Std. Cirrus flies

 Congratulations to Greg Hunter on flying his new Standard Cirrus yesterday at Springfield!

Assembly Day

 It is rare for us to go flying on Assembly Day.  It is even rarer for us to assemble and fly at Post Mills before April 15.  This year we did both, thanks to hard working members, an accommodating insurance agent, and climate change.

On Saturday, Darrek, Dennis, Don, Eric, Greg, Henry, John, Kari, Keith, Moshe, Rick, Sonny, and Tim all showed up early, and by midday, three club gliders were assembled and two of them flew!

The first flight of the year was accomplished by Tim towing Moshe solo in the 2-33.  One more just like that one, and Moshe became our first current instructor.  Here's a picture of him keeping his wings level on our sloped runway.

He wound up flying with Dennis, Sonny, Eric, and Henry.  Thanks, Moshe!

While this was going on, the overcast broke apart, and it turned into a decent soaring day.  Tim assembled BU and took off.

Greg stood next to his new glider and listened patiently while Rick told him things he already knew about it.  Then he had his first flight in the glider that will be known shortly as "JR."

Meanwhile, Darrek improved our tiedowns, Don improved the towplane tailwheel, and Eric organized the clubhouse.

Eric and Dennis bought the beer this time.

We are off to a good start!

Juliet Romeo

 Congratulations to Greg Hanlon on the acquisition and first flight of Juliet Romeo, a beautiful JS1B, seen here over Post Mills on Saturday.

A sure sign of Spring

 

COVID update IV

 This is the first COVID update of the 2021 season.

Our new 2021 operational rules were distributed to the membership today.

Vaccination helps, but we're not out of the woods yet.  Wash your hands, wear a mask, stay socially distanced, and watch this space for further updates.

Weekend report April 3 - 4

 Moshe (RU) disentombed his glider on Saturday and took his first flight of the year on Sunday.  Here's his report:

The forecast changed completely, but the winds were still light when I took off at noon.  It turns out I should have taken off even earlier (I was ready at least 30 minutes earlier). 

I concentrated on trying to reach the potential wave, as there were wavy looking clouds here and there.  To my surprise, winds aloft (within the thermal layer) were weaker than forecast, 8-11 knots according to Tophat.  Most good thermals got strongest (5 knots) above 5000 MSL but died before 6000, probably hitting the forecast inversion.  Some may have been wave-enhanced.

In one area I managed to climb to 7000 in wider lift patches that may have been wave, but I couldn't seem to stay in that lift, nor get any higher.  By then the wind reported on the ground was up to 15G20, luckily from the WNW rather than the forecast NNW.  And the thermals got difficult to find and work.

I hit some turbulence in the lee of Hawks Mountain, enough that my head hit the canopy pretty hard, so I decided maybe it's time to land, even though I've only flown a bit more than 2 hours.  Remembering the sink on the approach to runway 29, I came in close and high, planning to land halfway down that runway.  Once on final I pulled full spoilers - and in a few seconds I was staring at "the numbers" at the approach end.  Wow.  Kept the nose down and closed spoilers and all was well.

OLC loses a sponsor

For many years, we've been posting our flight logs on OLC, the defacto repository for such files, worldwide.  While the website functions as a pretty good online logbook for individuals, its principal emphasis is on ranking and contests.  (The "C" stands for Contest, after all).

OLC did not invent the "Distributed Competition," which is the generic term for what they do.  The original distributed competition was probably the National Ladder in the UK, which has existed continuously since long before the internet.

OLC has spun off subgroups, which are distributed competitions with limited membership.  Examples include SSA, which sponsors an OLC subgroup for its members.  Another example, until recently, was DAeC, the German national aeroclub - the largest in the world.

There are formal and informal subgroups.  Our club is an informal subgroup.  The formal ones pay a fee to OLC to be featured on the website.  It isn't clear how many national aeroclubs sanction OLC to handle their distributed competitions for them.  It isn't even clear how many gliding countries claim to have national distributed competitions at all.  SSA is a formal subgroup, but SSA-OLC isn't an officially recognized national championship in USA.

