Today I have visited the German Museum in Munich and the exhibition at the Flugwerft Schleissheim some kilometers north of Munich.


here are the "big birds": German rocket fighter Me163 above the Me262

It was Sam's idea quite a while ago to see the real aircrafts in a museum. Since both Hannes and me are building plastic kits and flying radio controlled airplane models it was a really good idea to visit an aviation museum once. Having an idea is one thing but finding a date and the best possible museum was again not so easy since each of us has different hobbies and schedules.
Munich is not far from us - about three hours by car, and Munich has two exhibition to offer. Avionics as a part the public transportation in the German Museum and the one in Oberschleissheim 20km north of the center of Munich.


helicopters at the exhibition hall in Schleissheim

The Flugwerft in Schleissheim is dedicated to avionic and has a visitors gallery to see what is going on in the restauration workshop. Currently they are working on a Heinkel He-111 bomber of the World War II. There are photos of it on the flickr set named Schleissheim.
Sure photography is another hobby of us and there are sets of Sam and me on flickr too.

today we went for another NOSOL training to Staubhausen near Uzwil. I haven't been there since ever and now and then I am being surprised what parts in our neighborhood are still undiscovered



NOSOL training on the map Hohrain, first runners arriving

NOSOL trainings are dedicated trainings to improve your orienteering skills. I don't know exactly what NOSOL stands for but that doesn't matter. This years trainings are coordinated by Beat Hubmann aka "Bidi" (his nickname in the NWK NOS squad) and todays training was planned by his brother Dani a well known orienteer worldwide.

Soon this year is ending, time to go out in the forest and meet Santa Claus!
This year he stopped near a hut on the orienteering map Hummbelberg a few kilometers south west of Wilen. Alain and me had no problem to find the forest but finding Santa Claus was difficult because of the o-course. But we managed that again and Alain could tell his "Värsli" (peom).



It is amazing how much Santa Claus knows about all the orienteers from our region More photos of Santa and "Schmutzli" on Flickr.
 

no sports , no family just Marianne an me. After intensive weeks with the NWK-NOS and and even tougher competitions during the last months is was time do "something else".
Since we enjoied our summer vacation in Halden and Göteborg very much we decided to go once again to Scandinavia and booked a short trip to Stockholm.


underground station Hötorget, the blue T stands for Tunnelbana

Similar weather as in Winterthur but a little more windy and still the beautiful colours of autumn in the parks and streets. And to no suprise the shopping streets are still crowded with people
_

during school vacation this autumn Alain stays for one week at the Sportzentrum Kerenzerberg in Filzbach. This is one of the biggest sport centers in the north east part of Switzerland. The gymnasts of TV Veltheim are celebrating their 100th anniversary and they organized this camp for their young gymnasts.


Visitors day

On Wednesday there was the official visiting day. Marianne and Nadine went to Filzbach and enjoyed a sunny day together with Alain and the other children.
  

this years summer vacation from 14. July to 1. August brought us to Halden (Norway) and Lerum (Sweden). Alain and me were traveling by car to Halden where we met the athletes of NWK-NOS for two weeks of orienteering training.


traveling routes in southern Scandinavia, up to Halden (1), next to Lerum (2) near Göteborg and to Billund (3)

At both locations we stayed in a club "Hytte" somewhere out in the nature. I rareley could take pictures because most of the time I was takeing videos. There are only a handful of photos on a flickr set.

We left three days earlier to visit Legoland in Billund (Denmark).
 

the sporting activities are going on. Now it is Alain's turn. Every year the Tössstaffette a relay for school classes around Winterthur takes place in June.


Alain short after his leg (2.9 kilometers)

Even though this event is for school kids only it comes up with a professional organisation. There is even an online result list on the Internet. The team from the 5th class at Schachen (Mittelstufe) became 34th.
 

During the last half year I have noticed that the most important feature regarding computing and Internet in our family is portability not computing power or a big screen. No one except me is working with the iMac because it is tied to the table in our home office. I was glad to have such a powerful computer for drawing the last orienteering map. But now, that it is finished my demand turns toward portable computing too.
That's why we get another portable Apple computer now, a MacBook 13".


Notebook gallery at Hebeisen's

This is also the time to retire the iBook SE (special edition). It is the last computer still running the Classic OS and having the slower WiFi bandwidth but it was working perfect up to today as an eMail client.
Concerning the iMac G5 it will be sold in the next couple of weeks on ebay or another web auction.
 

after finishing fieldwork of the new to be released orienteering map Glarisegg I needed a short break (Xmas time). But now it is time to draw this map. I am doing this on my Mac using Adobe Illustrator together with MapStudio.

After one and a half week I could finish the first and most important part of the map (see picture):


Glarisegg contour lines (brown)

Having the contour lines together with cliffs and rocks watecourses roads and pathes makes more than half of the map. Now only the vegetation (green color) is missing. This gives information about the runnability to the competitors. On the upper right corner you see the already existing part of the o-map Eichhölzli done by Adi Moser last year.
 

today, as some kind of New Year's flight I have been at Nussbaumen where I took the chance to hoover outdoors with my Lama. There was only little wind (almost windless). Thanks to Sam, my younger brother, he took a couple of photos.



Hoovering higher than 3 meters is new to me, I will have to do more such exercises.