KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

MY SOARING FLIGHTS OVER LONDON 351
by the aid of map, compass and course of the clouds.
This is an undertaking which I had not believed possible.
In order not to lose my chances in the bad visibility over
London once again, and on the other hand to utilize to the
full my altitude in the event of the flight failing, I worked
my course towards Biggin Hill aerodrome, which I saw
lying to the south of my course. I reached Croydon at a
height of one thousand five hundred feet, after my barograph
had again stopped by a failure of the clockwork. Over
Croydon, I worked up to an altitude of three thousand feet
in half an hour's strenuous activity. Then, thanks to the
line which I found drawn between Croydon and Hanworth
on the map borrowed from Flt.-Lt. Max Findlay, I arrived
at the London Air Park at a height of one thousand five
hundred feet.
Thermal soaring above all !—a new sport! The
naturalists in the tropics had called this " sun soaring "
in the case of birds. The Rhon competition, which followed
this flight, brought into play the greatest efforts ; but even
after I had landed in the London Air Park, I wrote : " What
we in our conception had held as impossible has succeeded
—flying overland in pure thermal currents. We are now
at the beginning of a sport in which experience, knowledge
and sense of feel count for everything/'