If you weren't there you missed a really great time. Yes, I know,
you've got a real job with real obligations and kids to put through college or
at least high school and can't go running all over the country just to attend
some little competition out in some peninsula or other.
But, jeez, the weather was great, the flying was spectacular, the area is so
beautiful, the fields to land in so plentiful and the people so friendly. It's a
hang gliding paradise and since you can land anywhere, a great place for Sport
Class pilots (some of whom had never gone cross country before).
The air was a dream to fly in. I was amazed at how low you could be for so long
and still find reasonable lift. Most of the flying took place below 3,000' and
it just wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.
I'm encouraging Adam and Sunny to apply to do the Sport Class and Single Surface
Class Nationals there next year. This year's Sport Class was very competitive.
At the end of the meet they were putting up their flights in See You and all of
them checking out what they had done wrong at certain points, seven or eight
people around a computer screen watching multiple flights at once playing in 3D
against each other.
Adam wants to make sure that the Single Surface pilots (or anyone else for that
matter) don't land within three miles of the airport so as not to wear out our
welcome with the neighbors (there are already two $100 fields at the end of the
runway (which no one landed in this year). I gave him a couple of ideas about
how we could work it so that the Falcon and Target pilots would not cause
problems with the neighbors (say a $50 fee if you did land within three miles of
the airport).
We'll see how much enthusiasm for the Sport and Single Surface classes there are
in Big Spring and go from there. Hopefully the USHPA competition committee will
get behind this. It sure looked to us like Sport Class was a cool entry point
for getting into competition (and thereby having the fun of competition).
Adam and Sunny did a great job with the facilities and the volunteers were
great. David Glover handled all the duties of the meet director and scorekeeper
while still playing Texas Hold 'em.
The Oz Report forum handles multiple languages now
We've been getting a few posting in Portuguese and French, so
Gerry added an automated machine translation capability into the Oz Report
forum. I guess he does this because he lives in a bi-lingual country. It's
there. Use it if you feel like it.
Gerry writes:
Maybe the "Use it if you feel like it." Part should be something
more like: "You don't have to do anything to use it, but make sure that you have
your language preference set right in your forum Profile. If you post a message
in a different language than that please be sure to select the right language
for that message at the bottom of the Post page."
Yeah, I had to make an English/French mod for the HPAC/ACVL forum (http://hpac.ca/forum/
and http://acvl.ca/forum/ go to the same
place but you get different languages, and regardless of that logged-in users
can select whichever one they want), so installing it on yours was easy.
"Bilingual" usually isn't hyphenated but it might be OK either way. Same with
"multilingual" but it's a much less common word. Work for any government or
official organization up here and you're gonna say "bilingual" a couple dozen
times a day (probably with something colourful just before it).
I saw that Steve Wendt is trying to simplify the over/under
release. Last fall and this spring I have also been trying to better the
stationary towing release. You can find it
here.
Are we helping to kill our planet by traveling the world in pursuit of the
perfect day? Do our airline flights to competitions contribute to global
warming, and if so, could a knock-on effect be worse flying conditions in years
to come?
As part of our Green Issue coming out in July, we're inviting pilots to
contribute their thoughts. Take part in our quick questionnaire here and our
calculator will tell you how many tones of carbon you emit by going flying:
http://www.bamdigitalstudios.com/xc/
Bob Drury, XC's editor, would love to hear your views on how environmentally
friendly you think our sport is, and any ways in which we can lower the impact
we have.
For example, we'd like to work out whether aero-towing is actually 'greener'
than driving to sites to fly. Can anyone tell us how much gas is burnt on a
typical tow to 2500ft?
Send in your thoughts to <editor>.
We really want to hear from you.
Last February, during the Plenary in Lausanne, the issue of
undertaking a statement on environmental matters was addressed. CIVL
Environmental Affairs Working Group would like NACs and concerned persons to
answer a few questions… Has your organisation been working on such a statement?
I doubt if we can say much about how global warming will affect
our flying conditions in the future as we know only generally how things are
going to change based on a broad range of future predicted average temperatures.
Of course, flying in airlines contributes to global warming, but the
contributions of hang glider pilots is obviously negligible as would be true of
any very small group of people, even very relatively rich people (by world
standards).
The contributions of the actions of hang glider pilots to global warming could
be easily offset by actions that we are already taking (discouraging development
by purchasing landing zones and flight parks) or by additional purchase of lands
to grow carbon dioxide absorbing plants.
You can also calculate the relative reduction in carbon dioxide production due
to the reduced income of hang glider pilots due to their concentration and focus
on free flying as opposed to their careers and child production. It looks like I
contribute six tons of carbon dioxide a year. This is due to flying to Australia
and back and driving from flight park to flight park in my big diesel truck,
often pulling my trailer/motor home. But it doesn't account for the fact that
this is my only home and is very small, so it produces much less carbon dioxide
than a "standard" home.
Davis, world number 23 (rigid) and 38 (flex).
(Canungra)
Jonny Durand Jnr takes the number one flex wing world ranking
spot. Is Jonny the first Australian to be ranked number 1 or did Steve Moyes
have that honor? Find it
here.
The rigid wing ranking
here.
I hear Gerolf is mad.
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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
web site, so contact him for PHP
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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.
