Baath – Stralsund – Peenemuende – Rostock

In July 2023, during a visit to Germany, Sigi and I visited the Baltic coast with our friends Hans and Johanna and their daughter Carolin.  We stayed for a few days near Barth, a small town on the German Baltic Sea coast just west of the island of Ruegen.  There are lots of waterways and islands and a general aviation (GA) airport.  The OstSee flying school is based there and were happy to take me on a couple of instructional scenic flights ie me in the left seat and Mike the owner in the right seat as flight instructor.  

D-EJTC is a 1975 C182 with high grade avionics and an engine that burns Mogas.  For the first flight it was just Mike and me so I could get to know him and vice versa. We flew to the coast to the northwest and followed it past Prerow and Zingst and on around the coast of the island of Ruegen and then on to the Polish border, passing over Peenemuende where the V1 and V2 rockets were built towards the end of WW2.  We also passed over a 4km long beach resort comprising the world’s longest building.  Prora, built on the command of Adolf Hitler between 1936 and 1939, consists of several identical connected six-storey buildings.  Added up, they measure 4500 metres in length. On the return journey we flew past Stralsund, the mainland gateway to Ruegen.

We returned to Baarth for lunch and to pick up Hans and Carolin, who flew with us on the afternoon flight, this time to the west, past Rostock and Warnemunde then Heiligendamm, where a G8 meeting was held in 2007 and the seaside resort of Kuelungsborn.

It was perfect weather for a flight with great visibility due to a torrential downpour the day before.  I learned how the German towers operate on these smaller airports with a traffic controller who gives advice but does not have control in the sense that Australian air traffic controllers do.  As always, the PIC is still ultimately responsible for conflict avoidance, as we discovered as we backtracked while someone appeared on final straight ahead of us.  I think the Australian pilot to pilot system of communications at uncontrolled airports works just fine.