The glider is almost ready

It has been one year since my last publication. In the meantime the club got the funding for the conversion and in the second week of march the conversion started.

Mr. Max Lux who was himself a pilot and stopped flying after a serious accident decided to donate €3000.- for the conversion so that in the future handicapped pilots could take part in the sport of sailplane flying.

The Flugsportrings Kraichgau e.V. Sinsheim decided to buy the conversion kit for the ASK 21 from Alexander Schleicher and do the conversion at its own workshop.

In the last year I attended theory classes and flew in several occasions but without side rudder control. These flights helped me to gain experience with the difficult procedure of getting into the airplane and putting on the parachute.

I must also admit that all the flights I did last year helped me to overcome the fear of flying a glider. At the beginning it was quite difficult to get used to the quite violent winch start. But I have now a much better understanding of the forces and the vertigo involved. Many people have problems with vertigo which is caused by the tight circles that are flown in thermals to gain height. Luckily I have no much problem with that but I always had some fear that the landings which could be quite hard could injure my back because of my bridle bones. Although this is a risk that will always be there I now know that a normal landing should not cause an injury. Still I will need to always take special care while landing in order to avoid an extremely hard landing. One of the measures I will take is to avoid days with strong windy conditions which could further increase the probability of an hard landing.

As I already wrote in the second week the conversion of the ASK 21 started. The entire conversion which is now almost finished has been done by the club member Benjamin Bauer. I feel a lot of gratitude towards Benjamin. He is the club and club board member which always supported my endeavor. He has shown an incredible amount of dedication towards this project. I admire his will and determination to help me. It is always special when people make an effort to fulfill their dreams but for me it has a much higher virtue to show this commitment to help others.

Benny at work:

The following pictures show some of the conversion steps in detail: