I had the HUGE pleasure and honor of being invited by Max Degen, our first Carbon Cub kit builder in Switzerland, to join him for a phenomenal flight over the Swiss Alps during our vacation there last month! What a GORGEOUS EX build! The detail was impeccable, and he has so many extra "touches" that he added, such as black anodizing most of the silver C&C'd parts on the plane, giving it a very distinctive and 'clean' look. He had a daunting paperwork challenge to get the Carbon Cub approved by Swiss authorities, but now that its done, the next Swiss EX to be built will have the way paved for him/her.

Having grown up there and seeing all my favorite mountains from ground level for years, it was just spectacular to fly by, over and around them, and to see the hidden glaciers and valleys that only mountain climbers normally see.

Max is one of only a handful of pilots authorized to land with skiis on the 60 different Swiss glaciers, and while the snow in September was not conducive to that, we flew nice and low over many of his favorite landing spots, where he would put down near extremely remote mountain climbing huts, and have lunch with the caretaker and/or stay over night!
If you look carefully at the pictures below, you will see one of those huts!

It takes 250 instructional glacier landings, on at least 10 different glaciers, over a period of 12 months, to get an endorsement to land on Swiss glaciers, and Max is one of the very few instructors. Not just a few times did I think about how I could move over there, and do the instruction with Max! The Carbon Cub handled itself magnificently at all the high altitudes we saw.

I also had 3 GoPro's going, as well as my new 360Cam strapped to the bottom of the plane, so once I get through the daunting editing task, I will be posting the video here and on my web site.

Thanks again to Max for his hospitality!
Rick

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