Last weekend a huge Scandinavian high pressure area helped to push away the grey, low-lying clouds further to the South and glider pilots in Northern Germany could enjoy an unusually blue sky dotted with pretty white clouds. Despite the calendar which already calls for fall, it looked a lot more like a spring day. On Saturday some pilots enjoyed nice triangular flights over the flat and very green looking Northern German countryside. You can find a great report and some nice pics in OLC Magazine. Sunday the winds became much stronger, the forecast called for 30 knots at 3,000 feet, spotty and broken thermals…

Björn Pauschardt did not trust the pessimistic weather outlook and prepared the club’s Duo Discus. The wind seemed to blow from a good direction. Together with Uwe Richter, who was equipped with a camera, he tried the fresh and clean air: The southeasterly breeze had already started to produce some puffy cloud streets. A little later, around noon, the cloud base rose to some 4,000 feet and streets formed all across the sky from one horizon to the other. The pilots enjoyed a view over maybe 50 miles out and headed south eastwards right into the wind. They never really got low and they could probably have gone forever. But the days are getting shorter on 54 degrees latitude, so at some point over Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the Duo Discus had to be turned around to soar straight back home.

After uploading the flight to OLC, Björn figured they had made it to the top of the German scores. In Europe the Duo Discus team was placed second, but worldwide… Oups, on the other side of the globe, again Jim Payne had conquered the rest of the soaring world. Never mind, we don’t have the Sierra Nevada in Germany, but with the right winds we can also fly straight. An average speed of 112.45 km/h is not too bad for the last Sunday in September! And some of the soaring-days between two seas are not less spectacular than over the mountains.