Cafe Columns

Is it impossible to fly 3 hours?

Is it impossible to fly 3 hours?  The diaries of a beginner woman pilot – mistakes and memories. I started soaring in 2013 and had my first solo in June. Looking back to this period in my life I was so happy that I reached my goal: I can fly a glider. Wow. But what…

Dale Kramer, BMapper, and Windows 7

A month or so ago I was finally forced to abandoned my beloved Dell Precision M6300 laptop running Win XP for a newer ride.  I liked that old laptop so much I actually had two identical M6300 models so I could swap the hard drive from my primary to my backup (or vice versa) in case of…

My Most Memorable Flight

Memorable flights come in many packages. Some are memorable because they broke a record, others for beautiful scenery, still others were challenging due to the weather or interesting circumstances. By comparison, mine is memorable in spite of the usual criteria. It was not particularly fast, nor high, nor even unusually long. I can’t claim the typical…

DeQuincy

On April 8th I had another incredible downwind dash starting in Wellington, KS. On April 2nd I had noticed on the long term prognosis charts that the 8th had potential to be a good soaring day in the Midwest.

Updates on 4 May Payne-Tito Wave Flight

Jim and Dennis launched at sunrise from Minden. I’m in KY on a family visit, sorry for the delay. They have over 500 km with a long run between Hurlong and Lone Pine thus far. I will be blogging on the Soaring Café site for the rest of the day.

Perry (Wagener, SC) Airstrip Review, Part III

In our last episode, we saw the melding of the Spartanburg and Perry airport/airstrip waypoints, the correction of old photo era turnpoint offsets, and other minor corrections.  The result was a pretty complete and robust Perry waypoint database, which was then published in its various file formats as ‘Perry2014a’ on John Leibacher’s wonderful Worldwide Soaring…

Minden Nevada Airport/Airstrip Review, Part II

Having failed miserably in my original attempt to solicit local knowledge input via direct appeal to the Minden crowd and the contest organizers, I have included the entire contents of my September 2013 Minden Nevada Airport review below, updated as appropriate with the most recent Google Earth images.  Note that although I reviewed every airport/airstrip…

Minden, Nevada Airport Review

Last September, I did a full review of all the Minden, NV waypoints, as my (now) normal preparation for flying at a new site. When it was done I had identified more than 20 airports/airstrips that I deemed ‘problematic’ in one sense or another (nonexistant, too narrow for 18m, brush growing on or near the…