If you are interested in growth in our sports, you should take a look at this
report and contact your regional director to tell him or her your views. I'll
have more to say on this later.
Last weekend the Newcastle club hosted the Canberra and Sydney
clubs for a fly and a BBQ. We had two days of good flying from Brokenback range.
We encouraged pilots to fly a task if they felt up to it. On the first day we
had more than half the field in goal, with lots of happy pilots. The goal on the
first day has a perfect up slope landing field across from the pub. So good that
the next day when it was on the way to goal, lots of pilots got pub suck and
landed there again. We had good flying conditions both days, the Sunday had
strong lift and overdeveloped later with a great storm. It depended on your
perspective though, if you were at goal, the pub or being rained and hailed on
in a paddock on the way to goal.
Monica and I had a great BBQ at our house. We had about 50 people there, I
seeded the party by giving out a model helicopter with Cyalume sticks on it. I
was flying my X Flying club plane through the BBQ area and handed out my water
pistol to people who were sure to use it mischievously. Monica was the one who
broke first and got the hose out to finish things off. Trent Brown who had been
a bit cheeky with the water ball blaster copped it.
We watched Playground in the Sky, people were rolling around on the floor
laughing. Then we had Foxy's latest Gulgong DVD (this is the best comp video
that I have seen, with heaps of air to air shots).
There are lots of happy people who are keen to come back again. The next party
to take our gliders to is at Tumut, the last round of this interclub series. We
will have instructors there to give low airtime pilots a safe introduction to
mountain flying and do some remedial work. There will be seminars some good
social flying and of course a number of BBQs, other things are still being
organised. It is sure to be a great party. The series is very well supported by
the New South Wales Hang Gliding Association, to provide free training and run
BBQs. Most important are the efforts of some enthusiastic organisers in the
local hosting clubs.
This is the best conversion program I've seen so far.
Richard <rich.jen1>
writes about his very cool IGC to KML file conversion program:
I've just fixed a small but annoying bug in IGC2KML, my program to
convert and collate gps traces to a single google earth kml file. Version 1.1
can be found here: http://www.mycloudbase.com/google/index.htm
Also on this page is version 1.3 of AIS2KML which downloads NOTAMs and displays
them in Google Earth.
Click on your flight and you get a lot of information about it in
Google Earth.
Want to join in the cross country pool?
http://ozreport.com/10.48#0 But you
are overseas? No problem. Send in $106 to my subscribe button above, and I'll
just transfer it to Steve Kroop. I'll send you back a confirmation.
As you now know I'm a total fan of stationary winch towing. I am
convinced that low and slow on a Condor is best method of teaching students to
fly safely. It trains students in an unthreatening environment until their
skills are automatic and instinctive. Their progression to higher altitudes and
other forms of HG is rendered easy and reliable.
I also agree that Steve Wendt is the perfect point man for this movement
(hopefully it will become an epidemic:).
In the last two years my appeals for support and subscriptions from Oz Report
readers have raised about $6,000 per year. That certainly helps keep the red ink
from flowing quite so fast on this cyber venture. Oz Report readers make a very
big difference. Without your support, well, I'd be getting more sleep.
If you like and/or read the Oz Report, use the Oz Report forum, use our
connections to Google Earth, won't you do a little something to help support us? $20 per year (or more if
you find the value here) for a year subscription:
If you want to send in a check it's:
Davis Straub
PMB 1889 PO Box 2430 Pensacola, FL 32513
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The Oz Report, a near-daily, world wide hang gliding news ezine, with reports on competitions, pilot rankings, political issues, fly-ins, the latest technology, ultralight sailplanes, reader feedback and anything else from within the global HG community worthy of coverage. Hang gliding, paragliding, hang gliders, paragliders, aerotowing, hang glide, paraglide, platform towing, competitions, fly-ins. Hang gliding and paragliding news from around the world, by Davis Straub.
