Unfortunately I had some mishaps during the past flying season, but the grey months of winter are a good time to fix the damages.

My Inside F5J (sold by Hoellein) is my most-flown plane during our club’s Hahnenmoos excursions – the reason is that I fly it in early mornings and late afternoon/evenings, when conditions are suboptimal for flying the bigger stuff. We often practice formation flying or fly far out to find the smallest bits of thermals. Unfortunately this also results in the occasional mishaps. During our club’s Hahnenmoos excursion in June my Inside F5J suffered a mid-air collision. The left wing was “impaled” by a full-carbon F5J glider coming from behind. This resulted in the left outer wing being ripped off in-flight and my poor Inside crashing to the ground from an altitude of almost 200m. Fortunately it weighs less than a kilo and I had the wits to engage what was left of the airbrakes, so the damage of the impact was not too bad. The left outer wing was beyond repair and most other parts suffered a bit of damage. Nothing that a few days of work couldn’t fix though. Most work was stripping the light-weight foil from the wings and covering them anew. Already in summer I bought a second Inside F5J kit, from which I took the parts to build a new left outer wing. Unfortunately I ordered the wrong foil (non-transparent), and only noticed this when I started covering the Inside again yesterday. I decided to use it anyway rather than buy new foil. My Inside will not win any beauty contests, but it’s fully functional again and looking forward to many more hours of relaxed flying.