Peter and I arrived in Klix last Thursday and went straight to the airfield. It felt familiar to me and reality hit -- I'm finally here after a year of preparation -- Yippee. Peter's first impressions of the airfield was green, spacious, busy and dedicated to gliding. The organisers were hard at work putting up sponsorship banners and flags. We met Rolf Pitzer, the owner of my glider "22". He brought it to Klix from near Frankfurt for me. Rolf is a glider repairer and did work for LS. The glider is in perfect condition, has a spare wheel and a box of tools. The owner also supplied tape (the good stuff like Bruce Taylor sells) and polish (from the LS factory). The trailer is a beautiful Cobra. What more could I want ... good weather!!
The first three days in Klix were spent setting up the glider and shopping. The weather was no good for flying until Sunday, so we were able to do this stuff at a leisurely pace. Last year I had trouble with cables breaking or not working, so this year I have two of everything. The glider has the usual basic instruments plus a peschges flight computer. I am using the vario, averager and speed-to-fly from this, but not the navigation or final glide. It is too difficult for me to learn in time, and I have WinPilot which I am used to. My set up is WinPilot connected to a Volkslogger and the two glider batteries. Also, a back-up Volkslogger connected to an independent battery. With a suction cap mount for the WinPilot and use of an existing mount for the Volkslogger and tapping into the glider battery power source -- the job was done.
The shopping for many bits and pieces seemed endless. I hate shopping at the best of times and finding anything seems to take five times as long here because we don't know where things are. The hardware store is always the first port of call, then the supermarket, drink store, homewares store etc... Our accommodation is a small one-bedroom house at the back of a house on the edge of the little village of Klix a couple of km from the airfield. The place is very comfortable and Peter is thrilled with the bread-cutting machine, and I am pleased with there being a washing machine. The TV is boring, especially CNNNN.
On Friday Turns and Keith arrived after a gruelling drive including a 3hr traffic jam on the autobahn. Turns is flying an ASW28 which comes from Denmark. She met with the owner on Sunday and launched into rearranging and tweaking instruments to suit. The Conways arrived in their handy motorhome on Sunday.
On Sunday I finally got up into with Cu to 1200m and climb rates of 1.5-2m/s. I spent 3 hours getting familiar with the area and the instruments. Took me quite a while to work out how to get volume on the audio vario, but everything else went well and the LS8 feels like an LS8. I am now ready to fill it with water and do a decent cross-country. The big event for Monday was the erection of the Aussie radio aerial which Cathy or Dave will probably tell you about. Weather was for local flying only on Monday and Tuesday, so I am still rearing to get up there and do a task.- Hopefully tomorrow. The forecast is for the weather to get better day by day, getting to the mid 30s by Sunday. The official practise is on Thursday and Friday and the first comp day is Sunday. We should have good weather for these days.