Aviation Forum / General / Soaring / February 2008

I was wondering if 2009 U.S. National Contests were successfully sited
a the SSA Convention?
If so, where are contest pilots going in 2009?
Thanks, EY

I am installing a regular rod type antenna on the wooden turtledeck of
my plane where it will attach to only wood. I got the antenna from a
friend who didn't have the attaching hardware.
Do I need to do or know anything special to attach this antenna to

Come on now, what where some of the highlights from this year's
convention for those of us stuck at home for various reasons. With no
convention next year, there should have been a lot of "new" stuff.
Usually RAS is full of post-convention

The SSA website only has the winner's traces and also  then mistakenly
Farfield's traces listed under the Cordele contest.
Any help/suggestions where to look?
Thanks,

1) Should aircraft use switches for both positive and negative (SPXX
vs. DPXX switches) or just the positive (especially in application
from point 2 below) ? I was planning on switching just the positive
only and have the negative side permanently connected; both batteries

Does an experimental ASW20B require a compass to be legal.  The
minimum equipment list in the amnual does not specify a compass?

To prevent abuse of the received data in competitions (which is an IGC
requirement) FLARM has since 2004 included a "Privacy" mode where not
all the received information is forwarded to the serial dataport and
therefore is never available to external, graphical displays or PDA's.

The rubber pistol grip on the flap handle in my LS6 is pretty badly
deteriorated. The spoiler handle grip is also going down hill. DG
replied to an email that they can't help me with replacements.
The next step could be fabrication, but I thought I'd try the group

I am trying to figure out why my AGL nav box is showing the wrong
altitude. On the ground it is showing -4995 feet and it has the same
error throughout the flight. Is there any way that I can adjust that,
or is it my 302 showing it wrong/reading it wrong? All the other

Over here on this side of the pond, how should I advertise or tell my
friends (yet to meet) that I fly something like an aircraft without an
engine running?
If I say Glider, I often hear "Oh, you fly hang gliders?"

Looking for opinions on a portable, handheld aviation radio for ground
support operations.  No special features needed beyond the basic
transciever functions, as far as I know.
If there is a handheld that would be suitable for use in the glider

If one is good, how much better is two?

I need to replace my zig-zags on the horizontal stabilizer, but I would need
to know the required position cordwise (upper and lower surface). I took it
off and cleaned before having a look at the maintainace manual - which does
not give any info on the topic... :-( Any ideas ?

Sorry to beat your brains, but I'm trying to wrap my own around all of
this.  I've read many posts on the subject so far and am still
confused.
I'm trying to determine the costs with moving my ship to CA and the