On the other hand, some countries take distributed competitions just as seriously as their national centralized competitions.  Germany is one of them.  In Germany it is a big deal to be the winner of a national championship, either a competition held at a specific site, or the distributed competition.

Until a few months ago, the official distributed competition for Germany was OLC.  The Germans have now switched to a new one called WeGlide.  The reasons for dropping OLC have not been published, but one can speculate that OLC's receptiveness to suggested changes to the rules might have been a factor.

WeGlide is new, and it improves every day.  However, it must be stated that WeGlide's mission is to do a superior job of running a distributed competition, with special emphasis on doing that job for the German national aeroclub.  A secondary objective is to be a useful repository for clubs and sites, and at a much lower priority, it serves as a personal logbook for individual cross country pilots.

Both OLC and WeGlide are weak at meeting the needs of an individual whose only interest is to keep track of cross-country kilometers for himself and his friends.  (It is amusing to note that OLC has been adding features and relaxing security rules since they were abandoned by DAeC).

There are two other websites for the casual xc pilot to consider, crosscountry.aero, and Skylines.  They have been around for a while, but neither one has crossed over the line into worldwide popularity.  They are both better than the other two for keeping track of your individual achievements.

All four websites have advantages and disadvantages.  In the broadest terms, OLC and WeGlide are aimed at competitive people, while crosscountry.aero and Skylines are for the rest of us.  Also, all four of them are mediocre in terms of detailed flight analysis.  If you want to analyze your flight with every conceivable statistic, you should be using a standalone flight evaluation program, like SeeYou or StrePla.

The difficult question, of course, is which of the four online portals should we use?  I am not an expert at any of them, so I plan to use all of them until I figure out what I want.  It's sort of a pain to upload every flight four times, but I am willing to do that.  It would be nice if each of them would forward your flight log file to the other three, but that happens in only one instance:  Skylines forwards to WeGlide.  So make that three uploads for every flight.  I can handle that.

In a future post, I will describe the pros and cons of each of the four websites.

Big wheel keep on turnin'

 

The advocates of rolling the runway got their wish this year.  Here's hoping they were right!

Weekend report March 27 - 28

 Tim (BU) and Rick (LEL) had a couple of 4 hour flights out of Springfield on Saturday, in thermals and wave.  The conditions were mostly blue.  The clouds were of no help.

Tim made it to 8000 feet in the Okemo wave and measured 29 knots of wind up there.  Rick didn't get as high, but he managed to fly sideways up to Lebanon before falling out of the wave for good.

We had great support from NESA:  Alasdair and Larry on the ground and Jerry in the towplane.  Thanks, guys!

Meanwhile, the runways at Post Mills are still quite squooshy.

New example test questions

 FAA has just published a new collection of example Knowledge Test questions for Private Pilot (Glider).

Weekend report March 20 - 21

 The season got off to a modest start on Sunday at Springfield.

Tim (BU), Rick (LEL), and Dennis showed up on a beautiful afternoon with no clouds and very little wind.  Tim and Rick flew locally for a couple of hours each.  The thermals were weak and widely spaced with the exception of one good one over the summit of Mount Ascutney.  It topped out at 5000 feet, but most of them didn't make it through the inversion at 3500 feet.

NESA flew checkrides in the PW6, so the total number of tows logged by the CallAir was about seven.  They are trying out the new Proving Grounds program, which is supposed to get more people flying cross-country.  It seems a little strange that one of their turnpoints is Lebanon Airport, with a control tower.

It was warm enough to take your time assembling, lubricating, pumping up tires, etc.  The conditions were benign enough that all the rusty pilot mistakes were inconsequential.

First cookout of the year

It was "hangar inspection" day today, and Dennis decided to turn it into a party.  He was joined by Rick, Mary, Tim Keith B, Jeanette, and Greg H for a little bit of work and a lot of hanging out around the grill.

It warmed up to about 35 degF before it was over.