DK - Ground handling with Mike Küng- Day 0 / 1 - Lokken

The last 2 weeks have been spent 'exploring' Danmark a bit together with Ruth. Some pix can be found here. . 

After having dropped her off at Aalborg yesterday for the return flight (AAL-CPH-ZRH), I headed north to Løkken, where today my ground handling course started: 6 days with Mike Küng (MMK - 'Mad' Mike Küng), organised by Papillon Paragliding.

I'm staying at a small vacation house (named 'Honsehuset = Henhouse) I had found on Booking.com. And every morning I'm getting 2 fresh eggs :-)

MMK is well renowned for his ground handling skills, but I'm wondering if he is not only a super pilot, but also a super instructor ;-)

Besides Mike, there are Stefan and Baldur as additional instructors; so with 14 pilots, this gives a good ratio pilots/ instructors.

The day stared with lots of clouds and drizzle/ rain, so we began with an extended theory session. Initially it looked that this would be all we could do today, but fortunately the light rain stopped around 1500 and we could get our gear for the first attempts at MMK's 'special kind' of ground handling. The aim of the course is NOT to fly as much as possible, but to learn controlling the wing on the ground in strong wind conditions. Therefore probably also no track logs. But today we all could train in light to moderate winds with our own wings. If the wind should become too strong for the 'regular' sized gliders, then Mike has a selection of wings (from 8 to 18m2) we can use, so that we are not 'grounded' due to strong winds. After about 2.5hrs the wind started to pick up and we called it a day.

I have not brought along my Leeloo, but instead Andy has lent me his old Swing Mistral 6 - thanks a lot! I'm using my harness from 'Flugsau', which is much better suited for this kind of work than the Sup'Air Delight.

Stefan kiting Andy's Mistral

Løkken: MMK (right)

Interestingly, the Danish PG association recommends to fly WITHOUT reserve; as  apparently during ground handling sometimes a reserve has come out of its container and when it opened the pilot got dragged by the strong wind...

Pix by Dirk Scheuner -thanks!

According to the wx fcst, the rest of the week should be dry :-) I'm hoping the winds will remain light to moderate - at least until I'm a bit more proficient.