Newcastle Hang Gliding Club

http://youtu.be/UN8oLGBNXpE

http://www.ruppert-composite.ch/en/aktuell/239-groesstes-archaeopteryx-fai-dreieck-343-km.html

Peter Eicher went for a triangular cross country flight after Christmas off from his home in Australia. The first leg made him not just dream of a great flight: Difficult thermals, flying low, wind, a low-safe and flying back for some kilometers because of unlandable terrain ahead. The pilot in his Archaeopteryx was encouraged the whole time by obviously better flying conditions further to the northeast of its route. So he fought for four hours until he reached his first turnpoint and came into good conditions.

Finally, Peter landed after almost 9 hours and 343 km at the place of launch. He enthusiastically said: ´On this flight I could fully taste the excellence of Archaeopteryx by not bombing out in the slow and low flying in the beginning, and making a good pace later on. At the end in cozy conditions I enjoyed a 50 km long final glide home.´

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?dsId=2802083

http://www.ruppert-composite.ch/en/aktuell/240-archaeopteryx-als-klasse-2-haengegleiter-anerkannt.html

At the February 2013 CIVL plenary meeting the CIVL Hang Gliding Committee officially categorized the Archaeopteryx as a Class 2 Hang Glider. Archaeopteryx pilots are now entitled to participate in hang gliding competitions in Class 2.

http://pwca.org/node/13655

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

James Bradley <<arcanadana>> writes:

Yesterday started to turn on a little despite the high clouds and it was just a tease. There was a lot of grumbling in the retrieve vans. The start was 12k from launch in an effort to keep us from all being in an ultra-crowded vertically compressed gaggle, low over the cliffs on the spine to the left of launch. Not crazy, a mid-air is a real risk and could be dangerous there, but we did lose 10k of course line. Personally, I was out of sync with myself yesterday, hoping to click better today. The top 25 qualify for the SuperFinal.

It has paid to make tracks early. When the day shuts off it mostly shuts off everywhere. With luck you might find one more very weak climb going moderately high and glide over some of your friends on the ground.

One more chance today to show up and see what happens.

We went on my normal ride: http://app.strava.com/activities/48781343

A quarter of the way out we found one of these in the middle of the road (warmer there?), a gopher tortoise as seen here.

Then around the corner we found this guy:

This is a Florida Red Bellied Turtle. He/she was about a foot long. Like the last one, I moved him out of the road.

Then around the next corner we came upon this guy:

This is a Florida Soft Shelled Turtle.

I have occasionally seen gopher tortoises on my ride, but not in a few years. To see three large different varieties on this ride was amazing. Then we stopped to check out the twenty Wood Storks:

Photos from video by Bob Grant.

William Olive <<William.Olive>> sends:

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

Task 5:

# Name Glider Time Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed RX 4 01:58:40 997 2 Nick Purcell Moyes Litespeed RS 4 01:58:45 980 3 Steve Blenkinsop Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:00:26 956 4 Jon snr Durand Moyes Litespeed S5 02:04:38 904 5 Guy Hubbard Moyes Litespeed RS 4 02:04:44 898 6 Trevor Purcell Moyes Litespeed S 5 02:06:28 882 7 Trent Brown Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:09:28 858 8 Len Paton Moyes Litespeed RS4 02:14:49 820 9 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:16:54 807 10 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:11:54 804

Cumulative:

# Name Glider Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed RX 4 4647 2 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 4232 3 Steve Blenkinsop Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 4027 4 Jon snr Durand Moyes Litespeed S5 3971 5 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 3909 6 Nick Purcell Moyes Litespeed RS 4 3767 7 Adam Stevens Airbone Rev 13.5 3481 8 Conrad Loten Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 3365 9 Cameron Tunbridge Airborne Rev 14.5 3248 10 Trevor Purcell Moyes Litespeed S 5 3243

https://www.facebook.com/groups/53797046893/

http://youtu.be/koCS3B8Sgx0

Thanks to Belinda.

http://memolition.com/2013/02/24/20-amazing-cloud-formations/

Thanks to Dale Abroad.

http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Grove-Thurgood-Marshall-Groveland/dp/B00B9ZF1NG

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.

In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.”

And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terror” at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next.

Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI’s unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize, http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/General-Nonfiction

GENERAL NONFICTION, GILBERT KING, “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” (Harper) Mr. King, 51, said he had become fascinated by what he called “lost cases in civil rights history,” cases that were on the front pages of newspapers at the time but had been mostly forgotten since then. “They got glossed over,” he said. “I started looking into them and found these untold stories. Thurgood Marshall was this amazing trial lawyer and his life was threatened constantly. He wasn’t just about reconstructing the American dream. He was out there fighting for people’s lives.” Finalists Katherine Boo, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity”; David George Haskell, “The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature.”

http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Lynching-Saga-Groveland-ebook/dp/B0082RDMJ4

First and only comprehensive analysis of the infamous Groveland, Florida rape case based on first-person interviews and extensive research. The true story (finally!) of a tragedy that began when a poor white girl accused four black men of rape.

I'm thrilled that Gilbert King got the Groveland story in front of mainstream America. Devil in the Grove is certainly a good read but it is misleading. While King must be commended for gaining access to the NACCP Legal Defense Fund files and thoroughly researching Thurgood Marshall's career, his research was far from exhaustive. For the whole story, do as he directs and read The Groveland Four (recently re-released as Legal Lynching: The Sad Saga of the Groveland Four), which I wrote eight years before Devil In The Grove. You'll see that Thurgood Marshall was basically a figure-head during the Groveland proceedings. In fact, there's no proof he ever set foot in Lake County. The real heroes of this drama was lesser-known attorneys Franklin Williams, Alex Akerman, Jack Greenberg, Paul Perkins, Horace Hill and William Fordham. They faced Sheriff Willis McCall, they found the alibi witnesses, they interviewed and dealt one-on-one with the defendants. Devil in the Grove is largely based on Marshall's files; Legal Lynching: The Sad Saga of the Groveland Four is based on interviews with people who LIVED the Groveland rape case.

William Olive <<William.Olive>> sends:

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

Task 4:

# Name Glider Time Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed RX 4 01:32:26 949 2 Jon snr Durand Moyes Litespeed S5 01:43:08 892 3 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 01:37:10 873 4 Trevor Purcell Moyes Litespeed S 5 01:44:39 872 5 Adam Parer Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 01:43:37 781 6 Conrad Loten Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 01:43:37 779 7 Jon Durand Jnr Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 01:39:22 775 8 Gavin Myers Moyes Litespeed S 5 01:44:41 760 9 Len Paton Moyes Litespeed RS4 01:58:03 749 10 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 01:52:02 708

Cumulative:

# Name Glider Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed RX 4 3650 2 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 3428 3 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 3102 4 Steve Blenkinsop Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 3071 5 Jon snr Durand Moyes Litespeed S5 3067 6 Conrad Loten Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 2992 7 Cameron Tunbridge Airborne Rev 14.5 2982 8 Rod Flockhart Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 2904 9 Adam Parer Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 2856 10 Nick Purcell Moyes Litespeed RS 4 2787

Bob Grant <<caskydog>> writes:

I have a page of over 300 photos from WW Demo Days at- http://www.skydogsports.com/hg-1/2013-WW-DEMO-DAYS.htm.

http://youtu.be/tX55GL2wWgw

Luis Rizo <<psuc.vollibre>> writes:

We are happy to invite you to our new aerotowing international competition "Troyes Aerotow Hang Gliding Competition", at Chaumont (France) from May 18 to 20. Chaumont is one of the best places to fly in France where great flights have been done (200 km FAI triangle, 375km straight distance…).

The comp is a category 2 FAI event, open to international pilots (class 1, 2 & 5). For this first edition, the maximum number of pilots admitted is limited to 36.

Registrations are now open ! For more information, please visit our web site : http://delta.ffvl.fr/open_comps_registration_form/3/list

Here is the huge airfield where the competition is going to be held : http://aero-club.chez-alice.fr/semoutiers.htm

- -- or here : http://www.aerodromes.fr/aerodrome-de-chaumont---semoutiers-lfja-a201.html

http://ozreport.com/docs/IntroducingtheVR190andtheVRS.pdf

Fred and I couldn't be happier to be the new US distributors of AIR products and we'll be working with your dealer to provide AIR products and information. First off, we'd like to introduce the new 77 lb ATOS VRS, which has a hook-in weight range from 99 lbs - 305 lbs. Next up is the new ATOS VR190, which has the same handling as the existing VR but a max hook-in weight of 400 lbs, allowing tandem operation.

