A invitation for a club event on October the 2nd existed to fly to the ‘Westerwald’ region and meet for lunch at airfield ‘Siegerland’. Unfortunately nobody from the club could make it. Therefore, during my coffee, early in the morning on this Saturday, I opened my event horizon to plan a new flight. During the check of the weather forecast it came out, that in the Rhein valley to the south, where the 3 countries Switzerland, France and Germany meet, the chances are quite good to have the best weather, all over Germany. Later, around lunch time, also the visibility in the northern alps was forecasted to improve.
Accordingly, I scheduled and flew to the South- West- End of the Rhein valley, with the first landing at airfield ‘Freiburg im Breisgau’. From there the route continued to the east, to the ‘lake of Konstanz’ region with a landing in Konstanz. There I checked the weather forecast again, with special view to the alps. It seemed that the stong ‘Föhn’ – wind would delay for some hours. Visibility and level of clouds was forecasted to become very good.
I departed again and continued with heading to the east, following the ‘lake of Konstanz’, flying close to the cities Friedrichshafen, Lindau, Bregenz, the alp regions ‘Bregenzer Wald’, Vorarlberg and Tirol, fling close the ‘Zugspitze’, the ‘Wilder Kaiser’, numerous of beautiful alpine lakes and the ‘Chiemsee’ to land for refuelling in Eggenfelden, in the east of Munich.
During the flight over the alpine terrain, the clouds over the northern alps were very high, higher then all my flights before with nearly exactly 10.500 Feet as level on their base. Also to my surprise, the turbulences where quite adquate. By following the Mountain valleys on the side with the upwind it was possible to profit from those winds and to climb and fly with a fast ground speed, simultaneously operating the engine of the airplane on a very economic low level.
Benjamin
Operation Manager of the ESAaviators