For the past two years, Southwest Soaring in Caddo Mills, TX has held ground launch clinics during the late Winter / Early springs using auto tows. We have 2 4000 ft runways but have achieved heights of 1,000 ft AGL with strong headwinds. We had good participation! SWS is located at the Caddo...

Bill Schweizer, the last of the three brothers who founded Schweizer Aircraft Corporation, has passed away. Here is a link to his obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/star-gazette/obituary.aspx?n=william-schweizer&pid=177226098&fhid=13269

I'm sorry to say that another Estonian glider pilot passed away on April 16-th after spinning to earth on final because making a downwind turn at 100ft while trying to eliminate excess heght. Glider involved was Cobra-15 (rented from our club). It particularly hurts us because there's so few of us...

What we need in soaring is a new glider built for a reasonable price. $150,000 for a new glider is just not even a consideration for most people. Let's face it, you can get a low mileage Ferrari for half that price! The PW-5 was a terrible failure. The engineers made the wingspan too short,...

Please excuse this post. I am unable to post the following message to "Blew off my hatch" from Google Groups. I keep getting a "We were unable to post your message". No other message or help. I tried to post "testing please ignore" to the same thread and it worked fine. I am wondering if there...

The weak dollar has driven the price of a new glass slipper with instruments, trailer and shipping to $100,000 US dollars (Bad News) I have watched the dollar exchange rate for almost 30 years and I have made some observations. When the dollar gets this weak, new sales drop off and buyers are...

Hi All, Our commercial operation (more like a club) is starting to do winch launches. I just bought a Tost weak link for my glider from W&W. Are most people using a "single" weak link or a "single and a reserve" weak link? Thanks. Tom Nau

ThePOH calls for a maximum strength of the weak link to be 700 daN. Does anyone know what that is in pounds?

I looked over the 1-26 pilot's manual that's available for our club's 1-26E, but there is no mention of what strength weak link shall be used for winch launching. Anyone know what this is and where I can find documentation to support it? Mark Remove extra "hot" to reply direct

Yesterday we noticed a weather balloon which appeared to be fully expanded slightly to the east of Moriarty. It appeared to move slightly to the west as the day wore on and, when I landed at 5:30, it was perhaps 20 to the west of Moriarty. Winds up to about 16,000' MSL were out of the west at...

For the duration of the Sports nationals at Uvalde, I'm creating model soundings graphics each morning between 8-9am PDT for various sites around the task area. You can browse it he https://www.dropbox.com/sh/asni95reuq31oth/AACd3jyUUz2LcWRbzTrapZz_a?dl=0 Walt Rogers WX

Several pilots mentioned that they would like a copy of the URLs used for my daily weather briefings. I have a Bookmark.html file for use in Firefox or Netscape that contains it all. Send me an email if you would like the file: Walter Rogers You can create my email with the first letter of my...

Apart from buying a new set, any ideas on suitable products which may help to re-waterproof slightly tired fabric type covers

It is about time, the weather here in South Florida is finally changing, yes fall is upon us and the soaring weather is getting better. After a dismal summer and an October that was about like July the cooler dry air has made it south. I flew yesterday for about 3 hours and got to about 6K AGL....

I checked, both of these guys live more than 100 miles away from Greenville, that makes them experts by definition. Seriously, these guys really know their stuff. And they actually do try to predict the future on a regular basis, I'll make sure they go to the Future of racing session to help...

Think this might be useful? http://www.storm-hawk.com/ Bill Daniels

So, my local radio station told two weather-person jokes yesterday that I thought I'd pass on to give you all a groan... 1) Q: Where do the weather forecasters go for a drink after work? A: The iso-bar 2) Two meterologists crashed in an airplane and each broke an arm and a leg... their friend...

Anybody has a comment as to the weather that can be expected at lake Constance in mid April? I will be at the Aero Show. I have never visited the area but hear it has a mild micro climate, due to the location. Udo

I fly with WinPilot Adv. on my PDA. It provides a color topo map that you can turn on or off, but I mostly leave it off, as it clutters the screen, slows down the PDA, and doesn't add much value. Wouldn't it be great if you could load today's weather from Dr. Jack in place of the topo map? ...

The first time I saw this I thought it was a typo, but for the third time that I can recall this web page is using the term "Sustained X- foot winds of Y to Z mph ...": http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=85222 (Forecast at bottom) What do 20 feet of wind look like?...