Visiting Unterwoessen

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A recent trip to Europe offered a nice opportunity to revisit the airfield in Unterwoessen in the Bavarian Alps. This is the location of the German Alpine Soaring Center (DASSU). And it is here that I started my soaring career a long time ago (don’t ask me how long).

Not too much seems to have changed. It is still a very small field operating mostly with winch tows and they still use relatively old equipment (K13, K8, Motor-Falke). However, the training center is very active and the field is home to a lot of clubs and private owners and offers a convenient starting point for long distance mountain soaring. For old hands of the old BGSC, who remember the K13s it will be interesting to note the nose gear/ main gear arrangement of the K13s used in Unterwoessen.

The original K13 had a skid/ main gear arrangement (probably the last production glider with this arrangement). Most of them have been modified with the above landing gear making ground operations much easier and improving the shock absorption.

They use the Motor-Falke with the Rotax engine for aero-towing. While there, I saw an aero-tow operation you don’t see too often – landings and touch-and-goes under tow.

This is a somewhat tricky operation, requiring full spoilers on the glider and just enough power on the tow plane to keep the towline under tension. I have never heard of a case where this was required but it was an impressive show to watch.

Altogether it was a nice visit bringing back long forgotten memories from my fledgling gliding days.