at this years event of the swiss o-mappers I had the opportunity to speak about generalization of orienteering maps in Switzerland. I was invited by Beat Imhof and together with Urs Steiner we started a discussion about this really important topic.
In my introduction I referred to a report of Tore Sandvik in a blog at world-of-o. This blog entry gets more than twenty comments in less than two days. For me that shows how important generalization of orienteering maps has become.

last sunday I spent the afternoon at my parents home and I took the Libelle with me. There my youngest brother Sam could take a few photos while I was flying the rc-sailplane.

I still have to practise this kind of launching an rc-model. But again it is a lot of fun flying such sailplanes like in the beginning more than thirty years ago.

but this time it was my left knee. I had to do an arthroscopy two times on my right knee and so this wasn’t really new to me.

Only a few days after the operation took place (10. Sept.) I could start my physiotherapy. Continuing the exercises at home helped a lot. And only two and a half week later I was able to do already a training on the bicycle.

Announced by a swiss modeling shop this model attracted my attention. I have a few HLG or DLG gliders some of them not even finished. But this glider (btw already sold out in the US) has a few features listed like easy-to-build, almost-reday-to-glide, inexpensive that seems worth another try.

I’ve got one and it is already finished. Initial set up is already done and even the first (test) flights were successful. Now I have to learn how to launch it to get a reasonable hight.

Following the trip to Rabland we just changed clothes at home and then traveled to Latvia. This time Nadine was with us. We took part at the Azimut 3-days orienteering event in Smiltene. Smiltene is a nice little village about 130 kilometers east of Riga.
It always impresses me to see how well these competitions are organized and this one makes no exception.

The terrain in Latvia is comparable to the scandinavian terrain that we know but as always if you are the first time in a country you have to learn a lot, even in orienteering! I had to get familiar with the map and the symbols they are using in Latvia first and then in Latvia all the maps have 2.5 meter contours because the country is rather flat (highest point is about 360 meters about sea level).
After the o-event we traveled back to Riga and stayed there for two more days. Sure I took a few photos but Azimut itself has put an album on the Internet.

This year Alain joined us (Marianne and me) to stay once more at the hotel Rössl in Rabland. Doing some kind of sports - being it biking, running or hiking - and afterward enjoy all the wellness facilities at the hotel that’s what all of us enjoyed (photos).

On Sunday I was hiking with Alain to the Durster Hof while Marianne was running uphill and meet us at the restaurant.

Back in Austria but this time in Wipptal. We have been often in Austria for orienteering over Whitsun mostly in Seefeld. This year Marianne and me were following thurgorienta to Steinach. From there we did a few very demanding trainings in the near surroundings.

Planning the next training on the map Igls Nord on Sunday.

Another legendary aircraft: North American P-51 Mustang. The Mustang was the most powerful fighter of the Allied forces during World War II over Europe. Therefore it is a must have to every collection.

I had this kit from Tamyia on my stash for a quite while. And when building the F-104 Starfighter to have the MrCOLOR metalliser tested it was time to build the Mustang too. My choice was the Moonbeam McSwine flown by Captain William T. Whisner during the year 1944 from Bodney (GB).

To have my gallery of „famous Lockheed airplanes“ complete there was one airplane missing for a long time: the Starfighter F-104. I was looking around for the A-Version, the very early types with the all metal surface.

Most of the kits available today are G-types or later (the A-version is having a shorter rudder compared to the G-version). I get an old AMT Ertl kit and also a few additional parts (PE, resin and decals). Then I’ll give the superfine metal colors from MrCOLOR a try. Now it is finished and also my gallery consisting of the U2, P9 Orion (Swissair), Electra (back), Starfighter and the Vega (Winnie Mae). All of them have written history.

Finally a night orienteering championship without trouble. All my problems with muscles, light and so on could be solved just in time. Together with Sam we drove to Schönbühl near Berne. Sam took a couple of photos and me I did the competition.

Personally I don’t like this years form of a mass-start with loops. Here you see different groups of runners on their first loop. Since the classes started with short delays soon there were a lot of orienteers in this area and it was difficult to keep track of your race. But for Sam this was fine, he didn’t need a flashlight - there was always some light around

As mentioned last September I got two kits of the Miles Magister. The second one from RS models has a lot more details and therefore took a longer time to build. Now that one is finished too.

It has a detailed cockpit and a more complicated camouflage pattern than the first one.

During February the weather was quite mild and there was no snow laying in our region. So that was the ideal time to do the fieldwork for the new orienteering map Rodenberg.

On March 1st I could finish my part. The Rodenberg is surrounded by no less than three o-maps. But until now there doesn’t exist a map of the Rodenberg. This is changing now and in June thurgorienta will organise a regional orienteering event in Schlattingen.

Like in England I have now built a model of an airplane I saw last year at the Norsk Luftfahrtmuseum in Bodø. While searching for a Miles Magister kit I found a Tiger Moth from AZ model (Czech) having decals for various Scandinavien air forces. So I decided to build such an airplane.

The Tiger Moth is a small airplane but AZ model has packed a lot of details and special parts into this kit. It was a real pleasure to build it.