Saturday dawned bright and sunny, but chilly nonetheless. There’s a huge pile of snow just outside the hotel entrance. It’s been there since Wednesday and it’s not getting any smaller!

I started the day with the Governors, Chapters, and Clubs breakfast. There was no formal program for the breakfast, but I enjoyed a pleasant visit with Pat Costello, Hank and Dianne Black-Nixon, and other soaring friends. The conversation ranged from glider insurance to strategies for retaining new club members to just plain hangar flying. It was fun!

Flight Instruction Panel

Phil Klauder and Dave Glosser, both of the Philadelphia Glider Council, teamed up with Hank Nixon on a panel to discuss issues relevant to flight instruction. Bob Lacovara served as  moderator.

Unfortunately, I missed the first half of the flight instruction forum, but in the second half, the panel focused on the question, “When (and how) do we take the the keys to the glider away from Grandpa?” As we all know, the population of glider pilots is highly skewed toward the upper reaches of the age demographic. The decline in physical and cognitive functions that befall most of us at some point may eventually make it unsafe for some of us to fly alone in a glider. Dave Glosser, a neurologist as well as a glider pilot, described how deteriorating cognitive functions can put an older pilot (and his passengers or students) at risk. The delicate issue of how to approach a fellow pilot and suggest that he or she might consider retiring from solo flying was discussed at length with lots of comments and questions from the audience. It was a sobering discussion and the question of how best to handle it remains very much a matter of the individual situation. Dave summarized the results and conclusions of a U.S. Air Force study of the effect of aging on pilot performance. This study was a seminal one in this field; however, the pilot population in the study was subject to a number of selection effects, so its applicability to glider pilots is imperfect.

Future Composites and Sailplane Design

Bob Lacovara of Convergent Composites and the Philadelphia Glider Council gave a fascinating talk on how advances in materials science and other technologies could revolutionize glider design and construction. Gliders of the future may be lighter, stronger, and have much higher performance than the current generation. Use of pre-preg carbon rather than conventional hand layup for building gliders might lead to less expensive, lighter weight structures. Bob emphasized that all carbon fiber is not alike; there are many grades, some with high modulus and other desirable characteristics while less expensive grades have quantitatively different properties. Other forms of carbon, such as carbon nanotubes or graphene, may someday prove useful in glider construction.

On a different tack, the experiments of Peter Masak, Loek Boerman’s group at Delft University, and others on controlling boundary layer flow over the wing, show that extending the boundary layer all the way from leading to trailing edge would dramatically lower the parasite drag of the wing and raise the max L/D of a 15-meter span wing to something like a present day open class wing. There are a number of practical obstacles that must be overcome before such performance gains can be realized, but the potential is there and people are actively pursuing this goal.

Bob’s talk roamed over so many technologies that I can’t possibly cover them in this space; however, I have asked Bob to consider writing an article for SoaringCafe based on his presentation at the conference. If that happens, subscribers to our free daily digest will be the first to know!

As a related aside, PBS is currently broadcasting a four-part series on Making Stuff, moderated by David Pogue, technology columnist for the New York Times. The third program in this series will air Wednesday, February 2nd and the last on February 9th.The first segment, Making Stuff Stronger, aired on January 19th, and is available for viewing online. If you’re intrigued by my all-too-brief overview of Bob’s talk, you’d probably enjoy this program. Check it out!

Soaring Product Market News by Paul Remde

At every SSA convention, Paul Remde of Cumulus Soaring always gives an informative update on the latest soaring gadgetry, videos, books, and other products. In my humble opinion, this year’s presentation might have been the best yet. Paul was kind enough to let us publish the slides in his presentation here at the Cafe, so I don’t have to attempt the overwhelming and frankly impossible task of trying to mention every single product featured in his talk. I will say that several products caught my attention, but they reflect my personal biases and interests, and yours may be different. In my case, the LX9000 and vario, LX nano flight recorder, PowerFLARM, and the new books and Grand Prix video are near the top of my list. For the real skinny, check out Paul’s presentation on our site and visit his website. With Paul’s cooperation, we were able to capture two videos at the conference in which he demos the LX9000 flight computer/data recorder and the minuscule LX nano, which is the world’s smallest IGC approved (up through world records) flight recorder ($$ I simply must get one! $$). I recorded the videos with my handheld camera. They’re not perfect, but they’re pretty good and they get the job done. [Editor’s Note: the videos will be posted on Wednesday and linked to this blog. Stand by…].

