Welcome to Łomża!

Łomża coat of arms

As President Łomży, I have the honour to invite the pilots and lovers of paraglider to our city, which will organize Microflights Europe Championship PPG during
The Łomża is the old town, located on picturesque Narew River valley, what creates superb conditions for practicing Microflights sports. It is used not only by numerous Łomża group of paraglider and motoglider, but also pilots from whole Poland and nearby Lithuania. Łomża is a city where many contests of the air – sports have been taking places for many years, among them Balloon World Championship Baltic Grand Prix under patronage of the President of Poland, Motorflight Raid World Championship under patronage of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Microflights Poland Championship and nine edition of Microflights Podlaskie Voivodat Championship under patronage of Marshall of Podlaskie Voivodat and President of Łomża .
Łomża is the city of prestige culture institutions, as Łomża Chamber Orchestra, unique in Europe Black Theater Sivina II, Gallery of Modern Art, which cooperate in organizing all air-sports competitions.
Łomża is the city of four higher schools. The students who know foreign language come true as volunteers superbly, helping in every events organized by City.
Łomża is the seat of weekly edited "The Contacts", animator and organizer of many cultural, social, sport, events and as the only one the airs - sports.
I assure, that organized by "The Contacts" Microflights Europe Championship PPG in 2008 will be the common work of editor, City Authority, inhabitants and our culture and science institutions. Presenting also unique in Europe our natural values.
With trust, that we will meet personally in the summer of 2008 on Microflights Europe Championship today – Welcome to Łomża!

Jerzy Brzeziński
President Łomża

Call of Icarus

Name – Małgorzata. Family name - Iwanowska. You won’t find that person in no encyclopaedia, lexicone nor biographical dictionary. Małgorzata Iwanowska is an ordinary country girl from a poor family in little Kolomyja village near Łomży. From her early childhood she was dreaming of flying - every airplane going over her village was fuelling her deep desire of something extraordinary.
After long years she fulfilled her wish – both for flying in the aeroplane and for extraordinary things. She walked away from her shopkeeping and volunteered for Albania, to work there as a carekeeper for the disabled children.
I am mentioning that story because for me and for many others the call of the Icarus is not just about flying. That call addresse many noble threads of human soul. I would like to hear them all resounding at PPG European Microlight Championships 2008 in Łomża, which I would like – with your consent – to organise. For many years my idea is to combine whenever it is possible sport with culture, art, media message. This time I would like to see it realized by:
- sport and cultural show, opening the Championships;
- demonstration of the PPG display capabilitiesu to wide public, including Chairman of the Podlasie Region Parliament, Mayor of the City of Łomża as well as other neighbouring towns mayors;
- presenting to the international sportsmen a chance to fly competition tasks in a unique, beautiful natural setting.
Let the call of Icarus sound with full harmony of the most noble strings of human nature. Let’s make it happen in Łomża.

Władysław Tocki
general manager
EPC 2008 in Łomża

Władysław Tocki
para - and motorglider pilot

Arrival to the festivities

Ballad of Jan Wnek

Icarus fell off the church tower in Odporyszow...

