Author Archive for Rand Baldwin

Rand is a Soaring Cafe Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief. Fascinated by soaring since early childhood, Rand learned to fly sailplanes while in graduate school (at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics), and earned his private glider rating at Yankee Soaring in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He joined the M.I.T. Soaring Association in 1974, where he completed his Silver Badge and became a flight instructor. After moving to Huntsville in 1977, Rand flew and instructed on weekends at Eagleville Sailplanes south of Nashville, Tennessee. In 1985, he and a handful of other soaring enthusiasts organized the Huntsville Soaring Club at Moontown Airport. Rand chaired the 1996 SSA National Convention and has served as an SSA Director-at-Large, SSA Governor and State Record Keeper for Alabama. He has set two U.S. national soaring records and many AL and TN state records.

Blogging the SSA Conference

On Thursday, Bill and I are heading north for the winter! Well, three days of winter. We’ll be in Philadelphia attending the 2011 Soaring Society of America Conference. Unlike a typical SSA convention, there will be no exhibitors at the conference, but that’s about the only difference so far as I can tell from the published program. The conference organizers have lined up what looks like a great selection of speakers who will dissert on a wide variety of topics.

Up the Learning Curve

For Bill and me, the first two weeks of the New Year have flown by in a whirlwind of work, flying, family, and. . .getting SoaringCafe off the ground. Like many new ventures, it’s been a lot of fun mixed in with the occasional frustration. Speaking of the latter, we spent the past week struggling…

Visit to the DG/LS Factory

During a recent vacation in Europe, my wife Charlotte and I decided to contact the folks who run the DG/LS sailplane factory in Bruchsal, Germany, and arrange a tour.As an LS-8 owner and pilot, I was keen to see how the current generation of LS and DG sailplanes metamorphose from rolls of carbon and fiberglass cloth and pails of resin into the beautiful creations that we glider pilots fawn over and trust our lives to.

Visit to the Wasserkuppe

I haven’t yet visited the U.S. Soaring Museum in Elmira, NY, but it would be hard to match the Wasserkuppe museum as a repository of gliding history. f you’re a soaring enthusiast and you find yourself in Germany, I heartily recommend a visit to the Wasserkuppe. You won’t be disappointed!