A flight to Hamm

A flight to Hamm (EDLH)

Text and images : Webmaster Leo

A short flight with the Taifun D-KFDI by Henk and Leo from Geilenkirchen to Hamm, the place of this year's Taifun-meeting on 25th-28th of May 2006. Total distance about 90 NM (160 km).

4th of May 2006
It's half past seven as your webmaster arrives at Henk's place.
Henk's wife (as usual) has loaded the table with all sorts of food. After enjoying a delicious breakfast we step into Henk's car (I won't mention the brand name, but its colour is red, as they say: the colour of passion) and make the 15 mile drive from his home in Susteren (NL) to Geilenkirchen Nato airbase (D).
After some 20 minutes inside Henk's car your webmaster arrives more dead than alive at the gate of the airbase. I'm feeling a little bit carsick. I'm not that familiar with Henk's love life, but I can confirm that as a driver Henk sure is a passionate man. According to Henk it's just something twisted between my ears. Anyway, I survived and I have still got an hour and a half before we wil be airborne, so plenty of time to recover.

Henk's Taifun, shining in the morning sun.
Almost completely covered by the tail, Henk's passionate car.

Small sign inside the cockpit.
In case you (or SAR) have any doubt who's in charge of the plane.
It's a little bit strange, but I didn't notice this kind of stuff in his car!

And indeed, after getting the Taifun out of the hangar, the usual check-ups, making and filing a flightplan and a last sanitary stop, the clock shows almost 11.30 a.m. local time as we are ready to depart.

"Taifun Delta Kilo Foxtrot Delta India request taxi for runway Zero Niner. "

The sun is shining brightly, temperatures reach a little bit more than 20 degrees Celsius, QNH 1018, the wind is coming almost right upon the nose, a short acceleration and less than 15 seconds later we enter the third dimension. For an earth guy like me it's strange to experience how quick your horizon broadens after leaving the ground. Within half a minute I'm able to spot several landmarks and hills that by car require an hour's drive or more. One of these landmarks are formed by the three RWE powerplants East of Tagebau Garzweiler.

Three lignite powerplants, owned by RWE Power, Germany's largest power producer.
Front to back: Kraftwerk Frimmersdorf, Kraftwerk Neurath and Kraftwerk Niederaußem.
All three powerplants are fed by the lignite from the nearby lignite mines (Tagebau Garzweiler and Tagebau Hambach).
You can read more on these giant open casting "brown coal" mines in the article "Just a testflight".
With their respective productions of 2400 Megawatts, 2200 Megawatts and 3800 Megawatts, these three powerplants supply well over 30 million people with electricity.

Several minutes later the Rhein river comes in sight and we cross the Bayer Chemiepark Dormagen.

Bayer Chemical Factory at Dormagen.
The Rhein river can be seen in the upper left corner of the image.

This terrain, 6 square kilometers, is one of five large Bayer production areas in Germany.
Best known for its original brand of aspirin the in 1863 founded company is Germany's leading producer of chemicals and pharmaceutical products.
Among others, Bayer has discovered aspirin, heroin, mustard gas (WW one), and polycarbonate which is used in CD's, DVD's (sun)glass lenses etc.

We cross the Rhein river, and via Solingen and Wuppertal we set course for Hamm. For a short while we follow the course of the A46 motorway. Below lots of trucks are caught in a traffic jam, but the only traffic we encounter is another motorglider, flown by our friend Hans Blossey, who is taking aerial pictures with his Dimona near Dortmund Wickede Airport (EDLW). After a little less than one hour of flight Hamm airfield gets in sight and several minutes later the Taifun is parked near Hamm ATC tower.

Middle left: the 600 meters long landings strip of Hamm airfield.
There are two waterways crossing Hamm; The Datteln Hamm Kanal (DHK) and the Lippe river.
The Datteln Hamm Kanal is a 47 km long canal, constructed in 1914 and the Lippe is a 255 km long side river of the Rhein.
In the image the Lippe is on the left and the DHK is on the right.
The city of Hamm has developed a plan to construct an artificial lake in between the present airfield and the Lippe river.
This plan must have been realized in 2010. The airfield will be moved several hundreds of meters Northward, to make room for the new lake and its terraces.

