Erstmalig findet heuer parallel im Rahmen der BaWü Airgames am kommenden Pfingswochenende am 11. und 12. Mai das Thermik-Testival statt. Neben der wohl größten Auswahl an Testschirmen sind auch ideale Bedingungen geboten: Oppenau kann mit nunmehr 4 großzügigen Startplätzen aufwarten. Eine Besonderheit sind die Leichtschirmwandertage.

Die BaWü... mehr

Time for a review of my disastrous (although it doesn't "feel" that way) Santa Cruz Flats Race with an eye toward providing the Oz Report reader with applicable lessons (as I don't seem to have the emotional makeup required to "learn" them) regarding how to do well in a competition.
At my last competition, the New South Wales State Titles, I was... mehr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjcc3qCnSK8

Thanks to David Glover mehr

The flex wing results.
The rigid wing results.
The Swift result.
Just click on their pilot number to download their tracklog for that day. mehr

Http://www.hangglidingspectacular.com/
The Hang Gliding Spectacular and Air Games is a true example of what hang gliding is all about, fun! Originally named the 1st Annual Tactile Meet, the Spectacular has endured over 30 years of continuous years of fun flying, good times and the creation of life long friends. The competition is scheduled each... mehr

William Jacques <<email>> writes:
Check out this guy's instructions (especially the one labeled "Crater Lake Flight". Seems to me to be good stuff re soaring strategy.
Http://hdsoaring.blogspot.com/ mehr

http://ozreport.com/weather.php
XC Skies.
XC Potential
This parameter attempts to identify the locations where cross country is possible based upon a comparison of four different criteria. They are the following:
1. Red. Buoyancy/Shear is greater than 6, average wind speed within the boundary layer (ground through thermal tops) is 10 MPH or... mehr

http://ozreport.com/12.085#2
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/travel/escapes/02american.html?hp
Slide show
This is the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, two skinny counties strung between Maryland’s own Eastern Shore and the Bridge-Tunnel. It’s only 65 miles long and no more than 10 miles at its... mehr

Zac Majors had a bad landing on the practice day at the Santa Cruz Flats Race landing in stiff winds behind the eight story hotel at the Francisco Grande. We got to watch the whole thing and I spoke with him later. At the time he felt that he might have broken his thumb on landing.
From our point of view it looked like he was coming in with his... mehr

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11760
There comes a time that you want to fly a little bit faster. Maybe you’ve been to a contest or two and you’ve seen what amazing speeds the top pilots achieve – and often in surprisingly bad conditions. Maybe you want to go for a badge, or just cover a little more territory in your... mehr

Derrick Turner <<email>> writes:
As you have recently posted on the Oz Report, I pulled off a very fortunate 5th place finish in the recent Santa Cruz Flats competition. So was it glider performance?
The first day was my 2nd flight on this brand new out of the box glider with no special comp tuning. My only adjustment was to turn... mehr

You might have noticed that the dollar is not worth so much compared to the Euro. I've mentioned this a few times in the Oz Report. Well, now we find out that it is having another effect other than just sending us Americans to the poor house. Europeans are buying the comparatively inexpensive American goods (like Wills Wing hang gliders) and the... mehr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOWTfTaUh0s
mehr

http://blogs.motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf/dx/airbag-motorcycle-helmet.htm
Thanks to Carlos Rizo mehr

It was fourteen years ago that Willie was in the cradle at the Road house near Dog Mountain in Washington state, as hang glider pilots had dinner after a day of flying.

As Willie knows, his dad, Bob Reich, has a twisted sense of humor, that had him send a clown to Willie's school for Willie's birthday. The clown frighten some kids and made one... mehr

Riker Davis <<email>> writes:
The Lincoln National Forest in southern New Mexico closes indefinitely on May 1st due to extreme fire danger. The 28th annual Memorial Day Weekend Fly-in at Dry Canyon near Alamogordo has been postponed for a future date, possibly Labor Day weekend or in the fall. Any pilots interested in attending this... mehr

http://goflyxc.com/livetracking
So I was excited heading to Arizona for the Santa Cruz Flats race to get this working....I got all my friends to get Boost phones in hopes of making this work. Manolis even has Live Tasks rigged so you can watch a race. I haven't seen that in action (in Europe) but apparently it works.
There was only one thing to... mehr

http://ozreport.com/12.21#2
2008 Canungra Classic - AA - 25th October - 1st Nov (precise day and rego 24th)
2008 Gulgong Classic - AA - 23rd - 29th November (practice and rego Sat 22nd)
2008 2009 Deniliquin ??? Dates not set.
2009 Forbes Flatlands - AAA - 3rd - 11th January (practice rego Friday 2nd)
2009 Corryong ??? Dates not set.
2009 Bogong... mehr

http://ozreport.com/weather.php
When I was in Australia I had the option of using RASPs that were built for each state by sail plane pilots to forecast the soaring conditions or XC Skies. Both use the US NOAA modeled weather values from the GFS database. This data allows one to predict the soaring conditions for any where on earth (well, I don't... mehr

raef mackay <<email>> writes:
I would like to say that I tuned my Flytec 6030 really well by adjusting Max. Pitch for the vario audio to 25 m/s. See this display from the FlyChart program:

Here the Max. pitch is 2165 fpm (11 m/s), and I would set it to 4615 fpm (24 m/s).
I have found that it stabilizes the pitch for most climbs up... mehr