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14th Oldtimer Vintage Airplanes' Meeting

Dear supporters of the Hahnweide Oldtimer Meeting,

Dear pilots in the display, dear visitors,

 

The 14th Hahnweide Oldtimer Meeting is now over.

After more than a year of intensive preparations, and thousands of working hours done by all our members, and in spite of the disappointing weather on Friday, the 14th Hahnweide Oldtimer Meeting has come to a good end, without any accidents or any major troubles, thanks to God. And I think it was a great adventure for the participants as well as the visitors, in spite of or maybe also because of the weather.

I would like to say thank you on behalf of my team and myself to all the pilots and their families, who came to the Hahnweide with their flying jewels, challenging the hard meteorological conditions, and who have flown home safely in the meantime. Our guests greatly appreciated the meeting, and I have already made arrangements for 2009 with some of them. Those who couldn’t join the meeting by airplane because of the weather, in the first line Daniel Koblet and Laurent Calame as well as our friends from Wels, Niederöblarn, and Berlin, will come to the meeting again in 2009.

I apologize to those participants who couldn’t be scheduled for a display due to the large number of airplanes we received at Hahnweide, and ask them to forgive us. I would really like to thank all of you for the “good airmanship”, your unbreakable good humour, your untameable desire to fly and to celebrate the Flyers’ Night on Friday and Saturday. And just for being here! Many thanks to Marc, Peter, Eric, Georges, Stephane and all the other pilots from all over Europe for your marvellous displays!

Now the Hahnweide has again become the usual idyllic airfield at the foot of the mountain Teck, thanks to the many hands helping with the clean-up works. Only few traces of this mega-event can be discovered, and they will soon disappear. Most of the remaining participants left on Monday morning. Michael Carlson’s Blériot, on the trailer, and his Piper will leave for Sweden on Wednesday, and so will Bernd Riecker’s Stampe and Josef Koch’s Klemm 25.

Many thanks to our visitors, who partly came from far away, in spite of the weather, and displayed good humour, motivation, and profound interest. Thanks also for the many entries in the Guest Book – although I can’t understand some of the discussions there. Three hours in a thermal bath, or two hours in a movie and then a pizza with a glass of wine, cost more than three days at the Hahnweide festival! There were no entrance fees for children under 14, so I can’t find any sympathy for the discussion about family tickets! Our little club had to invest an incredibly high amount of money in the preparations, just to offer you a varied and interesting programme regardless of the weather, and on Friday we didn’t even ask for money! 260 airplanes on the airfield, that means roughly 800 aviators coming here, and of course they all want to stay near their aircraft on the apron. So I can’t understand complaints about the airplanes being in the way of the photographers. In Duxford, for instance, the mere entry fee for a 2½-hour-display are, according to Peter Teichmann, is 30 €, and those who want to get closer to the airplanes than 100 m must pay a supplement if they want to be in the reserved exclusive club areas. However, I greatly enjoyed the support of a great many of our visitors, who bought a 3-days’-admission ticket already on Friday in order to support our club, the Fliegergruppe Wolf Hirth! I hope that everyone returned safely to their homes, and made an entry in their calendars for the week-end of September 04 th-6 th, 2009.

Thanks for the fantastic cooperation with the authorities, the administration of the community of Kirchheim/Teck, with all the services concerned (I’d like to mention our dear Mrs. Trieloff for clearing all bureaucratic obstacles), thanks to the Mayor of Kirchheim/Teck, Mrs Angelika Matt-Heidecker, for giving us her support, thanks to the county administration, and all the others. Our partners of the Civil Aeronautical Administration, Sybille Veigel and Albrecht Kalbfell, were present and gave us their full support. The organizing manager of the Red Cross section of our town, Mr. Georg Preu and his team, the fire brigade under the command of Mr. Pawell, the police under the guidance of Mr. Pitzinger and the Technische Hilfswerk have helped a great deal making the event a success. We’d like to thank them all very much!

My special thanks go to the helpful hands of my team of Fliegergruppe Wolf Hirth, who can be relied on in all situations. And although the work was being hectic at times we worked it out with a sensational success! Many thanks also to the “external” helping hands from the adjacing communities, the “friends of the Motorflug Schule of the Baden-Württembergischer Luftfahrtverband (BWLV e.V.)” and the aero club of Nabern, who did their jobs not only at Hahnweide but also at Nabern airfield where they cared for guests arriving by airplane. We certainly couldn’t have coped with the problems created by the bad weather without the super help of the Döbler company who provided us with tractors, devices, and filling materials. Moni, Jochen, Peter, Hayo, and Marc, were busy on the control tower, always keeping their friendly calm in the midst of numerous approaches coming in at the same time. What a splendid performance! Jörg, Dirk, and Jochen, on the speaker’s tower, managed to maintain the ability to combine deep emotions, profound knowledge, and a feeling for moments when silence was the best information, with their large background of “cool” comments. The press also merits a great Thank You for their fantasic coverings of the meeting. Unfortunately there was at some moments the usual trouble with the “pseudo-journalists” who simply don’t know have manners, and only want to avoid paying the entrance fees. It is really a pity that this tendency is increasing with every year; we’ll work on the problem. Thanks to our fellow flyers from the other clubs at Hahnweide, to the landlord of our pub, Florindo, and the Klink firm whose director Mrs. Eberhard organized the catering in the Wolf-Hirth area. Our “gourmet’s mall” offered meals to everybody’s taste. Thank you, “Raphi and Jörg”, and “The Ramblers”, for the trendy music on Friday and Saturday night, Thank You, of course, to Rainer Mugrauer for his “Indoor Flight Show”. Thanks to our club member Klaus Lenhardt of LEKI and Willi Balz of Finsco and Natenco , Karl Blaschke of “Autohaus und Karosserie Blaschke”, who made a full fleet of new cars available for use as pilots’ taxis and shuttles as well as Follow Me cars from his car sales house in Frickenhausen. Thanks also to Neckartal Quad , and to Erich and Steffen of KEPPLER REISEN , who assured comfortable bus travels to and from Dübendorf for the passengers of the Junkers planes.

I’m now running out of memories; in case I forgot someone, please don’t have a grudge against me!

One more word about the “super-clever” guys: I feel sorry for those visitors who tried to avoid paying the fees by using the wildest excuses, who filed past the mobile cash posts, and slipped through the smallest holes in the hedges as they didn’t want to pay their due! Such an outstanding programme, and then all that stress for saving 15 € ? Just think of all the expenses and efforts we had to invest, and what this means for a small club as the Fliegergruppe Wolf Hirth, when planning such an event! If you feel that 15 € are too much for assisting to such a performance then you should consider staying at home, instead of keeping the paying guests away from the best places. The same applies to the unknown persons who broke into the sales stalls, or stole parts of the loud speaker system, and destroyed parts of it. We are sorry we had to call the police and we now hope that the miscreants will be found and punished.

Now this should be enough, please remember that the next Oldtimer Meeting will take place on September 4 th-6 th, 2009. I’d like to invite you all to come here again!

Last but not least, I want to say a sincere Thank You to my colleagues in the presidency of the club: Felix, who organized the ground services and who was put in charge of coping with an interminable job with all the rain, to Stefan, who worked as my assistant, and managed the Media Team, and to Markus, who was in control of the financial matters.

To say it again in short: my dear fellow club members, you are what may be called “eine dufte Truppe” – a smart team! Thanks to you and your families!

I’m looking forward to 2009,

Fliegergruppe Wolf Hirth

Hans Puskeiler

Managing director