KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

368 KRONFELD ON GLIDING & SOARING
machine had ventured to do battle with the elements,
this year there had been twelve.
The fifth day of the competition was like a sigh of relief
after the great event. The flights of the practice competition
achieved times up to almost one hour. In the main competition
there were no notable results. It was quite different,
however, on the following days. I had returned to the
Kuppe again with my " Wien " which had been re-covered
with exemplar}7 promptitude at Fiesler's in Kassel and
tested it on the slope. The machines competing in the
main event had again returned. A new contest was expected
in the next day or so. On July 28th a flight of nine hours*
duration was achieved in the practice competition by Schmid
in his machine " Wurzburger Generalanzeiger." Klinzer
in his " Stuttgart " attained an altitude of one thousand
two hundred and thirty feet. The main competition again
provided a spectacle which the Rhon probably had not seen
before. In the battle for the much contested Oechsenberg
I started off first. I commenced the fight at the lowest
possible altitude which permitted me nevertheless to
attain the air current of the Rohn heights, but whilst I
was still there gaining altitude I saw a whole squadron of
machines coming from the Wasserkuppe. On this day,
thickly covered with cumulus clouds, there were eighteen
machines in the sky, and every youthful pilot was doing
his utmost to emulate the most proficient. Even if they
did not venture to make the flight at so low an altitude
as I had, they nevertheless all went at it together as, under
a particularly large cumulus cloud, they reached altitudes
of nine hundred to one thousand five hundred feet above
the starting point and followed Groenhoff, who was leading
at one thousand nine hundred and fifty feet above starting
point. Mayer in his " Aachen " was the only one who
tried to keep on the course, and he landed at the foot
of the Forest of Thuringen 32.7 miles distant from the
Wasserkuppe. The others made for Oechsen but as
they were getting away from the Wasserkuppe already I
could see that the better pilots were Keeping to a
higher altitude than the younger and inexperienced ones.
Owing to this the majority were obliged to land during the