Gliding
As a young man, he visited the Wasserkuppe in Germany and became passionate about the sport of gliding that was developing there. So Kronfeld became a member of the first Austrian gliding school. He befriended Walter Georgii, who was a meteorologist working at the nearby Darmstadt University of Technology and who had recently discovered thermals. Kronfeld became something of a test-pilot for Georgii, investigating this still-new phenomenon with the assistance of a variometer disguised as a vacuum flask.
In 1926, the German newspaper Grüne Post offered a RM 5,000 prize for the first glider pilot to fly 100 km (62 mi). Kronfeld took up the challenge in 1929 and selected a long chain of hills, the Teutoburger Wald, as a promising site for the record attempt.
He took off in a glider of his own design, named Wien ("Vienna"), launched by bungee, near Ibbenbüren. After a flight lasting over five hours, he landed near Detmold, 102.5 km away. Kronfeld used the prize money to build a gigantic sailplane, named Austria, which had a wingspan of 30 metres - a record not to be matched until the end of the twentieth century. Kronfeld was awarded the Hindenburg Cup in 1930. In the same year he undertook the first flight from a mountain in Lower Austria. He also staged large air shows. By 1930 he held the world records for distance (164 km) and height (2,589 m).
In 1930 he also had success gliding in England.
On 15 February 1931 Robert Kronfeld and Wolf Hirth were the first men awarded the "Silver C".
On 20 June 1931 Kronfeld was the first pilot to fly a glider across the English Channel, making a return flight the same day. For this he won £1000 from the Daily Mail
Kronfeld was an Air Scout within the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund and took part in the 4th World Scout Jamboree (1933) in Hungary as a member of the Austrian contingent. He participated in the Air Scout camp and contributed to the Airshow. He served as Commissioner for Air Scouts of the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund. Kronfeld also was an honorary member of this Scout association.
Read more about this topic: Robert Kronfeld
Famous quotes containing the word gliding:
“I stand on a bridge of one span
and see this calm act, this gathering up
of life, of spring water
and the Muse gliding ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)