The evening performance entitled „Ballad of Jan Wnek” by Teatr Gry i Ludzie [Games and People Theatre] from Katowice on the Lomza market, moved the audience into the world of matters as old as humanity: dreams about flying and flying as a dream. The authors of the play, which was full of touching imagery, remembered the Polish Icarus, that is... a serf from the village of Odporyszowo near Cracow, Jan Wnek.
He was born in 1828 in the village of Kaczowka. As oral tradition has it, he mastered carpentry and raised people’s houses, mended roofs. He also sculpted fine holy images in bass wood. The Odporyszow parish priest Fr Stanislaw Morgenstern commissioned him to rebuild the burnt church roof. When he realized that he was dealing with an artist, he commissioned some sculptures for the church. He took him to Cracow so that he could study the sculptures in the Wit Stwosz altar of St Mary’s Church and draw his inspiration from them. Wnek made over three hundred sculptures in bass wood. Some of these are on display in the church and on the cemetery in Odporyszow and in the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow.v The carpenter and sculptor had a secret passion. He dreamed about carving out a pair of wings like a bird’s and flying to infinity! He dreamed, observed birds and... kept on trying. It was said that initially he built little wings to which he tied wooden figurines and flew them off the church tower in Odporyszow. They gradually became bigger and bigger. He dreamed... He sculpted figures of angels with large bird-like wings. The next step were hang-gliders, able to carry a man’s body in through the air. He built these using a series of tightly bound slats of bass or sycamore wood covered with thin elastic canvas. He used the precisely bound cords to steer with—they let him control the direction and altitude. He repeated his test flights tens of times covering up to 5 km.
Is all this really true? It is certain that on 10 June 1869, the day of the church festival of Transfiguration he stood on top of the church tower in Odporyszow and fastened „the wings”. He launched quite suddenly. He fell to the ground, although he had struggled to stay in mid air. He suffered many injuries and two months later he passed away.
In the years 1891 – 18896 Otto Lilienthal from Germany made many flights in the self-designed “gliders”. He died tragically during one of his test flights. It is he who is considered the pioneer of aviation.
- And let this stay that way. Legends are more interesting than real stories and flights by peasant Icaruses inspire imaginations more than experiments by engineers and constructors – as Maciej Nogiec who directed the play (and the art director of Teatr Gry i Ludzie) puts it.
Life is always like a flight to the sky. Sometimes it is a sudden fall...

Maria Kaczyńska

Jan Wnek’s flight on the Lomza market...

Peasant Icarus from the Dunajec Riverside

Wnek preceded Lilienthal by 20 years!

The whole world considers the German engineer Otto Lilienthal an aviation pioneer and a constructor of the first gliders, however the victor’s palm in this field should be given to a modest peasant from the Dabrowa part of the Vistula Riverside, Jan Wnek, the illiterate and self-taught person who, as early as from 1866 to 1869 made the first successful long-distance glides using the self-constructed "hang-glider". It was only in 1889 (i.e. over twenty years later) that Otto Lilienthal made his first attempts at gliding using the self-constructed glider which were brought to an end with his tragic death in 1896.
Unlike Lilienthal or Tanski who were widely read in aviation, Jan Wnek, who was an illiterate and self-taught person, could only count on his own knowledge of nature based on the observation of birds’ flight and on the creation of thermal updraft "chimneys" in the air which facilitated gliding.
He started the construction of his flying machine from felling (two years before) a couple of slender ash trees to be used in the wooden ribbing of the large wings and tail. In a few months the construction was complete. Then Wnek covered the framework of the "hang-glider" with thin wrap. The village oil mill supplied the linseed oil with which he impregnated the already-finished "hang-glider". All the links, cables and levers were impregnated with varnish. On the wings of his "hang-glider", after he had fastened them to his chest and shoulders and with stirrups to his feet, Wnek was able to fly to infinity from a hill-top or church tower. The first short flights of a few hundred-meter distance were launched from the hill in Odporyszow which once used to be a bulwark. The flight was a success.
After getting the parish priest’s authorization, Wnek decided to fly into the air from the Odporyszow bell tower which stands 45 metres above ground level and is located on top of a fifty-metre hill, making it a ninety-five metre high launch above the nearby valleys. Wnek’s first flight was launched from the bell tower in June 1866 and it coincided with a fair in the Odporyszow church, an event which was attended by huge crowds from the neighbourhood. He flew about two kilometres. Thousands of people dashed to the landing spot of the first glider pilot and gave him a warm ovation.
The word of this event reached Cracow where an unknown author made a mention of the peasant Wnek’s flight in a calendar. In the years 1866-1869 Wnek did numerous "hang-glider" flights on the occasions of celebrations, fairs and market days. Local people were afraid of Wnek and accused him of dealings with the devil. During the church fair held in June 1869 at Odporyszow, Wnek was going to make an attempt of "hang-glider" flight. The master craftsman in carpentry Michal Sowinski who envied Wnek’s fame is said to have secretly cut the leather straps holding the framework of the "hang-glider" and to have pushed him over the ramp of the church bell tower too soon and, as if, unintentionally. Wnek travelled in the air over 500 metres but the girths let go after losing balance he landed on sharp rocks. He fought death for three weeks and died on 10 July 1869 leaving a wife and three children. He lived 41 years ...
(Fragments of the publication under the same title)

Stanislaw Konstanty Walega, PhD

The Odporyszow bell tower from which Jan Wnek launched

Truth or legend?

