By all means a second battery should be installed in our electrically driven modern sailplanes. After many years of quickly flipping my 3-position battery switch, and trying not to have my logger to momentarily dropout, I have concluded that is best to use 2 single-pole battery switches. That way...

Some of you know who I am and that I have not had a real sailplane since I sold my Ventus2CX a few years ago. I am still waiting for Flarms to be mandatory in all contests before I try to find a way back into competition. What I have been doing is flying my electric Lazair and RV8. A lot of you...

Rod Morris, a PW-6 private owner operating out of Invemere in the British Columbia Rocky Mountains, just messaged --- "With both kids now flying, the plane gets a great deal of use. Plus I have been allowing some junior club memebers and other pilots to get checked out on it so they can...

Those crafty Germans in their ginger bread, garden gnome workshops are building model sailplanes that blur the distinction between the real thing and RC models. Check this out: http://www.manfred-schadl.de/ASW15b%20gr%20a.jpg I was thinking of getting one of these for my 2 year old and...

Does anyone out there in this world make glider launch winches or are there plans available?? THANKS!! Ted

There are several questions concerning motorgliders on this years SSA / SRA pilot poll. Some of the questions may have been spurred by my letter dated 7/11 03 which follows Members of the rules committee, A few years back, we allowed motorgliders to have their engines...

http://sailplane-racing.org/ Ken Kochanski SRA Secretary

Hello All There has been quite a bit on refinishing on RAS recently. Most people advocate that when gel-coat starts cracking up, it is essential to remove it ALL. Does anybody out their own a ship which was refinished without removing all the gel-coat? What is the service history of these...

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

Greetings, Off season (northern hemisphere) is coming. What are the top 2-3 soaring simulators or is there a clear winner? Thanks, Gary

Hi group, Just a note to remind owners of older Becker AR3201 radios to check your internal nicad button cell batteries. These tend to leak after a few years, and if left too long will destroy your PC board ending the useful life of a pretty good radio! I found this green-crystal crud beginning...

Hi everybody, Does anyone know if any progress had been made in the functionality to show Skysight WX on XCSoar (in a similar way to how Skysight WX can be displayed on a LX9000)? That would make an extremely useful improvement. Thanks, Bogdan

I do not think that soaring community to trash current World Class. There are some gliders out there at least and there are competitions. And PW-5 seems to be a perfect glider for beginning pilots in clubs. But I still believe that although the idea of the monoclass is very good, the problem is...

One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed. Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently. Seven to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs. Seven more to point out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wR4aBVyVW0&feature=youtube_gdata_player Please endure the music and watch this video, paying particular attention to 2:00 to 2:25 into the short video. As was often argued with other PNA bases systems recently...why would these well known soaring manufactures offer...

Dear people, Last week, Sept 24 - Sept 29, 2006, the Glider U.S. National Aerobatic Championship contest was held at the Grayson County Airport (KGYI) in Sherman/Denison, TX together with the power U.S. National Aerobatic Contest. Contest results are posted he www.usnationalaerobatics.org ...

We all know what the manufacturer's polars look like, but what about our individual planes. Has anyone done any work to develop a program that would look at some flight logs and determine what a particular glider's actual polar is? At one point Ball was making a vario system that would determine...

I am going to be in Portugal from September 2 until September 17. It would be great to be able to visit a soaring site and even better to be able to fly. I speak Spanish and understand Portuguese some time... Any information would be most welcome. Peter Kelemen

Seems to me that it's been a while since we had a good brouhaha over pretakeoff checklists. Most of use use either ABBCCCDDE (or is it AABBCCDDE? Or ABBBCCCCDDEEFG?) or CBSIFTCB or some other variant. I'm curious what you use and WHY? What have you added or subtracted to the "base" checklist to...

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20111013X31821&ntsbno=WPR12FA010&akey=1 Happened to be looking through the NTSB Database and saw that they updated the report about a month ago.