The new ATOS VRS is more than just a VR for the lighter pilots. It's a newly proportioned wing with great handling benefits. The VRS carbon spars are almost 4 ft shorter than the standard VR spars while its tip sections are actually longer than the standard VR tips! The VRS is also super light, weighing in at just 77 lbs with an in-the-bag length of just 13.1 ft! (That's almost three feet shorter than the small U2 145!). There is a buzz at the factory around the VRS's responsiveness and it's described as having great stability when at speed and when coordinating high banked turns.

The ATOS VR190 is based on the standard VR but has reinforced D-cells as well as three pairs of carbon fiber sail battens. The VR190 is certified for two-place flight and is perfect for pilots that want a wing with the ultimate handling and performance but the flexibility to hook-in with up to 400 lbs to take a passenger or fly with a trike.

http://www.xcmag.com/2013/04/mads-world-world-paragliding-series-qa/

And you have a series of dates now for three competitions. What are they?

Each event is seven days, with the seventh day being a ‘reserve’ day. We’ll be going to Krusevo/Macedonia first, from 22-29 June. From there we have a two-month break and then we go to a new venue in Greece called Itea, a pleasant coastal town on the Gulf of Korinthia, only two hours west of Athens airport.

The dates for Itea are 18-25 August. We round up this first season in Roldanillo, Colombia, from 30 November to 7 December.

Briefly, there is a lot of talk about insurance, valid or not, around Open Class gliders. Have you looked into this? What’s your take on it?

Mmmm, tricky. Basically I am of the opinion that ‘my’ guys and girls are grownups and can handle the responsibility on their own shoulders. I have made no secret of the fact that I will NOT be taking out insurance against liability claims, and since I also own no significant assets there wouldn’t be anything to gain, financially, by suing me.

We do have a fairly elaborate liability waiver, and I plan to make no secret of the fact that paragliding is dangerous and that pilots should only take off if they feel they can handle the potential consequences during my briefings etc. All in all I am of the opinion that all this would make my case a fairly strong one in the unlikely event of a lawsuit.

Besides, we specifically make NO demands to the wings flown in the Series – our stance is, you fly what you want and take the flak if something happens. The reasoning is, IF I were to start limiting the wings in any way then someone can always say afterwards that I didn’t limit them enough – whereas if the wings are up to the pilot, then so is the pilot’s personal safety. You fly it, you carry the risk.

William Olive <<William.Olive>> sends:

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

Task 3:

# Name Glider Time Total 1 Jon snr Durand Moyes litespeed S5 01:55:16 979 2 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:03:22 877 3 Adam Parer Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:13:53 871 4 Adam Stevens Airbone Rev 13.5 02:16:05 839 5 Jon Durand Jnr Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:09:27 831 6 Steve Blenkinsop Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:21:26 804 7 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 02:24:53 782 8 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed RX 4 02:25:59 777 9 Rod Flockhart Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 02:25:31 776 10 Cameron Tunbridge Airborne Rev 14.5 02:29:30 752

Total:

# Name Glider Total 1 Attila Bertok Moyes Litespeed RX 4 2701 2 Jonas Lobitz Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 2555 3 Rod Flockhart Moyes Litespeed RS 3.5 2503 4 Nick Purcell Moyes Litespeed RS 4 2467 5 Grant Heaney Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 2394 6 Steve Blenkinsop Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 2374 7 Cameron Tunbridge Airborne Rev 14.5 2304 8 Conrad Loten Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5 2213 9 Jon snr Durand Moyes Litespeed S5 2175 10 Adam Stevens Airborne Rev 13.5 2136

The Dalby airfield:

Hugo Matias <<hugo.voador>> sends:

http://youtu.be/QBkWPENPzIc

Patrick Bardin <<patrickcharles.bardin>> writes:

The guy, the Medusa Killer never sleeps. Take care, he travels a lot. It's only for fun. I hope for everyone good flights.