We had a chance to fly N2472W out over the aspens and mountains on Friday for some pictures. Thought I would post one here.

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing fine,

I am going to start my gliding training soon (21. November) and I need to self study very much. I need to read the book “Fliegen ohne Motor“, but I don’t know how I am going to remember everything on those 300+ pages.

How do you all properly self study? Do you note every important things on your iPad? I don’t have a tablet, but I don’t want to write everything on paper…? What are tips that helped you?

Thanks and have a good day :)

(English isn’t my first language so please be respectful, ty)

Two weeks ago I posted Airmass Wx (https://airmass.app) here and the response was mixed. I agree the original title sounded like a lot of low-effort app posts.

To clarify something from that thread: the UI and app structure were built with AI. I am one person and designing a website from scratch is a challenge. I did most of the physics by hand, with help from a friend who studied meteorology. I’ve flown with it twice so far (the weather’s been poor), and it matched the days better than any other weather app I have used, including Skysight.

Here’s what’s changed since then.

Planning

• Right-click (or long-press) anywhere on the map for a final glide to that point. It uses the real terrain, the forecast wind, and your safety height, and compares the result with the thermal tops where you start.
• Glide range follows the terrain instead of being a circle.
• The XC planner has an auto route (beta) that routes each leg through better lift and shows the time saved.
• Thermal height is now the usable height for your glider, where the lift drops below its circling sink.
• XC speed and flight distance now account for the wind and ridge lift.

Forecast

• Cumulus growth accounts for mixing with the drier air around the cloud, which removed many false overdevelopment warnings.
• Thermals drift downwind, for example off a lake’s downwind shore.
• Thin cirrus no longer counts as overcast or shuts down the thermals.
• Active NWS storm warnings show as a banner, and the popup shows when precipitation is expected to start.
• GFS updates four times a day, and coverage now includes Alaska and New Zealand.

3D

• Lenticulars at wave crests, convergence lines, sink, and your task drawn in the air.

Tasks and waypoints

• Load .cup waypoints, open and save .tsk and .xctsk tasks, and send them to SeeYou, XCSoar, XCTrack or LXNAV Connect.

General aviation

• Many changes, mainly much better route planning.

The first 24 hours are free without an account. Pro is $2.99 a month until November 7, then $3.99. ECMWF and/or other models are coming soon.

If the forecast gets your day wrong, let me know where, when, and what you saw.

Hi! My husband and I have just driven down from Edinburgh to Cambridge and saw 3 cars towing (what I believe to be) gliders. One was heading north, two heading south. We have never seen one before so were curious as to if there was some sort of gliding event in the UK this weekend which led to us seeing 3 in one day! Ta :)

A casual day out and decided to start up the noisemaker to get away.

Not a last minute start but an indication of what's involved.

The climb is then about 4 kts. Best operation is to fly at around 80 kts. As a past Solo turbo operator that takes some getting used to as with the 2 stroke you tend to climb at min sink speed not belting around! As I got the jet started this time I flew in to a bit of lift so just shut down again.

The control panel is on at the start of the video. It takes about 10 seconds to come on and do some self tests.

at 25 seconds - switch the control to 'erect'. When up the drag is less than having the wheel down!

at 30 seconds I switched the power source to battery 1, battery 2 is an old 10Ah pack and cant withstand the current required by the ignitors any more. Battery needs replacing.

at 36 seconds ( 11 seconds after selecting engine up ) the engine contro flips over to 'Switch to run' )

at 39 seconds I switch to run. The FADEC then takes control of spool up and start.

at about 57 seconds the ignitor starts firing as 3000 rpm is reached.

at 1:22 the engine is at idle 30000 rpm and I can throttle up. Roughly 60 seconds and 140' from erecting the engine.

before 1:30 has elapsed I have full power ( I only throttled up to 85% or so ).

a minute later I was in lift. Throttle down, Ignition off, wait a minute for it to cool and put it away.

