Would I have stayed in bed?

The alarm goes off; it’s a quarter past six. Today is the Sportflyers competition in Breitenbach. At seven o’clock, I set off from Seftigen/Thun to arrive on site in time for the competition’s start at 9:00 a.m.—I know the way to the Erlen model airfield, after all. Everything goes smoothly until Balsthal, where I drive past an orange sign and just manage to make out “Passwang Tunnel Closed”: I stop before the second orange sign that follows shortly afterward and find it confirmed: “Passwang Road Closed.”

Unfortunately, there’s no road map to be found in the rented company car, and the passerby walking along the sidewalk has no idea how I’m supposed to get to Breitenbach now. So I’m forced to figure out the car’s built-in navigation system for the first time, which I actually manage to do: After entering Breitenbach as my destination, the device naturally wants to send me over the Passwang, but I know better and head toward Basel for now.

Shortly after Waldenburg, the GPS tells me to turn left. The narrow road leads over a small hill to Bretzwil, where the second surprise awaits me: A friendly traffic officer waves me to the right, even though the “Breitenbach” sign clearly points to the left. An orange sign confirms my fears: “Road closed due to paving work.”

After the positive experience I’d just had with the GPS, I’m full of hope as I let it find me a new route to Breitenbach. After a 20-minute drive through fields and woods, I turn onto a road that looks suspiciously familiar, and shortly afterward I find myself standing in front of the traffic officer again, humbly asking her for help. “Drive straight ahead all the way to Grellingen, then turn left toward Zwingen. Look for the sign for Breitenbach there.”

Traffic officers are better than GPS systems, I think, because about a quarter of an hour later, beaming with joy, I finally spot a “Breitenbach” town sign. But—how do I get from this unfamiliar town entrance to the model airfield? After driving back and forth through the village a few times, I realize with a sense of disillusionment that I’ve lost my bearings. Fortunately, an elderly passerby knows the way to the airfield, and so on this day I also find out where the Schwalbennest (District Flight Center) is located.

Finally—after a long, winding journey through the cantons of Solothurn and Baselland and 1½ hours late—I find the Erlen model airfield. Tall corn blocks the view of the airfield, and the wisps of fog give me hope that the competition might not have started yet. But, oh no! There’s no sign of any competition activity anywhere in sight. After me, two more vehicles arrive at the model airfield. Felix Andres, today’s competition director, steps out of the first one: “Hey Ruedi, didn’t you get my email saying we had to cancel the competition?”

When the second model pilot, Martin Lüthi, gets out, I’m naturally curious to know how he managed to get from Düringen to Breitenbach today. His dry reply: “Over the Passwang!” After swallowing twice and taking a deep breath, it turns out in conversation with Martin that he drove past the “Passwang Road Closed” sign in Balsthal; later, another orange sign with closure times appeared.

So quite a few things had already gone wrong by that point, but things were about to get even more eventful that day: During the approach for the second training flight, my model crashed into the little woods across the way—landing, of course, right at the top of the tallest deciduous tree. “You’re not the first one to ‘park’ your model in the woods,” Felix Andres consoles me, and he already knows a solution: “In Brislach, there’s a gardener who

"He's standing on a long ladder—he's even fetched models from the tree before."

*Kirchhofer Kurt* is written on a company sign at the northern edge of Brislach, and two women chatting by the neighboring house even know that this gardener lives next to the Kreuz restaurant. So, a first glimmer of hope. Ringing the doorbell doesn’t work, but luckily a young man in the neighboring yard knows his cell phone number. An hour and a half later, the helpful gardener stands next to the Wäldli, shaking his head, with my model in the treetop, and says, “But his ladder isn’t that loooong!”

Among the other model pilots who have since arrived at the scene of the accident, one says he knows someone else who always has good ideas. This man’s name is Toni Ackermann, and just a few minutes after the call, he’s already come up the slope cross-country on his two-speed moped and is examining the situation with me from every angle:

1st idea: A classic rescue using a ladder and telescopic pole won’t work—the model is too high up, and the tree isn’t freestanding.

2. Idea: Hire tree care specialist Rolf Jeker from Beinwil. This doesn’t work out because he’s currently busy setting up a festival tent and can’t help until the following Tuesday at the earliest.

His third idea: He could climb the tree with crampons. This worries me a bit, but he reassures me: “Don’t worry—I’m a crane operator, and I climb telephone poles this way, too.”

4th idea: Cut down the tree! But this idea is quickly dismissed, because it would surely cause trouble with the forest owner and the farmer on whose land the felled tree would end up.

5th idea: André Roth’s Hercules crane (a telescopic crane with a basket). But this idea is ultimately rejected as well, because it weighs 18 metric tons and doesn’t work at all on sloped terrain. Moreover, the damage to the landscape caused by this vehicle would likely far exceed the value of the model.

We come to the conclusion that the most sensible course of action would be to enlist the climbing skills of the arborist from Beinwil the following Tuesday, and so I drive home this Saturday without my model, via the Passwang. But the resourceful moped rider apparently had a sixth idea after saying goodbye, because as early as Sunday evening I received an email from Felix Andres: “Your model plane was recovered by arborist Alexander Christ using climbing gear. You can pick it up at my place soon.”

A heartfelt thank you to all the model airplane enthusiasts from Breitenbach and Brislach who, in one way or another, contributed to this unforgettable and eventful competition day and to the recovery of my Wind S 110E. Let anyone try to tell me that competitive flying is boring!

Ruedi Schmid