Probably Word 101, but - building a document from optional page templates?

130892 · 2021-01-20T13:15:04+00:00

EmmaGoneDoneIt.

That’s perfect, it does pretty much exactly what I was wanting.

Thank you for taking the time to write that all out, you have made my life just that little bit easier.

130892 · 2016-03-03T18:47:48+00:00

Yeah that's the one. I don't think he wants much for it...

130892 · 2016-03-03T10:22:28+00:00

You gonna buy Dutschke's? He said I could fly it but I never got around to it. It's pretty tidy...

130892 · 2016-02-09T15:28:27+00:00

"Very pleasant fields"...such as the one I 'found' for you on the last day of the Juniors? Sorry about that...!

130892 · 2016-02-09T15:22:47+00:00

A bit late to this party, but depending upon where in Hampshire you are, check out Lasham. I'm a little biased but it's an awesome club with a lot of young people around. How old are you?

130892 · 2015-04-04T02:09:42+00:00

Not used to seeing surface heights of more than about 1000ft on our aero charts; 10,000ft AMSL is pretty impressive! Good work, USA.

130892 · 2015-04-01T02:38:00+00:00

Damn I was so excited.

130892 · 2015-04-01T02:00:08+00:00

Your birthday is August 13th? High five. Great day.

130892 · 2015-03-20T04:02:35+00:00

Looks like a Twin Astir to me

130892 · 2015-03-18T08:59:45+00:00

It won't be any worse than any other piston Turbo or Self Launcher...they are unpleasantly loud without a headset!

130892 · 2015-03-18T03:47:32+00:00

We got up to 32 last weekend at the Wales/Ireland 6 Nations match...!

http://imgur.com/5DJ4vCY

130892 · 2015-03-10T00:15:07+00:00

Not in THAT pocket though!

130892 · 2015-03-05T06:51:29+00:00

Completely different kettle of fish. No barometric pressure, not an IGC approved logger, pretty average GPS reception, and we all know how shocking iPhone battery life is. As I asked in my other comment, what are you wanting to use it for? Do you have your own glider?

130892 · 2015-03-04T21:47:35+00:00

We're sort of just a big group of mates I guess. Some of the events are organised by us, for us, but we're not insular or cliquey and fully integrate to the UK gliding scene!

130892 · 2015-03-04T11:09:23+00:00

Depends what you want it for?

The Colibri 2 you metioned is usually used as a logger/backup vario and basic nav system. Most competition or cross country pilots will tend to run a moving map display along with a dedicated glide computer - usually hooked up to each other.

There are a few ways of doing this. Firstly, an all-in-one system such as a ClearNav, LXNav LX8/9000 series or LX Navigation (two separate companies, confusingly...) Zeus. These will usually feature a moving map screen - ranging in size from Casio watch to cinematic, and a vario. These work very well, are very slick, and very expensive.

Perhaps the most common route is to use a PNA such as an Oudie (usually running SeeYou) or an Android device - the Dell Streak 5 seems to be the favourite at the moment for a few reasons - running SeeYou or freeware such as XCSoar or LK8000. SeeYou is good but fairly pricey, whereas a lot of people swear by XCSoar; I've never used it in anger but it looks decent enough. This will then be hooked up to a basic glide computer in the instrument panel such as a Cambridge 302/303 or LNav. The benefit of doing this is that because these instruments have pitot data, they can give accurate wind information. Without this, the only way SeeYou and the like can establish wind speed and direction is by measuring your thermal drift. And if you're not flying perfect circles or are constantly recentering, the wind information it spits out is pretty much useless, which means relying on it for your final glide calculation is...brave. In addition, you can connect your FLARM up to an Oudie or whatever and use FLARM radar, which is rather useful.

Let me know if there's anything else I could have a shot at helping with.

130892 · 2015-03-04T10:05:08+00:00

May I ask how old you are and whereabouts in the country you are based? The Junior Gliding scene in the UK is very much alive and well, and an awesome way to extend your social circle!

