On 23rd of March 2006, Henk
made a flight with his Taifun 17E II from his homebase Geilenkirchen (ETNG)
to Dahlemer Binz (EDKV) and back again. After a long winter stop Henk wanted
to make a testflight to have his engine running for half an hour. As you probably
may have read elsewhere on this site, Henk has planned to fly to the Scilly
Islands in April 2006 and of course he doesn't want to encounter unexpected
surprises that far from home. Also this short hop was an opportunity to test
his new digital camera in flight.
Here a small report on the trip, with some additional pictures made by our webmaster,
shot from a totally different point of view.
Henk:
"Well, since
it has been a long winter period this year and having made only some short local
flights in recent days I wanted to make a somewhat longer flight to test the
engine. I planned to visit one of my favourite nearby airfields, Dahlemer
Binz, a small airfield in the German Eifel region. Dahlemer Binz is situated
at a distance of 38 nautical miles from Geilenkirchen, so this flight is little
more than a grasshopper's jump. However, it's my opinion you have to start the
flying season with small jumps in order to reach greater distances during the
rest of the year. It's a bit like that famous quote of Neil Armstrong standing
on the end of the ladder of the Apollo 11 landing module in July '69. We all
remember his famous words: " It's a small step for man, but a giant step
for mankind". But did you ever think about what would have happened if
he had made that small jump with the wrong amount of prudence? He would probably
still be lying on his back on the moon's dusty surface today!
Anyway, this flight also was an excellent occasion to test my new digital camera.
The last two years I have been making digital pictures with a Canon
Powershot A70. With this A70 me and my wife took our first digital pictures
at a trip to the Lofoten in 2004. After that it has served as a convenient camera,
but it lacks several essential features when using it in flight. The camera
has a 3 Megapixel chip, which is good enough of delivering acceptable prints
up to 20x30 cm (8x12 inch). Publishing pictures for websites is no problem either,
but it only has 3x zoom. This is not enough for clear and sharp pictures of
distant objects or airplanes so at the end of the 2005-season I started looking
for a better camera. After a while I found one that suited the job of air-photography
perfectly: I bought a 5 Megapixel Panasonic
DMC-FZ 20 with 12 times zoom function and image stabilization system. I've
used and tested the camera in my backyard, but I wanted to know if I could handle
it in flight too. It's quite a bit larger than the Powershot A70.
At about 13.30 local
time I took off from Geilenkirchen (ETNG). The visibility was more than 10 kilometres
with almost no clouds. During the major part of the flight I had to fly at 3000
ft MSL to avoid a too small distance to the ground above the Eifel region. The
highest "mountain" in this region is the Hohe Acht (the high eight)
with its 747 meters above mean sea level. I was able to fly to Dahlemer Binz
in an almost straight line, because a large military restriction area (Truppenübungsplatz
Vogelsang) I had to avoid on previous flights has been decreased in size. I
was curious to know if there were still some bits of snow on the airfield, but
even before reaching Dahlemer Binz I could see some white spots in between the
trees beneath.
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I could spot some white spots in between the treas. |
As
you can see in my first picture it was a little bit difficult to make it during
the bumpy flight (lots of turbulences and thermals). We see a horizon that's
not so horizontal at all, and there's a part of the window and a part of the
wing visible in this frame. It would be better if had a second person taking
it, but unfortunately I was the only one flying and taking pictures at the
same time.
Some short time after taking this picture I switched of the engine. For about
one minute the Taifun really soared and then I switched on the engine again.
It started perfectly, so I don't need to worry for any troubles during longer
flights like the one to the Scillies next month.
At about 13.55 I made visual contact with Dahlemer Binz. Its landing strip,
1896 ft above MSL, has a length of little over 1000 meters, but a Taifun 17E
II needs less than 25% of this distance to make a decent landing.
| In the distance Dahlemer Binz landing strip can be seen. |
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Several minutes later my D-KFDI was standing firmly on the ground. I made some checks around the plane and after that took some pictures to test the camera. There were still some remnants of melting snow, but not the large quantities we had seen two weeks ago.
