditions are perfect, we are proceeding with the course..." Too late to turn back. Lake Ohrid is an ideal place to practice acro - if the weather is right. Otherwise, the town is a beautiful holiday resort combining an ancient history with the latest in sport and entertainment. And all very affordable: I had a nice accommodation in private for about $8 Aussie a day. But again - all this is not much of use if you can't fly :-(.

 

 

 

The restaurants are cozy and cheap. $1 Aussie buys about 30 Denars. The nightclubs are busy noisy and slightly more expensive. One of them, "Big Blue" is being owned by a local hangie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way back it was hard not to notice some reminders of the recent civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Serbian Beograd still bears the scars.

      

 

 

The famous site Rana near Prague. The hill is 150 m high. This is the place where your Gradient glider most likely had its pre-delivery test flight. The locals are doing 100 and more Ks CX flights from there - This place helped to polish skills of pilots like Tomas Suchanek and Ondrej Dupal. If you want to fly somewhere from here, you'd better be good at it. At weekends this place often sees 50 or more pilots in the air. Scary...

There are better sites in Czech Republic as well - like the Jested Tower near Liberec in North Bohemia. I didn't get the chance to fly this one and pinched this picture from SkyFly website. Sorry, Standa :-)

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A totally confused 80 years old Czech farmer: Somebody falls on his paddock from the sky and in a perfect Czech tells him he is from Australia... That's something to talk about in the pub!