Another FREE product that Paul himself produces is his newsletter. The January edition was his first in over a year, but he plans to publish more frequently in 2011. Paul’s newsletter is much more than product announcements. It is chock full of photos, short articles and  news from around the soaring world. If you’re not a subscriber, I urge you to take a look at the latest issue and consider signing up.

SSA Awards Banquet

Every SSA convention concludes with the SSA Awards Banquet. I always look forward to the banquet because it’s the one event where most of us are together in one place at one time. I enjoy seeing my friends one last time before we go our separate ways and I look forward to recognizing the exceptional talent we have among our ranks during the awards program. I also look forward to being entertained, informed, and sometimes amused by the keynote speaker.

This year, the banquet MC was Richard Kellerman. Richard is articulate and witty, two desirable attributes for a good MC. He did a masterful job. SSA Chairman Al Tyler welcomed the crowd and recognized the speaker and other notables at the head table. Bob Lacovara was singled out for his hard work and organizational skills in arranging local support for the conference, mainly volunteers from the Philadelphia Glider Council, and for leading this effort.

Several awards are presented at each SSA banquet. The Hatcher Trophy, a.k.a. the Top Gun award, honors the most outstanding competitive performance in an U.S. national contest by a U.S. pilot in the prior year’s competition season. This year’s award went to Francois Pin. The Rudolph Mozer Trophy is awarded annually to the Junior National Champion. This year’s winner is Chris Saunders. Exceptional Service Awards are presented to members whose service to the SSA has been of utmost value to the Society. The six members so honored for 2010 are: Cindy Brickner, Richard Carlson, Stephen Northcraft, Chris O’Callaghan (posthumously), James Short, and Frank Whiteley. The Exceptional Achievement Award is presented to individuals or groups whose achievements have been, in the opinion of the Directors, of such import as to warrant special recognition for such achievements that do not normally qualify under other established SSA awards. The honoree for 2010 is Sergio Colacevich.

Finally, the highest award the SSA bestows, the Warren E. Eaton Memorial Trophy, is given for the recipient’s contribution to the art, sport, or science of soaring. This year’s recipient is Burt Compton. Burt has quite literally spent his life in soaring. He learned to fly gliders under the tutelage of his Dad, Fritz Compton, who himself won the Eaton Trophy in 1948. So Burt is a second generation recipient of the award. Burt has served the sport and the SSA in too many ways to list here. He owns and operates Marfa Gliders near Marfa, Texas. Congratulations to a highly deserving enthusiast and lifelong promoter of the sport!

The banquet speaker was Kevin Kochersberger. Kevin is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, but he is also an airplane and glider pilot and was pilot of the Reproduction Wright Flyer at the 2003 Centennial of Flight Celebration in Kitty Hawk, NC.

This year, 2011, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of recreational soaring. In October, 1911, Orville Wright and a friend returned to Kitty Hawk, eight years after he made the historic first controlled flight in an airplane. But this time, Orville brought only a glider. There was little purpose in his visit except to enjoy flying the glider. And that he did. On October 24th, on the longest of many flights that Orville made during his stay, he soared over the dunes at Kitty Hawk for nine minutes and 45 seconds, establishing a world duration record that stood for 10 years, until 1921 when a German pilot broke the record with a 10 minute flight.

Kevin’s talk was an illustrated history of humanity’s attempts over the past two centuries to build and fly machines that could glide or soar while carrying a person. He gave a fascinating tour through time of the foibles, trials, and ultimate success that marked the evolution of motorless flight, culminating in Orville’s record soaring flight of 1911. It was a masterful presentation and one that kept me and I think most of the soaring enthusiasts in the audience enthralled from beginning to end–a great way to end the conference.

See you next year in Reno!