Standing firmly on the ground,
surrounded by remnants of melting snow.
I took some pictures
of other landing gliders, amongst which there was another Taifun and learned
that it's not that easy to take a sharp shot of a moving object. I also found
out that drinking a cup of coffee at Dahlemer Binz to ease any nerves did
not change these facts.
At about 15.30, after little more than one hour on Dahlemer Binz, I took off
and headed back for Geilenkirchen.
On my way back I crossed the Rurstausee, an artificial lake with a dam, the
so called Rurtalsperre Schwammenaul. The Rurstausee in total is covering a
length of 24 km and concerning volume is the second largest in its kind in
Germany. The powerplant near the dam generates electricity and has a capacity
of 15MW.
In flight it's a beautiful sight.
| The Rurstausee. Again parts of my window can be seen. I wished I had someone sitting next to me for taking these photographs. |
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As usual while
flying near Weisweiler powerplant, some 10 NM before reaching Geilenkirchen
I contacted Frisbee tower to enter the area for descent. I had to make a 360
because there was an emergency landing on Geilenkirchen base. Next to Weisweiler
power plant I could see Tagebau Inden (Open cast lignite mining area Inden).
On the ground there was a tractor ploughing a large field in which some very
large words were visible. I reached for my camera and took two shots of it
so that I could read the text at home. One of these two shots was absolutely
horrible, but luckily the other one was quite sharp.
A tractor was ploughing a large
field with some sort of text written on the ground. At home I was able
to read: "RWE POWER NEUE INDE 2005".
I paid no notice
to the mining area (called Tagebau Inden) and continued my flight to Geilenkirchen.
Again I noticed how difficult it is to shoot pictures during a bumpy flight.
At some moments I was afraid to damage the new camera when holding it too
close to the window. That's why in almost every picture I took you can see
the edge of a window or a reflection in the fibre-glass.
Anyway, just before 16.00 hrs I touched down at my home base and taxied to
the hangar.
Next day I visited Leo, my webmaster, and showed him some of my pictures.
Leo immediately looked at the last picture I made, anxious to read the text
written on the field."
Leo :
"Ah Henk,
you must have made this picture while flying somewhere in the vicinity of
the Weisweiler powerplant. RWE Power, the owner of this powerplant, is the
second largest producer
of electricity in Germany. This company has a daughter company called Rheinbraun
AG which provides 15% of the annual German need for electricity. The most
important fuel burned to generate electricity at Weisweiler powerplant is
the lignite extract excavated at the mining area Tagebau Inden.
Last year (2005)
RWE had to deviate the course of the Inde river, so they could enlarge their
mining area.
That's why the text on the ground reads "RWE POWER NEW INDE 2005".
| Weisweiler powerplant. |
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There are several open cast lignite mines in this area, the largest being Tagebau Inden, Tagebau Hambach and Tagebau Garzweiler I.
As a kid I got interested in these mines, not knowing their origin.
I always wondered when looking at maps of this area what these giant white spots on the map were made of. At first I thought these spots were military areas and the military didn't want to reveal top secrets by painting their properties white on all maps.
Though situated only some 40 miles from my home town in Holland, I never heard anything about the origin of these strange white spots, until one day there was an article about it in our local newspaper.
One of the giant bucket-wheel excavators that served its duty in one of the mines was transported across a large motorway, from one mine into another, and details and pictures of this transport were shown in this newspaper article.
It turned out that the giant white spots on the maps I had seen years before actually where the mines theirselves.
Some of them having a surface area of more than 30 km²!
These giant mines are used to excavate millions of tons of lignite extract (some sort of coal, but a little bit more brownish). The lignite extract is then burned in giant generators to produce electricity.
Last year by coincidence I happened to visit one of these lignite mining areas, called Tagebau Hambach. While making a walk near the German city of Jülich I realised that we would be near this mining area and looked for it on a road map. We made a walk through a young forest (which afterwards turned out to be created by RWE) and after a mile or two we reached a steep ridge leading upward.
