Exadios

Yes, boxing the slipstream - I forgot to mention that. That, and the "hookup" condition are the only times we are in high tow. And, as exercises, we only do them on calm days. Even from low tow it is possible, on very rough days, to get out of position and go to high tow inadvertently - again a very dangerous situation - bung off!

We are a low tow club. I'm sure that all Australian tuggies are low tow supporters! :) We release from low tow and use the speed for some height gain. The only time we go into high tow is in the event of a release failure at the glider end. The glider will move up to high tow to avoid the glider pilot having to occupy the cockpit along with 200' of rope, shackles and weak links (some pilots a fussy like that). That's happened to me once. Very frightening! You have got to be quick - under 1 second - to release, otherwise its almost certianly a tug upset. I keep my hand on the release at all time when on tow.

I think I meant LSAs.

Wow, 9 Blaniks with wings still attached! Who knew. What the proceedure was in the event of an engine failure would have been I cannot guess.

Stable version 6.2.6 of XCSoar has been released.

Unfortunately, things did not go to plan.

News Flash! Gordon Boettger to Try Record Downwind Flight Saturday, February 25th.

For those of you who are interested XCSoar has released version 6.3_alpha1. I have only tried the Windows desktop edition so far - seems to work OK.

A couple of safety articles.

Yes. Paul Oakley landed out from YNRG. The rest aborted their tasks south of Pingelly. It was only a 6500' day and it seemed impossible to center the thermals. A number of times I had my wing lifted so strongly that I had to use full airleron and rudder to counter act it but when I turned into it there was nothing there! Weird.

If you went on the flight on the Saturday (2012/02/11) then that was a reasonably rough day. I few people told me that it was the roughest day they had flown. I have seen rougher myself but it was up there. My point is that it was not a typical day - big time "stipple". So your motion sickness may have been a result of the day. Give it another try on a better day. Learning to fly a glider has a lot to offer a power pilot in that it teaches skills that are usefull to powered flight.

Wait until you get in a glider that has some real performance! The Dimona, like other similar power gliders, necessarily are compromised in therms of their performance as gliders. Compared to a twin such as a DG500 or DG1000 for instance a Dimona would be considered very much sub par. I was speaking to a pilot who owns a couple of Grob G109s (which is of similar appearance and performance to the Dimona) and we wondered why more people did not buy these sort of aircraft over some of the SLAs. They are invariably well built, and for about the same money you get a fine touring aircraft which can also glide. And, because its "VH" registered, they can be snuck into airports that will not usually accept SLA aircraft.

Pilots were warned plane could drop from sky.

I've had the IAS go negative during side slip.

U.S. Air Force Buys 18,000 Apple iPads to Replace Flight Bags.

Redmond aviation engineer's lifelong work has saved thousands of lives.

The glider's up and down was not excessive - reasonably normal. I doubt whether it could be even felt in the tug. If there had been some sort of PIO, or other problem with the glider, the correct proceedure would be for the tug pilot to pull the release (the glider pilot should also pull the release) and keep going to clear the runway. The only time that the maneuver in this video is performed is when the tug fails.

A video of a tug incident - correctly handled.

Article here.

Now has a page at SoaringSpot.

And roll on ECUs.

Roll on fuel injected engines.

Thanks. Looks like a nice spot to have a competition.

About two thirds of the way down.