Glider Stories by Sonja Englert

I have been a glider pilot since 1982, when I learned to fly in Germany. I started flying in a club near Frankfurt, but eventually made my most interesting soaring flights (and landings) departing from the Braunschweig Airport. I was a member of the Akaflieg Braunschweig during the years I spent at the University to earn a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. The Akaflieg is a group of students who are dedicated to design, build and fly their own gliders. With one of their designs, the SB11, Helmuth Reichmann won his third World championship in 1978. Another one is the famous SB10, which with a wingspan of 29m (close to 93 ft) was the world largest glider for a long time. A number of world records had been set with it in Australia. With such gliders available, I spent many hours flying cross country. To give some more information I might add that I was a flight instructor in Germany, have flown in many contests and ended up being the German Female Champion 1992 in the decentralized cross country contest. I always think that a successful flight is a good achievement, but sometimes I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed the fun and excitement of the outlandings I had. I have written down the stories some of the more interesting outlandings I had during the years, which I want to share with my readers.

Landing out in France

We (the Akaflieg Braunschweig) were on a summer camp with most of our gliders and one tow plane in western France on the small airfield of Ancenis. After some beautiful flying days it was my turn to fly as an instructor with one of our students in the two-seat Janus on his first cross country. We had planned a small, 250 km triangle to the south and east with the last leg returning along the river Loire. Everything went well, but as students are, we made slow progress because Oli tried to squeeze every thermal to the end before daring to fly on. I enjoyed the ride and sometimes helped him make decisions on how to proceed. But it came as I had anticipated, the thermals were ending before we got home. We were about 50 km east of Ancenis and still east of Angers, when we got lower and lower and no lift in sight. We circled over the Loire, which to our amazement flowed inland (the area is very flat and the difference between high and low tide large). There were plenty of fields around and my student chose a lightly covered large field, approached against the wind and touched down in what we determined later as young beans. Now our main concern was how to find a phone and call our crew to tell them where we were. I tried to remember the few words in French I knew to make myself understood to the next person we might encounter. Then we set off in direction of the next farm, which we had seen from the air. We didn’t have to walk far, but the nice old stone building looked deserted. We started shouting to locate the inhabitants. Soon a young man came to meet us and I managed to tell him we had landed in a glider nearby. To our surprise that was all he needed to know. He pointed to the telephone, brought us a plate full of cake and left us a full jug of lemonade. Since we had eaten nothing since this morning, this was very welcome and we soon had reached our crew and gave them directions to our landing site. When we left the building, another man approached us. He looked stern and asked us if we had landed in his “haricots”. We guessed that he was referring to the beans and followed him back to the field to sasses the damage to his crop. The Janus had touched down neatly between two rows of the little plants, but crossed to another row during roll out. After some grumbling and complaining about the “expensive” damage, the farmer was satisfied to write down the registration of our glider and became quite friendly after this subject was dropped. In the meantime our hospitable farmer friend came looking for us. He suggested that he could show us his Ultralights, which he kept at his nearby airstrip. We were somewhat reluctant to leave our glider in order not to miss our crew, but he reassured us he would take care of the problem. At this point we did not understand how, but followed him to his grass strip. We had not seen the runway from the air, when we arrived, it was clear why. It was so small that even with a glider we could not have landed there. But it was sufficient for his ultralights. He and a friend had a whole hangar stuffed full of parts and complete flying machines. He pulled one out and instructed his friend with something. The fragile looking thing took of and started flying around us at and below treetop level, bussing like a lawnmower and disappearing once in a while behind the hedges lining the road. Meanwhile our friend explained to us that he had asked his fellow pilot to look out for our crew and trailer while he showed us his toys. Well, we didn’t have time to get bored. After a while the pilot came back, waving his arm and pointing in the general direction of our glider. That was our signal to return, our crew had arrived. After disassembling the Janus we thanked our new friends and rode back to Ancenis thinking what a nice country France is. The French certainly love aviation and had made this flight a special one.

Landing out in Hungary

The Akaflieg Braunschweig was holding a summer camp in Gyöngyös in Hungary. We had brought most of our gliders and our towplane to the small grass field 60 km east of Budapest, from which we were hoping to make long cross country flights. The weather had not been all that good for long flights so far, mostly the thermals developed soon into thunderstorms. On day it finally looked promising. We had the necessary permissions to leave the local area and I had my favorite SB11 for the whole day.