Panoramic view on Hamm airfield (EDLH) and environment.

Hamm
We land at Hamm airfield after 1 hour and 3 minutes of flight. My body is sweating all over.
I'm not inside Henk's car, so this has not been caused by his passionate way of driving.
Just take a look at the temperature in the cockpit right after landing!

12.32 p.m. Standing on the grass at Hamm-Lippewiesen airfield EDLH,
outside temperature 24º C
inside the cockpit 42,1 ºC

After a short conversation with the ATC-guider at the tower, we are guided by Karl-Heinz Mielke, one of the employees working at the Luftfahrttechnischer Betrieb Hamm (Aeroplane Technical Maintenance Company Hamm) into one of the hangars.

A beautiful aeroplane in one of the hangars at Hamm-Lippewiesen.

D-ESPS, de Havilland D.H.82a Tiger Moth, winner of the Tavistock Trophy 2002.

The de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth is a 1930s biplane designed by de Havilland and operated by the Royal Air Force and others as a primary trainer. It remained in service with the RAF until 1950 when many of the surplus aircraft entered civil operation.
By the end of World War II, over 7000 Tiger Moths had been built.

Length: 23 ft 9 in (7.29 m)
Wingspan: 29 ft 4 in (8.94 m)
Height: 8 ft 9 in (2.68 m)
Engine: Gipsy Major 10 Mk 2, Ser. No. 10732 (145 hp)
MTOW: 828 kg
Cruising speed: 148 mph (237 km/h)
Range: 280 miles (450 km)
Service ceiling: 15900 ft (4850 m)

After admiring this wonderful aeroplane we decided to look for a place to eat some snack cause we're feeling a bit hungry. Unfortunately the airfield's restaurant "Fliegerklause" is closed on Thursdays. It's a very fine affordably priced restaurant right next to the airfield that is also used by non-aeronauticals to have breakfast, lunch or dinner, especially on weekend days.
Normally a place to eat or shop near an airfield requires a taxi or other means of transportation to be taken to the city centre, but not Hamm! It's no more than a 10-minute walk and you're in the heart of the shopping centre.

Henk at the bridge across the river Lippe right next to the airfield.

View across the Datteln Hamm Kanal, right next to the Lippe.

Turn around and you're facing the Allee Center, a large shopping mall at the edge of the city centre of Hamm.

View at the Pauluskirche, the oldest monumental building of the city, reaching a height of 79,30 meters.

Inside the Allee Center you can find all sorts of shops.

Enjoying delicious food at Imbiss Ciao

At our ease we make the short walk to the city centre and inside the Ritter Passage we find, among others, a small "Imbiss" called Ciao, serving all sorts of Italian food, from take away pizza's to spaghetti bolognese. Talking to the very friendly waitress about the items listed on the menu card, Henk decides to try the Garnelen Salat (shrimps salad) and I go for the Baguette Salami (oven roasted bread with salami, cheese and tomatos).
After enjoying this delicious food, we can only recommend that if you want to visit Hamm some day and feel hungry, you surely must make a stop at this place, it's called Ciao and is situated inside the Ritter Passage.

Future plans for Hamm
The city has a very daring masterplan called "Hamm-ans-wasser" (Hamm near the water) to create an artificial lake, 2 kilometer long and 350 meter at its widest. In order to realize this plan, the airfield, buildings and hangars will be moved several hundreds of meters Eastward and the runway will be extended to 900 meter (currently 600 meter). A large part of the area in the panoramic picture above will be raised 4 meter to form a terrace with views across the newly created Lippesee (Lake Lippe).
The lake can be used by sail boats and recreational fishermen, but it will also have a 300 meter long beach and a 1000 meter long canoe racing track with 9 lanes.
Best of all, it will all be within walking distance of the city centre.
Hamm airfield's present position already is a unique one in Germany. You can walk to the heart of the city within 10 minutes, but when these plans have been realized around 2010, Hamm will be even more attractive!
To get an impression how things will look like, you'd best take a view at some 3D-movies, presented on the official city website www.hamm.de

