Aviation Forum / General / Soaring / October 2007

The US Team Committee, which consists of three appointed and three
elected members who serve three year terms, is calling for nominations
to fill the spot being vacated by Tim Welles at year end.  The
nomination period will close at the end of November and an on-line

FLARM has become extremely popular in several regions of the world (Europe,
and Australia, and ...?), but it has not been "allowed" in the USA so far.
However, there are several gliders flying with FLARM here in the USA.  It is
a great technology solution and safety enhancer.  ...

In looking at the 406 ELTs, it does not appear that they have the
capability that a PLB does to receive GPS position after activation in
order to directly transmit location in the event of a crash.
Does anyone know if any ELTs with this feature are on the horizon?

What would be the need for a medium performance sailplane that can be built
for under $1500 and in less than 200 hours?  No carbon fiber, no fiberglass.
Not a hang glider nor foot launched.   Please don't laugh.  This is entirely
practical in my shop.   What I'm asking is, is there ...

I would like to publish pictures of british gliding team pilots in my
website www.aerogazette.co.uk as done for the italian team
http://www.aerogazette.com/it/?p=364
If you have pictures of the following pilots and wish to contribute

This may get many comments, but I'm curious as to the consensus.
On a recent training flight (wasn't me...) the student was advised to go
to about 2/3 spoiler just before the flare.
Normal approach, field was made, on target for a nice touchdown.

I am working though some calculations and need the sink rate as a
function of speed with the spoilers fully extended.  Does anyone know
of such data for a glider?  How do spoilers extended affect sink rate
as a function of speed?

So far I've had little luck finding any replacement parts for my
abused Pik project here in the USA.  It looks like I'll need rudder
pedals, stick, trim, flap mechanism, and all of the linkages for the
cockpit.  Does anybody else in the world have any Pik salvage with

I was thinking we really needed one to test fly flights.  Did a search
and found this:
Google Earth's Hidden Surprise: A Flight Simulator
Duncan Riley

The SSA Future Restructuring Task Force (FRTF) has made available
their final report/recommendations recently presented to the SSA Board
of Directors. To access the files, you'll need to log in on the SSA
home page, www.ssa.org, then click on the News link "FRTF Final

Just curious if anyone is making a viable bluetooth microphone or
perhaps a bluetooth headset that is compatible with our typical aviation
radios.
Obviously glider pilots really only need the microphone, but since it's

Details of the Predator UAV crash in Arizona have just been released.
Currently two of these pilotless 66-foot wing-span beasts are flying
along the Arizona border as part of border patrols and a third will be
added next year.  Some of us local pilots are underwhelmed.

I am currently working on a website on 'Baby's' and
i am looking for photos of Grunau's, EoN's and Nord
1300's to use on the site both old and new.
It will be a purely non-commercial site and full credit

Tim Taylor wrote:
'Maybe, but can you dive, lose the altitude, decelerate
and get it on the ground for a tail wheel first, full
stall landing?'

The soaringweb.org Soaring Server is down, and I have been unable to
reboot the machine by the telephone modem so it will be out of service
until a least the 22nd when Guenther Eichhorn is able to reboot it.
But the two mirror sites - http://soaring.gahsys.com, maintained by