Jan Wnek is a historical figure, we know his dates of birth and death (1828 - 1869) and the minor entries in the parish records at Odporyszow help to determine the most important events in his biography. We know the works of his hands which have been preserved until today, namely over a hundred sculptures out of the three hundred, as a tradition has it, he had created.
In 1978 Fr Henryk Chojnacki moved the deteriorating sculptures by Jan Wnek and Sowa the Hermit from the open sacella into the tower next to the church. Fr Dariusz Dobbek started Jan Wnek Museum. In 1995, Fr Henryk Surma erected the monument of Wnek the pilot, located near the church, in the central part of the village. It portrays a stylized winged figure which is stood on a stone plinth as if ready for the take-off. It is a wooden sculpture by Marian Pajor of Lososina. One of the streets in Odporyszow was named after Jan Wnek and the information about his aviation achievements are on display in special showcases around the church. While touring Odporyszow and strolling around the church, we can unintentionally marvel at the achievement of Jan Wnek. And although there is no conclusive evidence of his aviation achievement (because of the fact that even the information about his death recorded in the parish books does mention that he died as a result of such an extraordinary event as an aviation accident) we would like to believe that he "flew before Lillienthal".
(Fragment of a publication. The Author is Deputy Manager of Seweryn Udziela Etnographic Muzeum in Cracow)

Andrzej Rataj

Jana Wnek Street in Odporyszowie

Jana Wnek Museum in Odporyszow

Recluse from Chelchy

After farm work, he takes his paraglider and goes behind the barn to fly away

He remembers his childhood when two gliders once landed in his village. Afterwards, these gliders "flew" in his mind all his life.
He wanted to fly but he did not know how or where. His brother-in-law helped him out: "He saw in Bialystok that people flew on a thing which looks like a parachute. He told me about that. Seemed interesting and accessible. I found out the details on the Internet". It was there that he found the PPG pilot Maciek Zaczeniuk from Bialystok. He promised to ring him up as soon as a paraglider course is organized. He waited through the winter and in the spring of 2005, i.e. in May, Maciek made contact. Before his first flight, he had had two opportunities to fly the tandem. This was the final persuasion. "I thought to myself that there is no other way. I must do it!".
"Nobody flew in the village, there’s plenty to do and he wanted to be up there in the air", as Teodor Wojsław, Leszek’s dad, relates. At first he was sceptical. Now understands his son. He also wanted to fly in a plane once. "As a passenger and not the pilot", he explains. The neighbours were also surprised. "To start with, they called me a suicide. Such flying machines have never been seen around here. Now they are slowly getting used to him. It is special fun for the kids", Leszek chuckles.
When flying he forgets the mundane matters. All problems become so tiny. "i am not a poet but when I fly a lot I get the feeling that there are no limits for me, or barriers which I will not overcome". He would like to fly together with his friends. He would feel more cheerful and safer. However, no one apart from him flies in the neighbourhood.
The worst part is already behind him. He has flown about 10 hours but it has not always been pleasant. After obtaining the license he decided to buy his own wing. "I was hot-headed and wanted to start flying as soon as possible". He bought a Traper, although he knew it was a sports wing and that flying was going to be hard. On top of that, he was alone. There was no one there to explain things or give hints. His only basis was the knowledge acquired in the course. Apart from that, the Traper wing is not recommended for beginners
He usually flies in the environs of his native Chelchy, the village not far from Szczuczyn and the Warsaw – Augustow road. His farm does not allow him to travel. He keeps cows. They have to be milked twice a day. But after work, instead of going to the pub for a beer, he pulls the paraglider out of the garage and goes behind the barn to fly away. "If I had a few days off I would take part in the competition in Lomza. But there are no leaves in the country".
There are dreams. "When I was a child, I went for this trip in the mountains. I made myself a promise that one day I will return there". With a praglider, there’s no doubt about it!

Mikolaj Tocki

After farm work, Leszek goes behind the barn and fastens the wing

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