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

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...

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...

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...

What a surprise, just today my son brought me a great gift to fight off the flaming liberals at the gliderport. It is a Bulgarian AK47 with 2000 rounds of ammunition. Thank god that I raised this kid correctly, educated him and he achieved the status of a Structural Engineer, PE. He advised me to...

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...

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...

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

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.

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...

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...

Pictures and process for refinishing a ventus b fuselage. Work in progress pictures and process as work is completed. http://www.craggyaero.com/ventus.htm Richard www.craggyaero.com

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...

I'm just starting out with soaring. Simple question for you guys. How many of you fly with an emergency parachute? It looks like they cost around $2000 online. Pretty steep price; although the cost is insignificant if it saves your life. Is this something I should be looking to purchase?

Hi all, I'm here to report that I cheated death and survived a flight in a glider with the dreaded "Landing Flaps and V-Tails of Death". Jim Harper graciously allowed me to fly his beautiful HP-16. What's an HP-16 you say? Well, looks to be just like the HP-18 (or I should say the HP-18 is just...

I have noticed over the years that this glider sells for what seems to be a very low price given that it is a near 50:1 glider. But I notice lately that there are also some for sale on Wings & Wheels with relatively low total time: 320 hours $21k 260 hours $20k 200 hours $15k Other than the...

I want to replace the tires on my Komet trailer. The original tire size is P165/80 R13, which is now hard to find. The choice seems to be either a Firestone passenger car radial in the correct size or a slightly taller Towmaster made by Greenball. The trailer tire will have a taller but stiffer...

We recently converted from 3/16 7x9 cable to 3/16 plasma rope on our winch. "Plasma", made from Honeywell "Spectra" fiber, seems to have some real advantages over wire or cable. Some benifits include light weight, 11.48lbs per thousand, (that's not much even converted to metric!!), hollow braid (no...