55th Zäziwil Friendship Fly-In, RCS Hang, March 23, 2025

The weather posed a challenge for us once again during the 55th edition of our Friendship Fly-In. We had to cancel the original date and hope for better weather on the rescheduled date.

As planned, despite the uncertain forecast, we remained optimistic on the Thursday before the event and announced that we would hold the competition.

Upon arrival on Sunday, it was still raining quite heavily, and morale was understandably low. The brave participants left their gliders by their cars for the time being, but, equipped with umbrellas and rain gear, made their way to the landing area to see what the MG-GH had in store for them.

We mustered all our courage and started right on time at 8:30 a.m. by welcoming the participants. Fortunately, the rain soon stopped, and we were able to ask the participants to bring their gliders up to the launch field.

Under what turned out to be fairly good conditions, we were able to complete three runs. After the second run, we took a half-hour lunch break so that everyone had enough time to eat. During the third round, the wind was unpredictable. As a result, this was certainly the most difficult round for achieving the three-minute time limit and making a precise landing.

The performances were once again impressively high. The pilots

And the pilots handled their task very well; it was exciting all day long to see who would ultimately snag the top spots. Unfortunately, there were also two or three unintended stick-landings—landings that were very precise but unfortunately got stuck. This resulted in many penalty points and no reward. The pilots involved, however, took it in stride. Worth mentioning are two precision landings with an exact time of three minutes and a distance of zero centimeters from the line! Bravo! The overall rankings can be viewed on the Grosshöchstetten Model Flying Club’s website at www.mg-gh.ch.

The season has begun! It was great fun to see you all again and hold the friendly competition! We’re glad it all worked out in the end, despite the uncertain weather!

Once again, a big thank you to all the pilots for your interest and participation in our competition!

Many thanks to all the volunteers from MG Grosshöchstetten for their hard work! There’s a lot of “behind-the-scenes” work before and after the event that you don’t even see on the day itself. Thank you for that, too!

I’d also like to give a special mention to the data analysis team, who spent the entire day in the background on the bus analyzing the data.

We wish you all a wonderful and successful 2025 season as you enjoy our great hobby! Stay healthy and “hábets guet”!