In Slovenia

Yesterday, I drove from Frankfurt to Ljubljana, where I am staying with my cousin Milan, whom I last saw 20 years ago before I moved to Canada. His wife Tanja and sons Jure and Žiga are vacationing at Vis island in the Adtiatic, so I will not see them this time around. I talked to Tanja on the phone last night and promissed not to let another 20 years pass before we meet again.

Milan was kind enough to take me out on the town and we climbed on top of the Ljubljana castle tower for a very nice piece of sightseeing. Right above us was a cloud bank stretching in the North-South direction from horizon to horizon. I guessed that it was a weak front, but a very unusual one, and, since it couldn't fit in a photo, a took a short video of it.

This morning I went to Ajdovščina (about an hour drive from Ljubljana) to visit Pipistrel (http://www.pipistrel.si/), a very successful and high-profile manufacturer of sophisticated high performance ultralight motor gliders and planes. Since Milan was busy chasing a deadline on a project for his company Merkur, I went alone.

At Pipistrel I met with Ivo Boscarol, the company founder and General Manager. After a brief introduction, I was taken on a plant tour by Andrej, a very pleasant young Canadian-Slovenian mechanical engineer. He first showed me the production facility where the Sinus, Virus and Taurus aircraft were being assembled. We then moved on to the R&D department (they use Autodesk Inventor to design their aircraft), the new and soon-to-be-finished production builnding and, finally, the hangar. There I was joined again by Ivo, who showed me ins and outs of the Taurus motor glider cockpit, as well as the motor and prop extension and retraction procedure. I didn't take my camera for the tour, but there's plenty of photos at http://www.pipistrel.si/extras/514.

I was very impressed with everything I saw, especially after I learned that the factory is 100% energy self sufficient, thanks to the extensive use of various alternative energy technologies, including geo thermal, heat pumps and photo voltaic cells on the roof. The only thing missing is a Nexterra gaisifier (http://www.nexterra.ca) -:)

The main reason for my visit to Pipistrel is to make 3 takeoffs in a Taurus motor glider in order to satisfy the requirement by German authorities that all pilots who will be flying self-launching gliders at the World Championship that will be heald at Luesse in August, must have at least 3 self-launching takeoffs in the 90 days preceeding the competition. In my case, this presented a bit of a problem, since I will be flying a DG-808C Competition motor glider in the 18 meter class. When I contacted Ivo a few months ago asking if I could do my required 3 self-launching flights at Pipistrel, he was kind enough to say yes. However, the local weather didn't cooperate. The 16 to 20 m/s Northerly wind named Bura, which was the result of the last night's front passage, made the conditions unsafe for flying. So, after a lunch with Ivo and a couple of his friends, he asked me if I could come back to do the flying tomorrow and we agreed to touch base around noon, just in case.

Back at Milan's appartment in Ljubljana I will have some time to update my Blog and read the Taurus O&M manual, which I should have already done, had I not ran out of time...