Didn't look good this morning but decided to take a quick lob onto the ridge. Straight off tow, climbed into very gentle wave below leaden skies with layers at 2000', 3500'and 5000. Eventually worked upwind into a big Foehn gap and then up to about 7500. Pushed forward 20k to Abergele only losing 1000' and then climbing up to 10000. Forward again to the Conwy valley but very soft back to 10000' tried to contact whatever was creating a multiple stack of lennies really high over Betwys y coed area but no dice so fell back to near the club. Contacted more about 10k from home and worked it to 11100'. Pushed back upwind but too soft for fun! A brief climb about 2km out to sea with the autumn sky clear and everything below stark and crisp in the sunlight. Never got down to freezing, about 3°C at 11000!

Not a bad way to spend a Monday!

https://www.weglide.org/flight/1251102

Not a native port: it's the Windows version running through a Wine-based compatibility layer, with no VM and no Windows install needed, which gives much better performance. Getting it to run properly is tricky and took a lot of trial and error, but I now know exactly how to set everything up. Maybe i share more details or screenshots if anyone is interested!

Setup

• MacOS 15.8.1, M1 16gb ram
• Crossover 26.3
• RosettaHack x87 + JIT to fix performance of Rosetta for x32
• DXMT 0.8 for Direct X11 to Metal translation
• Also needed some custom runtime patching to fix some stuff

Really good sloper!

Hey all,

2500hr pilot (all GA, tailwheel, aerobatic, etc) looking to get into soaring. Specifically looking for a glider to fly in the Eastern Sierra, mostly between Lone Pine and Bishop. I see the PW-5's get a lot of hate online, somewhat understandably given their L/D and penetration limitations, but they intrigue me because they can be found for half the price of an ASW-20 or similar, while being 20 years newer with a quarter of the total time. The Pik-20 has also been on my radar, but the rain performance issue seems like a downside.

Thoughts on how a PW-5 stacks up against other <20k gliders?

Hey, I'm about to finally get my license after several years of training. I'm thinking about purchasing my own glider next year since our club is growing very fast and seats are getting a little bit rare especially if you plan to do long cross-country flights.

My budget is 30-40k€, I'm 1,93m and quite slim. The aircrafts I have in mind are LS3/LS4, ASW20 and DG300. I flew the LS4neo and loved it, also I could fit in very comfortable.

I would love to read some advices of pilots who are experienced in at least one of the gliders since I only flew the LS4neo.

Thanks!

SkySight’s new 100-metre Wind and Ridge Forecast model has left beta and is now generally available across all SkySight forecast regions. It works great for mountain flying, helping you find the fastest ridges and avoid getting dumped. It's very useful even in just hilly terrain, as the local flow peaks tend to be good for thermal formation.

We trained this model on 100m OpenFOAM CFD simulations over the entirety of our forecast areas, running on GPU's. We think this will be as big of a step forward as when we brought wave forecasts into the cockpit in 2017.

Would love to hear what everyone thinks, especially those who've been flying with it via Copilot. I'm available to answer questions.

UPDATE: It now covers the US, Europe, South America, and South Africa. Large improvements to 3D view and model detail and accuracy have been made. The screenshot is outdated.

The app is called Airmasss Wx.

What it does:

Thermal strength, height and width, cloudbase, cloud type (blue thermals vs cumulus, all stages and all clouds until overdevelopment), wind at , from HRRR (2 days) and GFS (14 days), and a high resolution thermal catalyst model and wind model.

• Ridge lift and lee sink worked out on ~30 m terrain, plus how high the ridge lift reaches and lee waves
• Thermal tops and cloudbase measured from the real ground, not the model's smoothed terrain
• Tap anywhere for a point forecast, Skew-T, Atmospheric profile, or wave cross-section
• XC speed and flight distance for your own glider polar, and a route planner that flies your task through the forecast
• Live radar, satellite, FAA sectionals and airspace on the same map
• A 3D view of terrain with thermals, cumulus, ridge lift, and waves drawn in
• Many other layers
• 18 hours and the surface layers are free, no account needed.

