Want to display a spot or two or a hundred in Google Earth?
Gerry just doesn't stop playing with the Google Maps and Google
Earth APIs. I passed along a video (go to the
Oz ReportRadio videos) of a
pre-flight problem
(warning, horrible crash) that happened near him. He wrote about it:
Notice the clever use of co-ordinates and place name here to call
up Google Earth and display the place with a Placemarker. Give it a try with
your own places. Think about how useful that can be.
I've added fields for their email (which is encrypted to prevent
harvesting by spambots but will still allow click-to-email functionality) and
another for any other info they want to include in the little balloon that pops
up when someone clicks on their location icon.
David Glover <davidhglover>
sends Celebrity Google Maps:
Scooter towing is in the e-air and working in Ohio. I found
teaching on the hills back in the late seventies and early eighties to be very
unproductive, and unreliable in spite of the fact that most Ohio pilots back
then learned in that manner. Fast fwd to the 21st century.
Working with Michael Robertson convinced me that stationary towing is the best
way to learn hang gliding. Articles in this publication about Dave Broyles's
scooterzilla and talking with Steve Wendt about his experience with his Yamaha,
combined with the generosity of a fantastic aviation promoter and airfield owner
Wes Jones, helps get me back in the teaching saddle and Wings to Fly ltd (http://www.aldenaviation.com/)
is born.
No need to reinvent the wheel here. I copied Steve's winch the first year and
then Dave's winch the 2nd year. My Scootzilla, named by my scooter mechanic
never knowing of Dave's, is just as ugly and just as functional.
I try to keep things real simple using barrel type releases and
pulling off the shoulders as in aero towing. I don't use a turn around pulley. I
just start with the winch close to the students, using radios, and start backing
up as they progress, giving them a ride back to the launch area on a golf cart.
Not only do the students not have to carry up they don't even need to carry back.
Students learn from the bottom up rather than from the top down as in tandem
aero towed training. Lots of ground handling and perfecting take offs and
landings from the start. In as little as two lessons some students have
progressed from ground handling to boxing the field to stand up landings.
Have not had much luck with my big WW 330 Condor as it seems too tail heavy for
everyone. But all the Falcons and the Target are great trainers and fun to fly
gliders. These gliders, plus the ability to reposition glider and winch to
accommodate changing wind direction, have made teaching hang gliding and
paragliding fun and practical. Usually after ten lessons students of scooter tow
training are flying prone, working lift, launching off a cart, have a novice
rating and are ready for hill soaring and aero towing.
I find scooter towing with a 250 cc Honda Helix based winch like Broyles
pioneered to be a simple safe way to teach. It will even pull a tandem. It
certainly can't match the quality of tow one can have off a hydrostatic winch
but for those with a limited budget it's a close second. But it all comes to
having a place to tow from. Thanks to Wes Jones and all the other aviation
friendly land owners who let us fly.
So I was in Home Depot about six months ago and noticed this cool
product. It's called "Plasti Dip" and it comes in a small paint can. It's used
to replenish the grips on metal tools. The concept is simple. Take a metal pair
of pliers, dip the handles into the vat-o-goo, wait a couple of hours, and you
have a new rubberized handle! Pretty neat. I thought how cool that would be to
dip my downtubes in it, however, that would have been cost and weight
prohibitive. Brushing on didn't seem to be any better aerodynamically as simply
wrapping the tubes with tape, so I passed on the idea.
Then, a week ago, I happened on that same isle and there before me was a spray
can version of the same stuff!! Now that may have possibilities I thought. I
quickly bought a can. First, I took my old pair of "used-to-be-sticky" football
gloves. Being useless now for hang gliding, I thought "what the heck". So
sprayed the palms of the gloves with the stuff. It dried surprisingly flexible
and quickly brought back the sticky life back to these thin leather gloves.
Then, I put my eyes on the down tubes. I masked and sprayed a six inch section
on the outside of tubes where my hands are during launch. For giggles, I also
masked a six inch section on the inside of the tubes where my shoulders hit. The
"paint" dries very thin and adds significant grip to the tubes (especially when
coupled with the sticky gloves). My grip problems are solved and it will add
negligible (if any) additional drag to the tubes.
What I don't know is how durable this stuff is over the long run. I just put it
on and am very happy with it, however, I don't fly all that much and I'm pretty
easy on my equipment, so it will be a while before I see how this stuff holds up
over time. It works great on the thin leather gloves. I was considering spraying
this stuff on the bottom of my airfoil based tube for added protection on the
ground. Haven't done that yet.
I'm also writing a tool to automatically download and convert UK NOTAMs into KML
format for ease of viewing. Currently only in a crude dos executable form but
also available for download if people want to play with it.
Both programs are freeware, donations welcomed if find useful.
I get my anti-spam service from hang glider pilot Jim Page <Jim.Page>
at http://www.emailsystems.com/. It's
an absolutely essential service. I wrote to Jim lately and he responded:
We are always evaluating new spam filters. There is an awful lot
of organised crime money going into new ways of getting round the filters so we
are not out of a job yet! You are pretty much maxed out on the filter settings
right now but we have some new stuff in the pipeline. A quick scan of your
delivery log looks as if you may be getting maybe ten or so SPAM messages a day
through our filters. We are filtering about 350-400 or so messages for you
daily, so that amounts to 96+% success rate which is not too bad (but not
awesome) by our standards. We should be able to improve on this in the coming
months. It's always a work in progress!
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Credits
Gerry makes the Oz Report portal much smarter. He is a web consultant
and a PHP expert. He's the brains behind the Oz Report, so contact him for PHP
programming services. David Glover
heads up the Oz Report Radio
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.