We climbed the ridge and after a few seconds we were standing on the edge of a giant hole.
And when I say giant hole I really mean GIANT !!!
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The webmasters parents in law, just seconds after the first time looking over the edge into the giant Hambach mining hole. Dumbfounded, silent, overwhelmed, there are no words to describe the feelings you get when seeing Tagebau Hambach for the first time. |
With nearly 400
meters below surface, Tagebau Hambach is said to be the deepest open cast
mine on earth. Actually it is told that it's also the largest manmade hole
in the world. In 2003 the mine was covering an area of 32.4 square kilometres,
but RWE has a license to excavate a maximum amount of 85 square kilometres
for this particular mine. Each year about 40 million tons of lignite extract
is excavated and transported to the powerplants in order to generate electricity.
Because for each kilogram of lignite extract you need to excavate 6 kilograms
of soil, each year a pile of rubbish of 250 million m³ is generated.
You can't leave this amount of soil unseen, so RWE created an artificial mountain
of a little over 200 meters height. This artificial mountain, called the Sophienhöhe,
can be seen from quite some distance. RWE also created an artificial forest
on it and nowadays it is used as a recreational area.
Later that summer
I also visited Tagebau Garzweiler, some 15 miles northwest of Tagebau Hambach.
Garzweiler I also is an open cast lignite mine and contains the largest bucket-wheel
excavator in the world, Bagger 288.
Bagger 288 has a total length of 240 meters and a height of almost 100 meters.
This giant machine is capable of excavating 240000 tons of lignite per day.
It took 5 years to assemble the thing and it only requires 5 people to operate!
| Bagger 288, the largest bucket-wheel
excavator in the world. Each bucket is large enough to contain a car
without any problem. Height: 96 m, length: 240 m, weight: 13000 tons,
built: 1979. In service at Tagebau Hambach until 2001 and than moved
to Tagebau Garzweiler. |
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Panoramic image, taken while standing on the edge of Tagebau Garzweiler. Again try to grab sense of its huge proportions by looking at Bagger 288 in the distance! On the other side steamy clouds of some lignite powerplants can be seen. |
The mining
area is called Garzweiler after a village that once was situated at a
location now in the middle of the mine. In the past decades over 30 villages
and towns have been wiped of the map completely in order to let RWE excavate
the lignite. Some 30000 thousand people had to abandon their homes and
hometowns!
Some of these towns history goes back to the Roman period.
After visiting Tagebau Garzweiler I learned that RWE has a license to
excavate another area called Garzweiler II covering a total area of some
80 km².
Again some 7600 people in another 12 villages and towns have to leave
their homes.
One of these towns is (or better was) Otzenrath.
As I visited the village (once housing 1600 inhabitants) it really felt
spooky, as walking through some kind of ghost town. Only about a dozen
houses were inhabited. The largest part of town was already demolished,
or in the process of being demolished.
| Beautiful sight, almost like a moon landscape while the sun is going down in the distance. Digging goes on day and night. However, there once was a time, not so long ago, when upon these grounds there were people's homes, gardens, playgrounds, etc. Now it's all gone. |
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When in 2045 the excavation of Garzweiler II has been finished, there will be a hole of 23 square kilometres that needs to be filled again. Plans are to fill it with water from the nearby Rhein river to create an artificial lake. Each year will bring 60 million m³ of water into the lake and some 40 years later in 2085 the filling process will be completed. To avoid a high level of acids in the water RWE today already adds chalk to the remnants of excavated areas.
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Representative image of Otzenrath, while the neighbours already have moved to Neu-Otzenrath (New Otzenrath) some houses have not been demolished yet, because there are still people living in it. Slowly but surely all signs of life are disappearing. Even the dead in the graves at the churchyard have been moved to a new resting place. |
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Yes
Henk, a beautiful sight out of the sky, those lignite mines, also a
beautiful sight if you're standing on the edge of a mine, or looking
at those giant excavators.
But actually it's a shame that this is happening to people living in
a civilised country."
© march 2006 Leo Llama (webmaster)
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