Aviation

The Dream of Flying...

Aircrafts have of course always fascinated me, but I never thought it possible to actually fly myself.
But after the third flight as passenger of my colleague Philip, it really got me :-)

The Path to Private Pilot (PPL)

Various reasons led me to do my training at Flugschule (Flightschool) Grenchen.
So far I've not regretted my decision a bit, the ambiente is very nice and the flight instructors are competent and easy to get along with.

"My" training aircraft is a Robin Dauphin DR40/160. I like its nice, sporty lines and the good surround view through the cockpit glass. It's a wooden construction covered with polyester foils, powered by a 4 cylinder boxer engine with 160 HP and a two-bladed propeller. It reaches a cruising speed of approximately 115 kt (213 km/h).

After my move to the Zürcher Oberland in spring 2006, the distance to Grenchen was getting too much for me. So I decided to have a look at the nearby airfield Speck-Fehraltdorf for an alternative and I'm now continuing my training with Flugsportgruppe Zürcher Oberland and a Katana DA20.

The following is the current status of my training, I'll try to keep the table somewhat current...

what	when	status
PPL theory	25.10. - 4.12.2004	test passed 18.12.2004
RTF (voice)	21.01. - 30.01.2005	test passed 11.02.2005
Practical	Oct 2004 - ????	19:24 hours / 72 landings

As soon as all the fields are green, I'm done :-)

X-Plane Flightsimulator

While searching a decent flightsimulator for Mac OS X, I came across X-Plane. Unlike other simulators, X-Plane divides the aircraft into multiple small elements (Blade Element Theory) and calculates several times per second the resulting forces on each element, through which the behaviour of the whole aircraft can be calculated. This leads to a very realistic flight behaviour.

The brandnew version 8.03 is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.
Free demos can be downloaded, which will act as a full version after the CD/DVD has been purchased.

X-Plane Ressources

A lot of sceneries, aircrafts and the forum can be found at X-Plane.org.

Airport Grenchen (LSZG) V1.0

Sadly there was none... but I had to have it! So this essentially meant "do it yourself" :-)
This version works with X-Plane 7.3 and newer. If time permits I'd like to create a new, improved version some time next year using the version 8 scenery format.
Download

Skin HB-KDV für Robin DR400-140B

This is a skin (paint scheme) in the colours of HB-KDV for Daniel Dezulier's DR400.
Download

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