In a loose group of several gliders including my friend Lothar with our Libelle. We started out eastwards away from the hills in the northern part of the country out into the Pußzta. We were advancing fine, admiring the landscape so different from northern Germany. The land underneath us was very flat, rivers meandering through seas of grass dotted with little villages. In some areas the distances between villages stretched quite far with uncultivated wild land in between. We took care to overfly these areas high enough to make it safely from one village to the next in case of an outlanding. On the second leg the progress slowed down, the ground was very wet with standing water, which is not a good source for thermals. The clouds were standing further apart and we had to glide long ways to the next fuel station (lift). I had lost sight of the others but was listening to their talk on the radio. One by one announced getting ready to land in a field, since the weather was deteriorating. I too had to make my choice on where to land. I observed the Janus landing in a cow pasture on the western bank of the Tisza, a tributary to the big Danube. I decided not to take a chance with the cows and landed in a field on the eastern bank. From the air I had made sure the next village was close by so I wouldn’t have to walk far to the phone. In the field I had landed a young woman was working. I walked over to her and showed her the piece of paper, which we all carried with us, which said in Hungarian that I needed a telephone and please be assisted until picked up by the crew. After reading it she got a worried look on her face and made it clear to me by and drawing pictures on a piece of paper (I spoke only one word Hungarian, which meant sailplane), that the only phone available in this village was already shut down for the day.

Airport field

It was at the Niedersachsen Championship. I had qualified to participate in the FAI 15m class and had the SB11 from the Akaflieg Braunschweig to compete with. The SB11 is a unique one-of-a-kind design, in which Helmuth Reichman, who was twice World Champion, won his third World Championship in 1978. The SB11 has unslotted fowler flaps, which can increase the wing area by 25%, which reduces the wing loading and increases the lift coefficient. This greatly helps while circling, because the circling speed in much lower and the circles tighter than in other ships of my class. In some weather situations a good pilot can benefit greatly from this feature, as I did during the German Women Championship, helping me to score first once. Back to the Niedersachsen Championship. We had already flown a few good days. There were three classes competing, the Club Class, the Standard Class and the 15m-Class I was in. The sequence in which the classes were launched changed every day and today we were last. The weather forecast was pessimistic but the Championship manager decided to launch us anyway. The first two classes were well on their way when it became obvious that the cumulus were rapidly developing into thunderstorms. It was very hazy and the landmarks were far apart. Our class stayed quite close together, no one dared to leave the goggle for fear of missing the turnpoint (this was before GPS) or the next thermal. We managed to get away from the airport, flying into the darkening sky. The first turnpoint was quite close, but we already had to glide through rain, take a picture and get out of the rain into better weather. This was the plan, but we never found better weather. The rain stopped, but the air got very smooth. There was nothing else to do but glide on until we hit the ground. There were large fields everywhere, but glider pilots are sometimes like cattle. Where the first one successfully lands, the rest will follow. We ended up with seven gliders on one dusty field. We collected all the tail numbers and send one of us to the farm to make the phone call. Fortunately the farmer was not worried about having his field ploughed once again by a swarm of gliders. He said it would not harm his potatoes, which were not due to grow until another month. Then the rain caught up with us. Actually it was a heavy shower and the SB11 was able to show her true qualities as an umbrella. I had extended the fowler when the first raindrops started to fall, and one by one a wet pilot came running over to my large wings to sit under them. When the shower was over we were faced with another problem. The dusty field had turned into an ankle deep sea of mud. The gliders were sitting distributed all over it. The first crews started to arrive. What to do? It was impossible to push the gliders out. The nearest one to the road started to take his plane apart right where it was and carried the heavy pieces to the trailer. But this was no option to the rest of us. I already had visions of my poor plane missing the next contest day and waiting for this awful swamp to dry. But than we were saved from an unexpected helper, but of course it was also in his best interest to get rid of us. The farmer drove onto the field with his tractor and pulled us out one by one. It filled the gear well solid and threatened to tear off the gear doors, but finally the SB11 stood next to her trailer. With enough helpers around we took the wings off and stowed everything. Don’t ask me how long it took the next day to get that plane looking clean and white again.