Sinsheim, May 2005

This is my report as written in my weblog

 

This coming weekend I won't be online... I don't have a laptop with remote internet access yet.. so unless I find an internet cafè or someone else with at laptop, I won't be able to read here from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.... HOW WILL I SURVUVE?? :-)


 
I'm going to be at a hot air-balloon competition! No, I won't be taking part as a pilot, though yes, I DO have the licence heehee. This is me on my first flight in 1990....






Instead, I'm going to be the take-off coordinator! We have 17 teams signed up so you can imagine I'll be quite busy!! I've been doing this job every year for the last 6 years. It's always fun to see everyone again... and to get back into the atmosphere of ballooning! I have no time to fly them anymore so I discontinued doing it regularly.

On this weekend 3 competition flights are planned... Saturday morning and evening, then Sunday morning. During the day we have free-time and sometimes games or sight seeing are planned. All the thermals during the day, which the glider pilots love, are bad news for balloons. The weather report doesn't look very promising... rain and maybe thunder storms forcasted. That's always a big pity for the organisors....

So, if you don't see me online the next days, now you know why!

and rained and rained...   yes, with thunder and lightning and very strong winds and COLD!! . We had to cancel all the balloon flights, so I decided to come home a day early... not worth to just sit around doing nothing when I have so much to do at home. When driving off, one of the near by creeks was already starting to flood over it's banks... pretty soon the whole airfield might be inaccessable!

To kill time between the scheduled (and canceled) flights was a visit to a local Auto and Technical Museum. I'm not that thrilled about old cars and such, but they also have there a REAL supersoncic Tupelov TU-144 and one of the last Air France Concorde's on display...so I finally got to board one!!
The first photo shows how they are set-up:
 

 

isn't she a BEAUTY? (and check the weathre yucky)

this shows the TU-144 as viewed from UNDER the Concorde

 
this shows the cockpit....

 

so the trip wasn't a total lost! though, meeting all my balloon buddies again was also lots of fun, as always!!

 

P.S. for anyone interested, here's their homepage:  Sinsheim