Saturday, November 1, 2008

Wasserkuppe Glider Museum

Many years ago, before I was a pilot, I spent the whole day in the US Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio and enjoyed every second of it. I thought that being a glider pilot, and knowing what I was looking at would make the visit to a glider museum much more special.



I was at Wasserkuppe on Friday on a very cold and foggy day. People must have decided to stay away as not only I had the whole monument to myself, but a glider museum to myself for the most time. The museum was right across the road from the glider flight school and contained both full size gliders and scale models.




The side walls of the museum contained the history of gliding, all of it in German, but surprisingly with some illustrations, some animations, lots of numbers and the knowledge of 3 other languages, I could understand most of it. The was also information about different lift patterns (thermal, wave, hills) and where in the world the different patterns were. But the gliders were definitely the stars of that show.

Middle of the two halls of the museum contained actual gliders, which ranged from basic 10:1 wood and fabric machines to the high performance composite gliders.

It was nice to spend few hours walking though the history of gliding and seeing how the materials and designs changed with time starting with designs resembling bird wings and finishing with the delta wing. Interestingly, the shape of fuselage appeared to have been settled long ago, but the shape, angle and size of the wing changed quite dramatically with passage of time.






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