Mountain Wave Project

In 1998 the pilots René Heise and Klaus Ohlmann founded the MWP, a project for global classification, research, and analysis of orographically created wind structures (e.g. Chinook, Foehn, Mistral, Zonda).

The MWP is an independent non-profit-project of the Scientific and Meteorological Section of the Organisation Scientifique et Technique du Vol à Voile (OSTIV) and is supported by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).

As MWP gained greater awareness of the power inherent to mountain wave-like structures in the atmosphere, and their strong vertical airflows, it became obvious that they presented great dangers to civil aviation in multiple ways.

The pilots were assisted with life support equipment and physiological preparations by the renowned flight physicians of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and by astronaut Ulf Merbold.

[5] Thanks to the help of qualified scientists and state-of-the-art sensor technology, the MWP achieved its goal to gather and analyze wave structure data with impressive results at the operation in Mendoza in October 2006.