Newcastle Hang Gliding Club

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/04/12/atmospheric_vortices_flow_past_an_island_seen_from_space.html

Mind you, a fluid is anything that can flow, not just liquids. Air is a fluid, and when you have a steady wind blowing past, say, a Pacific island, you can get vortex shedding leading to von Kármán vortex streets. Here’s another fine example taken from space, showing vortices off Isla Alejandro Selkirk and Isla Robinson Crusoe off the coast of Chile.

Thanks to Frank Schwab

Dara Hogan <<dara.hogan>> writes:

The outgoing PG Competitions Officer (PG) of the Irish hang Gliding & Paragliding Association, Rafal Obora, smashed the Irish XC record with a flight of nearly 78km (over 48 miles) on his last day in office - 6th April 2013. His excuse for arriving late to the IHPA AGM was accepted! The previous record was held by Tom Cardas who flew 65km on 10th April 2011 from Mount Leinster to beyond Ashford, County Wicklow. Here's some video from Rafal's flighht.

http://vimeo.com/63959992

Rafal and his flying buddy Mariusz flew from Mount Leinster and they landed just north of Rathangan, County Kildare in the same field. Rafal reached cloudbase at 4,600 feet. Lubor came close landing at 73km. Here's Rafal's track:

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/733903

Rafal, Mariusz and Lubor are "new-Irish" who emigrated from eastern Europe to Ireland at the height of the Celtic Tiger. Their flying skills have made a huge impression on the local Irish flying scene. In recent years, the local Irish pilots have experienced significant adverse weather with non-existent summers. The spring months of April and May have proven to be the best flying months.

http://pwca.org/node/13655

http://www.hipoxia.com.br/pwc2013/

James Bradley <<arcanadana>> writes:

Sunday we ran a task with rain chasing and ahead. It was stopped when the leaders caught the rain ahead. The GAP parameters are well in force in the PWC these days so the day was devalued to 330 pts. When we are still that far from goal the software seems to realize, correctly perhaps, that it has no idea how people are going to finish, so the scoring is extremely compressed: 50 pts covered the top 90 pilots who spanned just 4 kilometers in the air when the task was stopped. (A couple of high pilots gained a little more distance as everyone got credit for 4:1 glide.)

Monday was called early at HQ for rain. Today -- Tuesday -- we went up, called a task, and waited for it to blow in. It never did. At 2:00 they called it. A few of us ran off in a light tailwind and had lovely short flights. A task would not have been possible.

Tomorrow and Thursday look better, fingers crossed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUumI-JHSGs

Andrej Kolar writes:

http://forum.naviter.com/threads/1078-IGC-Speed-and-Distance-task-script

You need the "Speed task - no handicap" script: http://forum.naviter.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=101&d=0

It should be pretty self explanatory. You need to set a task (any task), you MUST define task time. You need to do that in Edit > Day properties > Task Options.

You must use the correct script
You MUST set task type to "Assigned Areas Task - AAT"
You MUST set task time.

It is always considered to be "Minimum task time". Anyone that flies less than that time get scored by this time. Anyone that flies longer gets scored by his actual time.

Jimmy, President, James Dean Byrd Foundation, Ecuador writes:

We continue to grow the school, and are adding a 7th year classroom and computer science curriculum for all the students this year! In Ecuador, the average education of an adult is the seventh grade. We will exceed that average with our growing student body! In 2013 our school starts on May 6 and we expect 91 students!

www.jamesdeanbyrdfoundation.org

The Cloudbase Foundation is another organization that just keeps on giving in meaningful ways. With the Cloudbase Foundation, each project is unique and needed.

http://ozreport.com/data/LosAlgarrobosMarch2013ENGLISH.pdf

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cloudbase-Foundation/173807269297449

William Olive <<William.Olive>> sends:

http://www.williamolive.com/dalby/comp results.html

# Name Glider Time Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed 01:24:03 990 2 Trent Brown Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 01:25:44 949 3 Nick Purcell Moyes Litespeed RS 4 01:28:05 904 4 Rod Flockhart Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 01:28:13 897 5 Conrad Loten Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 01:28:29 889 6 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 01:28:51 880 7 Dave Stevens Moyes Litespeed RS 4 01:29:16 872 8 Adam Stevens Airbone Rev 13.5 01:34:08 828 9 Jonathan Kinred Moyes Litespeed S 01:42:37 757 10 Cameron Tunbridge Airborne Rev 14.5 01:42:35 753

Totals:

# Name Glider Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed 1924 2 Trent Brown Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 1835 3 Conrad Loten Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 1820 4 Nick Purcell Moyes Litespeed RS 4 1766 5 Rod Flockhart Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 1728 6 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 1679 7 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed S 3.5 1617 8 Simon Braithwaite Moyes Litesport 4 1616 9 Steve Blenkinsop Moyes Litespeed RS3.5 1575 10 Cameron Tunbridge Airborne Rev 14.5 1557

A total of two days:

# Name Glider Total 1 Glauco Pinto Icaro Laminar Z9 1793 2 Cesar Castro Aeros Combat 1733 3 Jonny Durand Moyes LS RX 3.5 1720 4 Marcio Rosadas Moyes LS RX 3.5 1687 5 André Wolf Moyes LS RX 3.5 1582 6 Evandro Maurício Muller Aeros Combat L 14 1365 7 Max Turiaco Aeros Combat 1299 8 Cid Maestrini Wills Wing T2 1265 9 Eduardo Fernandes Wills Wing TC2 1257 10 Marcelo Andrei Gomes Aeros Combat GT 1097

http://www.avli.com.br/eventos/1/ibiturunaopen2013geralOpenElite.html

http://www.avli.com.br/?p=evento&id=1

http://pwca.org/node/13655

http://www.hipoxia.com.br/pwc2013/

Speaking (as we have lately) of Brazil, James Bradley sends:

