Landed for the 1st time

Last saturday and sunday we were on the airfield. On saturday I made 3 flights, last one pretty low (only a few meters above the ground). On sunday I flew again, some loopings and.......when I told the instructor after 10min that we should land he told me, what we? You will land......And, I managed to do it!
And the next flight also.
The 3rd flight I did with another instructor. This also included takeoff!!! Next hour we did nothing else than takeoff/land, takeoff/land until I got the hang of it. After a wrong approach I openened full throttle to abort the landing and then the motor stalled. The plane was already low and the instructor also couldn't prevent a crash in the field. Luckily it was just lying upside down. After some cleaning and difficult starting of the engine I could takeoff again and land. After that I did some loopings and a vrille. Then I did some taxiing on the airfield.

Sinsheim Museum

Last Sunday I visited the Sinsheim Museum. It has a nice collection of oldtimer cars, airplaines and war-equipment from the 2nd worldwar.....

Here's a German WWII Junckers transport airplane.





And Adolf Hitlers personal armoured Mercedes. Near this magnificent car was also a copy of the original bill from Mercedes to Adolf Hitler. It costed 25.000DM!!!









This museum also has an original Concorde and also the Tupolev-144. I even could go into these beautiful airplanes. What an enourmous difference between the super-high tech cockpit of the Concorde and the ultra-low tech cockpit of the Tupolev!








And here's the Mighty German WWII Tiger tank, Germany's answer to the Russian T32. It was very nice, you could control the tracks, turret and the elevation of the barrel with a joystick. With the typical Maybach engine growl in the distance! Beautiful!

I really liked this museum a lot. Well maintained and a lot of information. When you ever come nearby: visit it!

Finishing the chemical plant control system

Here I'm finishing the weigher control system that was part of the Siemsens S5 to ObjectAutomation/ISA-88 Batch control system that I commissioned last week in Heilbronn Germany.

Commissioning chemical plant in Germany

After a (too) long trip with very bad weather (many heavy rain) I arrived late in Heilbronn Germany for commissioning a chemical plant control system upgrade. Fortunately we were still able to test some parts of the production machines in the few hours that were left. Tomorrow we will really start with intensive testing of the system.

Gig at the Splinter music festival

Here we are playing at the Splinter music festival. The daughter of our singer just won a music-constest. She is singing the same song here together with our band.

Flying my Protech Azurro

Here I'm flying my Azurro with assistance of a trainer.......all went ok. Marion took this picture while I was flying.

Impression of our new Band Demo

The Sun 28th April 2009

This is my setup for photographing the sun. An 90mmF10 refractor on EQ2 mount (unguided) with solar filter. Camera used is an Eos400d with remote triggering.










Here's a 1/50sec ISO100 photograph of the Sun, apperently there's not much to be seen......







But after careful investigation I discovered a sunspot!