Yearly Archives: 2014

1-26 Championships Practice Day

Leah and I arrived at the beautiful Caesar Creek Soaring Club last night for the 1-26 Championships. For those unfamiliar, the 1-26 Champs are the only outlet in the US for one design sailplane racing, are organized by the 1-26 Association (www.126association.org), and feature competition among only Schweizer 1-26 gliders. With only 23:1 book performance…

My first solo — I’m stoked! [HD Video]

Cockpit set. Thumbs up. The super cub starts revving its engine. The slow start of the spinning wheel directly under me vibrates the entire cockpit as our beautiful club starts speeding past me. I only need a gentle touch and I am airborne, waiting for the tug to lift off as well. The rest is…

Young Meets Old – Project K8

Young Meets Old – Project K8 From time to time you stumble over something really special and that right in front of your door. That kind of describes how I found out about those 3 people. Now, in the gliding world “right on the front porch” is probably a far stretched term, but living at least in…

Finnish Nationals “… storms, storms and more storms”

“…forecast is either for storm, many storms or the whole country covered in storms.” It was waiting on day 3 from the Finnish Nationals in club and standard class flown from Rayskala. Good practice this competition,  specially for the overseas pilots, participating in the WGC starting on June 22. A competitive way  to get to…

Summer 2014 Issue of VSA’s “Bungee Cord”

The Summer 2014 issue of Bungee Cord is distributed to Vintage Sailplane Association (VSA) members and we thought the rest of the gliding and soaring community should know about this special 40-page issue, published in conjunction with the VSA’s 40th anniversary. Summer 2014 Bungee Cord: Table of Contents The editorial by Jim Short discusses “Fine…

Maiden Dual Flight of the Sunseeker Duo

Eric and Irena Raymond report on their First Solar Powered Flight After the recent great news about Schleicher’s latest product, we now discovered another exciting maiden flight that had already happened the day before the ASG 32 Mi’s first launches. In Italy, Eric Raymond who built the first solar-powered two-seater which he had “secretly” test…