Dancing around rock monoliths and rain showers in light conditions, getting help from vulture swarms, before the PWC in Baixo Guandu. With Brett Hazlett. First task Sunday. The forecast is looking better, i.e. dryer.

http://wimp.com/speedflying/

Laurent Pironneau <<contact>> sends:

http://youtu.be/esk4t2q1MTk

http://www.bearn-ailes-libres.com/

http://www.dhv.de/web/en/newsdetails/article/sollbruchstellen-fuer-uls/

The DHV-Technology Department has tested following predetermined breaking point at the 11.03.2013 and recognized for the UL-tow with hang gliders:

Breaking point in stainless steel with the breaking load values of 90, 100, 120 kg

Manufacturer: Georg Schumacher, hedges mill 2, 69483 Wald-Michelbach, Tel. 0177-5969361, E-Mail: <gs>

The breaking point optionally offered with a target breaking point protection, which allows a simple, tool-free replacement of the breaking point.

Mark Dowsett <<mark>> writes:

We tried these ourselves last year for our winch towing but they failed miserably. I can see them working for aero-towing as stated where the load is rather constant but when we transition during our two-stage towing (one line over, one line under), it shock loads the tow line and will break these calibrated metal weaklinks in a heartbeat.

NHGCXC: http://t.co/tjDHZVsiub 4/4 in goal at ellalong.awesome day to go #nhgcxc - @DementedManiac

NHGCXC: The weather is looking great for a flap. Freeos at 10:00 see you there! - @DementedManiac

Early in the morning, Larry looked at the FSL forecast for sites to the north and decided that it was too unstable.

At 2 PM:

It was a bit windy down here, but that is what you would expect on a great day.

Now at 3:15 PM it looks like rain along the course line far to the north ahead of the front:

At 5:45 PM:

It's good that we didn't go.

Jonny Durand writes:

Another day of no flying here in Valadares cloudbase is below launch and it seems tomorrow will be much of the same. It seems the last two days of the comp might be flyable so until then we wait.

From Jonny.

William Olive <<William.Olive>> writes:

The Dalby Big Air 2013 starts this Sunday the 14th. I will be scoring the comp using FS and I'll upload the results onto a page on my website.

Paul Voight <<flyhighpaul>> writes:

I watched your landing video a few times today. Nice footage. I'd be careful with that momentary "let-go of the control frame altogether" when raising your hands higher in ground effect.  It'll bite ya some day.

As an additional comment, when Ryan Voight and I do landing clinics. towing the students high enough to have the student have to make a more complicated approach will illuminate lots of pilot's problems stemming from bad approach technique. Landing after a straight tow with no turns only works on a portion of the "landing skill set".

If all pilots would set up to be straight into the wind from the height of that tow most of their landing issues would be fixed. Low turns  mixed with hand transitions and round-outs, all too late in the landing sequence, are a common thread we see in pilots who have landing issues.

Mitch held a landing clinic last year at the East Coast Championships, where indeed pilots were towed high enough to do an approach. You can find the discussion and then videos starting here: http://ozreport.com/16.131#0.

Mitch Shipley<<elektratow>> writes:

Thanks for taking time to share your perspective! Agree completely about skills needed/learned/exposed during higher approaches.

What I do is tailor the tow height/approach to where the student is skill wise (which is hard to determine with “experienced” pilots I just met based on their view/evaluation/articulation of their own skill level!) Or the real estate available to execute the tow. In this video, Davis jumped in for one tow when I was working with two hang II students, one of which was an aero tow student of mine that had never landed on his feet. He had his hands full just trying to execute the mechanics of a proper foot landing while flying straight.

After low experience pilots can execute a tow and landing flying straight (and the proper climb rate/pin off altitude is definitely part of the skill set that needs to be learned) then higher tows with approaches are added. I learned the “straight flight” lesson after I suggested to one of my landing clinic students that he tow higher and execute a full approach. His lack of proper spatial awareness resulted in him pinning off low, slipping a 360 and making me very nervous. Turned out fine, but I now am more careful on adding in the approach elements.

When towing experienced pilots I usually have them tow high enough and do the full approach, as done at the ECC last year. Even then, however, care must be exercised as some pilot still have weak spatial awareness and pin off too low (pin off early or weak climb) and still try to crank one around. The low pin off is a hazard that comes with using a ground based tow system as opposed to higher foot launch or aerotow. That said, I like the ease and speed with which pilots get multiple practice landings.

In post landing clinic critiques from students ( I always ask them what went well or poorly!) universal good points are 1) the number of practice landings they got (typically 8-12) and 2) the frame by frame, high resolution video review of each landing/approach.

Thanks again for the input. Hope to see you during my travels this spring and summer!

A pilot sent:

My Powered Paraglider friends tell me Dell had a later video up where he "cage walked" his buddy without permission. Dell's hiking boot lace clip caught the cage mesh and the buddy tossed his chute. The jerk from the chute opening freed Not-So-Super Dell's boot.

The separation and weight release caused the buddy's wing to re-inflate but to no avail. The reserve took over and the buddy impacted with a scream on the ice below destroying his paramotor and what sounded to be his legs. This is far from over.

I did not see the video re this but one of our Powered Paraglider group guys did before it was pulled down. He wrote me an "accurate" description of the events, none of which sounded nice at all. It's a sad day for light weight pilots in general with such bozo's on the loose.

http://vimeo.com/63483066