International Fellowship of Flying Rotarians

Pictures by ©2009 Gregory Guida

IFFR Friedrichshafen,  20-23^rd August 2009

I am not a Rotarian or even a true GA enthusiast – though I do admit to helping my husband, John, who is. So when Rodney Spokes invited us as guests to the German section IFFR meeting in Friedrichshafen, I did wonder what we were letting ourselves into.

The weekend began early on Thursday, leaving our ‘home airport’, Leicester in G-AYWD, the Cessna 182 Rodney and John share. It was a lovely flight over rural England at harvest time, across the channel and into Le Touquet. My knuckles were white as we landed in bumpy crosswind, but this only raised mild laughter from the ‘boys’. A comfort break, passport check and refuel and we were off again, and the adventure for us Chevertons really began, never having flown on the continent before.

For me in the back, it was lovely to watch the countryside unfold and notice the little differences between France and England. - the lack of hedges, small towns with huge gothic churches, roads shaded by rows of trees like lollipops. As the ‘boys’ dealt with the technicalities of flying across France and Germany, I enjoyed a mini air-show as two Mirage jets swooped beneath us, watched the Rhine flow past, and admired the wooded Jura mountains, which give way to a neat countryside of small fields and orderly red roofed villages with the Bodensee shining ahead, and real snowy mountains in the distance.

Our welcome was warm. The control tower at Friedrichshafen said they ‘knew all about us’, and we swiftly landed and took a taxi to our hotel. The Buchhorner Hof is very traditional – decorated with geraniums outside and a variety of deer heads inside. Despite our very inadequate German we were made to feel at home and shown our comfortable bedrooms. Half an hour later we were relaxing in the sunshine outside a lakeside café, with well-earned tankards of beer and a late lunch.

We met most of our fellow IFFR delegates later in the evening, when we dined at the Seehof Restaurant together. Good eating, drinking and airplane talk were at the heart of the meeting, and we chatted to Rotarians from England, Scotland, Jersey, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany (of course) and even New Zealand. Our lack of German and my even more embarrassing lack of technical language (‘what plane have we got, John?’) were not allowed to be barriers, and we soon felt part of the group.

Wolfgang Teich and his team had put on an excellent programme for our entertainment. Next morning (having been warned that the timetable was to be respected), we were taken the Zeppelin NT works. I was fascinated to see how the dream of lighter-than-air flight was being revived, using NT (New Technology, not No Toilets as we were told). Unlike ‘blimps’, which are basically huge balloons, NT airships are built over a light carbon fibre skeleton. This allows the engines to be fixed away from the cabin – thus producing quiet vibration-free flight. Three engines with swivelling propellers give excellent manoeuvrability, and the combination of low, slow, smooth progress makes them ideal for luxury passenger flights, traffic and crowd control (as in the Athens Olympics) and scientific research. One model was used for a geological survey over the Kalahari Desert, prospecting for diamonds until it came to grief in a hurricane.

Our guide, Bernd Straeter, former CEO of Zeppelin NT, did such a good PR job we were disappointed to find all flights in the airships were fully booked during our stay. Instead, we had a quiet afternoon exploring the town (or snoozing) until we boarded the MS ‘Graf Zeppelin’ for a more conventional cruise on the Bodensee in the evening. Our destination was Bregenz, at the eastern, Austrian, end of the lake, and we arrived (well fed of course) as the sun set, for our next treat, Verdi’s ‘Aida’.

The stage is on the lake, and was set as a waterside palace dominated by two giant cranes and a pair of huge blue feet. We watched enchanted as the music and drama drew us in to the tale of the tragic love between an Egyptian general and a beautiful Ethiopian slave and the conflict of loyalties to family, country and love. Although there was a vaguely Ancient Egyptian theme, it was with a modern political twist. The Ethiopian prisoners-of-war arrived in Guantanamo Bay-style orange jump-suits, and as the priests sang of war and hate to foreigners, the cranes moved huge blocks to reveal the head and flame-holding hand of a blue Statue of Liberty, (matching the feet). Of course it all ended in tears as Aida and Radames die together in a little boat that drifts up to the stars (in this version, anyway).

Despite a late cruise home, the pace did not slacken and Saturday started with a visit to the Zeppelin museum.  Here we learned of Graf von Zeppelin who at the age of 60 started making hydrogen-filled rigid airships at the end of the 1800s. The pinnacle of his achievement were the 245metre long LZ-129 ‘Hindenburg’ and LZ-127 ‘Graf Zeppelin’ which provided luxury flights around the world and a regular transatlantic service. Part of the museum was a full scale reconstruction of about a twelfth of one of these monsters, showing the scaffold over which they were built, the gas bags (each made of 70,000 cows appendixes!!) and the high-class living-quarters for passengers inside the airship itself. There were sleeping cabins with hot and cold running water, a lounge with windows that could open, dining-room and even a well-insulated smoking room. The 60hour trip across the Atlantic cost the princely sum of 1,000 Reichmarks (equivalent to 7 months wages for a factory worker). Fifty staff served the passengers and ran the engines - access to which was via scrambling ropes on the outside of the airship.

Landing was the most dangerous time for these huge unwieldy vessels. 200 ground crew were trained to catch landing ropes and steer the airship onto a mooring pylon. It was as the Hindenburg was trying to moor at Lakehurst in the US in 1937 that disaster struck. The combination of wet mooring lines (which earthed the ship), inflammable varnish on the outside and a lightning strike resulted in an explosion that destroyed the ship. This disaster and some less-than-enthusiastic support for the Nazis by the company, led to the demise of the original Zeppelins.

We were revived by lunch and then taken on to the Dornier Museum, which celebrated the achievements of Claude Dornier. He was an engineer who started work with Graf Zeppelin, and then graduated to designing planes. His trademark designs were of metal, multi-propeller flying boats, but he diversified many other types. During WW2, Friedrichshafen was an obvious target for allied attacks, since it had factories for Dornier, Zeppelin, Maybach and ZF. We saw some very sad photos of the destruction of the town by bombers in April 1941. But despite this and the restrictions on post-war German industry, Dornier has once more grown to be a world famous manufacturer of planes and space technology.

Our weekend ended with a hearty Gala Dinner at the Buchhorner Hof. All the visitors were mentioned by name – which made us feel very welcome. Prizes were awarded – including one to Mal for making it from New Zealand. As newcomers we were curious to note Scotland was the cause of much good-natured teasing (I think we missed something there!). But many herzlich thanks to our generous and friendly hosts who had given us such a memorable time.

Sian Cheverton