As most Café readers know, Linwood ‘Steve’ Stevenson of Knoxville, Tennessee, set U.S. national standard and 15 meter class records on May 12th by flying his Discus 2 over a 3TP 1250 km course (click here to view the OLC claim). Today, Steve received the following message from Rollin Hasness, the SSA’s FAI Badge and…
The Pentecote- weekend was weatherwise not too good here. Only Sunday was OK and that only for a few hours ! The “poor” pilots flying a long weekend in Belgium, this time for the Kiewit Cup, had 2 cancelled days but the one in the middle was reasonable. 41 Competitors in 3 classes and in club the 5 […]
On May 6, sixty retired airline pilots attended the yearly “VGV gliding day” at Terlet. Several of them started their aviation career at Terlet many many years ago as a teenager attending the Dutch government sponsored “scholierencursus” gliding course. Gliding instructor Hans Groeneveld, age 80 now and still active as a gliding instructor, trained many…
From the May 15, 2013 edition of SSA eNews… “Mark your calendars! Because the 2012 Convention was such a success, the SSA Convention will be held once again in Reno, Nevada February 25-March 1, 2014. There will be a [Flight Instructor Refresher Clinic] FIRC sponsored by the Soaring Safety Foundation on February 25-26 and a…
Alexander Schleicher Flugzeugbau has published a new Technical Note (TN) concerning the usage of spin ballast with the ASK 21 and ASK 21 Mi. There have been seldom occasions in the past where it took up to three more turns in the spin until it could be recovered. This situation was a result of wrong…
Markus Völter with the Omega Tau website recorded a conversation with Dick Butler, pilot and head of design and construction for Concordia, currently the world’s most advanced sailplane. In the audio episode they discuss the team behind Concordia, the design challenges, the unique aspects of construction as well as Dick’s preliminary experience flying the airplane.…
With 11 out of 13 days , even 2 days with tasks over 500 km. you can say it was a GREAT competition there in Prievidza for the 119 pilots flying for the Flight Challenge Cup Gliding 2013 !!! When I left you on Wednesday , they were ready for over 500 km. flights. It turned out […]
AERO exhibition at Friedrichshafen (Southern Germany) started today. Helge Zembold will be there tomorrow for Soaring Café, finding out the latest trends and reporting live from the exhibition on our Facebook and Twitter sites with lots of pictures. We are very excited to have Helge join our team and look forward to his Facebook posts…
Alexander Schleicher has just announced their newest design. From their website, Sailplane pilots worldwide have noticed, that there is a gap between the basic flight Trainer ASK 21 and the Open class two seaters in the Schleicher product range. A new 20m two-seater will now close this gap. Introducing: Next to our ASK 21 trainer and…
German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed the next generation of their MACS 3D aerial camera system. It was recently tested during an initial flight on a Stemme S10 VTX motorglider near Berlin, Germany. Both, camera and motorglider, will be used during the 2013 expedition of the Mountain Wave Project (MWP) to be held in the Himalaya. …
