KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

82 KRONFELD ON GLIDING & SOARING
lightning and rain. To take advantage of the storm, the
pilot must fly along the front of this roller ; Kegel did not
contrive to do this, but he was flung so high by the strong
upwind that when he had happily escaped from the clouds
he was able to make a long gliding flight of over thirty
miles. As he had no barograph with him, he could not
determine accurately the highest point he reached, but it
must have been at least two thousand three hundred feet
higher than his start.
Kegel's description of his terrific struggle with the storm
was so eloquent that everyone was strongly dissuaded from
imitating his example, and in the following year flying
experts pointed out that it was most inadvisable to attempt
thunderstorm flying.
1926 was again a year of records. The flights of Nehring
and Kegel had convinced many sceptics that good soaring
demands a profound knowledge of air currents and their
laws and that we still possessed all too little of this knowledge.
An acute observer must have sensed the dawn of
a new era in soaring.
With his usual tenacity Ferdinand Schulz refused to
let 1925 pass without the accomplishment of some special
feat in his homeland. On June 3rd, some time before the
opening of the Rhon Meeting, he created a world record
for two-seaters by remaining in the air above the sand dunes
of Rossitten for nine and a half hours with a passenger.
This fine flight must certainly have helped to prevent
interest in Rossitten from dying out, and the Rossitten
Meeting in the spring of 1927 showed how important it
was that it should be kept alive.
Max Kegel had added an engine to his thunderstorm
machine, and hummed about the district in his newfangled
nine h.p. aeroplane, thus wiling away some dull
hours ; not that there were really many of those during
that meeting. Coast land is and will always remain the
best territory for duration flights on account of the steady
winds and areas of strong upwind. Ferdinand Schulz
was naturally once more to the fore in these achievements ;
on May 3rd he made a flight of fourteen hours and seven
minutes in his " Ostpreussen " (East Prussia). Nehring and