UP Team Pilot Markus Henninger has broken the 300-mile mark from Cottbus! Congratulations!
What we appreciate about Markus, aside from his excellent piloting skills, is that he always provides a detailed report on his flights. This time is no exception, as he’s on the road with his MERU 2: “I’m now on the night train from Ratibor to Berlin and have time to reflect on the day. Where do I start?” Well, if that isn’t a promising intro.
He continues: "Thanks to Marko, Dietmar, Gert, and Peggy - without you, this wouldn’t have worked out today. I texted Dietmar last night that we could start as early as 10:00 a.m. today. Dietmar agreed to come extra early so he could get me up in the air by 10:00 (Cottbus Nord). I’m at the site by 9:30, setting up at my own pace; the clouds roll in just before 10:00, as forecast by the DWD. Dietmar and Peggy are there as planned and set up the winch. At the launch, there are some pretty strong gusts coming from the northwest. Dietmar tows me. I release at about 650 m, right into the thermal up to just under 900 m, still below the base. I turn with the clouds. The thermal is patchy. I manage a few circles, then it’s gone. Wind around 30 km/h. It’s a challenge. Altitude is dropping. Past Cottbus, if I don’t catch a thermal now, I’ll have to land; I’ve got 200m left, then it’s forest. I catch nothing and land near Kahren. So much for the great day... Too bad...
I call Marko; he should still be on his way to Cottbus, planning to arrive there around 11:00 - we’d spoken on the phone before my launch. I’d briefed him on the Polish airspace, specifically that the TSAs aren’t active today and you can really push it for 300 km along the Giant Mountains. Now I’m standing here on the ground a few km past CB, and it’s not even 11:00 a.m. yet... maybe the day isn’t as good as I thought after all... Marko picks up and immediately agrees to make a detour to pick me up - well, then there’s another chance to get a head start; 200 km should still be doable. Marko can’t find me at the reported location. My GPS went haywire, which means another 9-minute detour. I’m relaxed and grateful that I’m getting another chance to get a head start at all. I probably took too much of a risk with the early start.
Actually, I thought the day had a lot of potential. In the morning, I’d picked out a 310 km route along the Giant Mountains. In the end, it turned out to be 313 km. I didn’t think 400 km was possible today - you’d have to start from “Altes Lager.” Actually, I’d had my eye on this route for a while as a potential 400-km route with a NW wind. Maybe it’s also possible from CB - I’ll have to do the math. Today, I had 300 km in mind. As we saw in the end, 400 km would have been possible with a bit of luck. If the first takeoff had worked out, it would have been 1.5 hours more flight time, and if I hadn’t prophylactically flown around an airspace I wasn’t familiar with at the end - forcing me to leave my convergence line - I might have gained another 20 km, bringing the total to 400 km... So 400 km with a NW wind from AL is possible, maybe even from CB. The line is good.
I was on standby in both AL and CB. I decided on CB for two reasons: I can get there by train in 40 minutes; to get to AL at such an early hour, it would have taken me about 2.5 hours, and the 1.5-hour train doesn’t arrive until after 10:00 a.m., which was too late today. And much more importantly: the forecasts for CB were significantly better than for AL, with clouds starting at 10:00 a.m. and a base at 1,200 meters and up - at least according to the forecast. I’m currently checking various weather reports and downloaded the forecasts this morning; I’ll post them here for comparison. Plus, from CB you should get a direct connection to the excellent strip on the Polish side. So huge respect to the AL pilots for their flights today. The conditions were at least a bit worse for AL than forecast for CB.
So, second launch; Gert is already on the winch. One of my roughest tows follows - it’s not Gert’s fault. First, I get hit by a big gust, and shortly after, the wing collapses. Clipping is not an option. I stay in. After releasing the lines, I fly into the wind toward the cloud; it works, and I climb into it. Still relatively weak, but this time consistent. Staying in is the motto. It’s really quite a challenge; I’ve got my hands full - 30-knot winds and low altitude, lots of wooded areas. Only after an hour, just before the Polish border, can I climb up to 1,500 meters. Now I’m in the right band - let’s go!
First, I hold a bearing to fly around the ED-R 76 barrier to the northeast; it works well. The clouds are positioned almost exactly on the border. Just a few weeks ago, I flew south from CB for the first time right along the border at the ED-R 76 barrier, but got stuck at the end of the barrier. Today it’s going well. I can see the runway at Rothenburg Airfield. Now I have to head south again to avoid being pushed into the EPD31. That’s working out well, too. I can see the dam near Görlitz and am now heading east under the EPD31, already flying over the large forest northeast of Görlitz toward the east. The strong 29 kph NNW wind wants to push me into the Giant Mountains, which I want to avoid at all costs in this wind.
I have to switch to the cloud corridor heading east every now and then to escape the pull of the mountains. It’s working, but now I have to head south again to avoid the Legnica airspace. I make it through, staying north of the mountains and south of the Legnica airspace - actually the perfect line. Then I encounter a small, circular airspace directly in my flight path - a drop zone or nature reserve? I can’t identify it, so I have to avoid it. However, the detour gets me into a convergence line around 6:15 p.m. - or so I suspect - and I climb quite smoothly to well over 2,000 meters with a 34-knot tailwind. A band of clouds along the mountains follows. The NNW wind hits the slopes, and from there, there’s reverse thermals? Anyway, I’m climbing and continuing on. Right on the flight path to the Czech Republic, I’m already encountering another airspace restriction that I hadn’t checked during my flight prep. I don’t want to take any risks now, even though the cloud corridor might have yielded another 10–20 km. I glide diagonally to the wind and land in Polish no-man’s-land on the outskirts of a village. On the horizon, a larger city - Racibórz, as it turns out later.
I’m walking with my gear along a sandy road when a gravel biker - Magda - comes by. She offers to help me, finishes her gravel ride first, and then drives me 40 km to the Ratibor train station, where I’ll catch the 10:00 p.m. night train and meet up with Andi around 1:00 a.m., who’s boarding in Wroclaw. An amazing day with great views of the Giant Mountains, but also the vast treeless plain between Görlitz and Legnica. What a magnificent landscape!"
We’re thrilled too - keep it up, Markus! “Fly & Train” - you’re right at the forefront of that discipline!