For those of you who can't read the German language on that website, please take a look at the following three wmv movies created by 3dpixel-company gmbh (source: official city website www.hamm.de).
The movies will open in a new window. You can also right click the link and "save target as" to your local harddisk, before viewing the movie.
1. Rundflug (4,7 Mb, duration 1:05 minutes) showing a 3D flight around and above the area.
2. Badebucht (3,5 Mb, duration 1:13 minutes) showing the beach on the Eastern side of the new lake
3. Hammsteg (8,5 Mb, duration 2:11 minutes) showing the Western part of the lake with terraces and the raised area where now part of the runway is situated.

Back to the airfield
After a short visit to "Saturn" a consumer electronics, CD and DVD store inside the Allee Center, we walk back to the airfield. It's 16.05 p.m. when Henk opens up the cockpit to find out the temperature inside has risen above 50º C. With the roof opened, luckily temperatures drop fast and at 16.17 we are ready to depart from runway 06.

Warning sign near runway 06.
With many people (Hamm has over 180000 inhabitants) living close to the airfield it would be very nice if everyone respects this sign that asks every pilot to keep North of the Lippe river for at least 5NM in order to avoid too much noise.

At 16.18 we're in the air again, enjoying a last quick glance at Hamm, a beautiful city, with a beautiful airfield.

Take-off is a little bit bumpy because of cross winds, but when we make a 180 turn towards the West, the wind comes from the tail and in no time the bumpy feeling disappears and where heading home with well over 110 knots.
Despite the fact that the bumps have gone, I'm confronted with a fearful thought; the worst has yet to come: a car drive with Henk from Geilenkirchen airbase to his home.
I try to forget the nearby future and enjoy the flight as it is.

After a little more than 30 minutes we already cross the meandering Rhein river

Some 5 minutes later we are able to see the Sophienhöhe in the distance.
The Sophienhöhe is the largest artificially created hill in Germany and consists of material dug out by RWE power while creating the open cast lignite mine "Tagebau Hambach". The hill, 6 km East of the city of Jülich is used as a recreational area by mountainbikers and pedestrians, but at its Northeastern side there's also a launch site for paragliders since its average height is 200 meter more than the natural height of the surrounding area.

Farmer ploughing his land.
A beautiful composition by mother nature.

At 17.12 p.m. we are making a final turn for runway 09 at Geilenkirchen airbase and 2 minutes later our Taifun D-KFDI makes a safe landing.
No scratch whatsoever, but as said before, the worst has yet to come.

After 57 minutes (6 minutes less than the way there) we're back on the ground at Geilenkirchen airbase.
Right after landing we start to clean the wings and the fuselage. The Taifun is full of small spots of blood, caused by tiny mosquitos squashed onto the aeroplane during the flight.
After the usual game of tic-tac-toe to get the motorglider into the Hangar we go to the club home to have a refreshing drink.
The sun is hiding behind a thin layer of clouds, an omen of things still to come.

Just past 19.00 p.m. we are heading home.

Here we are entering the small town of Gillrath.
It looks like the pilot in command is mistaking the road for a runway.

False perspective or reality? The left side of the car seems to be on the left side of the road.

But, we're lucky, there no sign of any other aeroplane using the same runway !!!

Several seconds after making this last picture we encounter an old lady alongside the road holding up her middle finger.

...like I already said before, Henk owns a passionate car...

Henk at the bridge across the river Lippe right next to the airfield.	View across the Datteln Hamm Kanal, right next to the Lippe.
Turn around and you're facing the Allee Center, a large shopping mall at the edge of the city centre of Hamm.	View at the Pauluskirche, the oldest monumental building of the city, reaching a height of 79,30 meters.
Inside the Allee Center you can find all sorts of shops.	Enjoying delicious food at Imbiss Ciao

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