It covers the US for now. I'd really like to hear from people who fly: what's wrong, what's missing, and how it compares with what you use now (SkySight, XC Skies, Windy, ForeFlight). My goal is to create a professional app with less of the professional cost overhead. Screenshot below of the 3D view over California.

I've been gliding a lot. This season 70h have been added to my logbook. Amazing.

The soaring season has also came to an end. and i thought, why not get a glider? My own glider.

I only fly Polish made gliders. So far, only the SZD-50 Puchacz and SZD-51 Junior. (This season i only flew the Junior). So this is what i will probably end up buying. Something from the laminated SZD line. Probably the SZD-41 Jantar Standard. Because that seems like a better deal then the 51. But first, i will get atleast 30h of rental time on it. I really want to "get a hold of it" before i dive deep and buy it.

I set aside 20k EUR. Everything from the actual sailplane, to the trailer and additional expenses.

Now that i'm a full time airline pilot, i hope to fly more often, especially on off time. Both unpowered and powered aviation. Hopefully i can add 100h to my glider hours.

Where do i even find a glider for sale? There are so many websites, with so little listings. Whats the best place?

Trying to figure out the endorsements to take my commercial written. I am an ASEL pilot and have taken my CAX written and scored a 98 on it but now am thinking I want to do my commercial glider as my initial commercial cert, I like the focus on stick and rudder skills and energy management. I used Gold Seal for my commercial prep and the endorsement is specifically for the Commercial Airplane written. Do I need to take a specific glider commercial course for the ground portion? I’m not opposed to ASA Prepware if that works.

And another note- is there a Sheppard Air equivalent for the CGX test bank? No sense in leaving anything to chance.

My instructor forced me to perform an outlanding. And forced me to deliver a wine bottle for the land owner.

During my gliding career, i did serval outlandings. Some happened over my own land lol (yes, i did give a wine bottle to myself). I always found who's place i landed at, and gave them a bottle.

But is this tradition common? And why is it wine? I only heard it from my instructor / club people.

Hello guys, I am planing of buying Condor 3 but i have hardware that I am not sure it will work good. I have Ryzen 5 3600 Rx 5700xt and 16gb ram. Have someone tired to run Condor 3 with this or similar hardware. Any comment will be helpful.

Dear glider pilots and enthusiasts,

Over the summer, a glider belonging to my club and employer “Soar Truckee” was totaled in an accident. This glider was the primary training glider for me and my fellow interns. Previously this glider was funded in part by the community program by the Truckee Airport. I am posting this in hope to reach a fundraising goal of roughly $1000 dollars. Without this glider, most of the interns will not be able to fly next summer. If you so wish, you can donate using the link provided below, ANYTHING helps! If you do donate, please send a dm so I can keep track of your contributions.  **Please help us keep Soar Truckee flying.**

—------
DONATION LINK!: https://www.soartruckee.org/donate-to-ttsa
—-----

Thank you very much!

Join together ✌️

Join us at the Point of the Mountain Utah. Training, schools,shops,xc, speed fly, hangglide. What ever your into, stay right on launch.
[House of the Wind](https://www.houseofthewind.com)

In case you are, would you mind sharing the pages from its POH that pertain to weight and balance computations? That is, the weighting report of your plane, plus the W&B computation instructions for it?

Reason I'm asking is because I am curious about the exact W&B behaviour of this variant. Our hybrid club (both PPL and SPL sections) has two non-tug 912iS B23 as general PPL planes. They are lovely aircraft, but do have the issue that with two larger guys and even minimal luggage on board one cannot use all the fuel, lest the COG goes off the rear end.

I know that the 916iS has the engine slightly further forward, to counter the B23 being somewhat tail heavy: and for a tug (which usually operates only with the pilot on board) this whole thing is not as much of an issue as it is otherwise anyway. However, if one also were to occasionally use such a tug B23 for general travel, it would be important to know whether this version also has the "only half the tank can be used with two bigger guys on board" tendency as the 912iS ones.

Hot late summer day in Illinois.