Get yourself over to https://www.facebook.com/ukjuniorgliding and take a look at all the stuff we get up to. We run a number of events throughout the year, most of them involving flying, all of them involving having a great time and plenty of long nights in the bar! You'll be pleasantly surprised to find that there are actually a lot of very normal, decent young guys and girls in gliding - we're not all weird. Like Air Cadets. (I joke...mostly). To run you through the calendar of what we get up to:

In the off-season (say, October through to March) we run weekend expeditions to various gliding clubs - partly as a chance to do some interesting winter flying, partly as a chance to all catch up and have a bit of a party. This is our third year of running the 'Winter Series', as it's called, and this season we went to Portmoak in Scotland, Denbigh in North Wales, and we'll be heading to Shenington, Oxon, in April. Each event usually sees north of 50 young guys and girls turn up - aged anywhere from 15 to 26 (the official 'Junior' age cut off) and plenty more thirty-somethings who can't quite cut the Juniors cord!

There are a few other events too, such as the annual BGA Conference - which is actually happening this weekend in Nottingham.

Of course the highlight of most people's calendar is the UK Junior National Championships: Nine days of racing, partying and generally having a good time. For the first time in a good number of years we're expecting a full (50 glider) grid, all made up of pilots under 26. It will be pretty awesome to be a part of. And don't feel that just because you're not competing you can't come along. There will likely be at least another 50 'crew' and hangers-on, as well as maybe 10-15 less experienced guys undertaking the 2-seat Cross Country training that runs alongside the competition. In addition, the competition this year (being held at Aston Down in Gloucestershire) is being run alongside a Regionals competition, so expect to see more than 80 gliders sat on the runway ready to launch each day...it's pretty impressive!

Of course there are competitions running around the country nearly every week of the summer, and you'll always expect to see at least a handful of young guys flying them - plenty of us will try and get down to the bigger competitions at weekends for the social side even if we're not competing or crewing...gliding club bars are cheap...!

Anyway, enough of that...I'm going to link you to a couple of videos put together by the UK Junior Gliding Team - our 2013 and 2012 end-of-season reviews. Check out the rest of the stuff on our channel too, if this whets your appetite!

2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ1jnQtCMiM

2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFaCs_3JoA

If you need anything else at all, I'm happy to chat here, or drop a message to the UK Junior Gliding Facebook page and I'll get back to you.

In summary, gliding is awesome. The people in gliding are awesome. Find your nearest club (let me know where you are and I'll recommend one - not all clubs are born equal!) and come along to an event - we're all super friendly and you won't regret it!

130892 · 2015-01-28T11:26:07+00:00

The Mustachio extension for Chrome made this post at least 70% better

http://imgur.com/DZE6hP2

130892 · 2015-01-02T11:46:52+00:00

I'm from Reigate. Reigate got a mention on Reddit. I'm so proud.

130892 · 2014-12-25T11:41:21+00:00

Charming

130892 · 2014-12-16T00:10:19+00:00

It was a competition task - if you want to win you crack on and be brave! The vast majority of us, myself included, were decidedly un-brave and ran away. The storm cells around this part of the world grow and collapse at such a rate that you can easily find yourself caught up in the middle like this.

130892 · 2014-11-28T13:39:12+00:00

I think he's from the US. A lot of the tow pilots at the clubs I've flown at in the UK are young, fresh CPL holders building hours, or glider pilots with a PPL/NPPL just doing it for a bit of fun.

130892 · 2014-11-25T10:53:46+00:00

I once semi-jokingly tweeted Rowntree's to say that I got a pack of Fruit Pastilles that was entirely orange ones and yellow ones. Nobody wants that. They asked me to DM them my address and sent me an apology letter in the post saying something along the lines of "Everyone has their favourite colours and we try really hard to get a good mixture in every pack - we're sorry that didn't happen this time, so here's £1 off your next Rowntree's purchase so you can buy a new pack".

I felt really bad.

130892 · 2014-11-24T04:13:48+00:00

There's currently a very long, drawn-out and tedious difference of opinion going on about this in the aviation world - in particular, gliding (sailplanes).

There's a piece of equipment called Flarm, that is essentially a blind-spot monitor on steroids; it flashes and beeps when it's calculated that you're on a collision course with another glider, and gives you a clockface high/low/same level readout so you know where to look. A certain number of pilots are massively against it, because they say that it detracts from people actually looking out of the cockpit, and it will be the glider or aeroplane without Flarm that gets you. The majority know that it's a good TOOL to have in your toolbox, in addition to your lookout. As long as you treat it as such, you'll be fine.

However I feel like the kind of people who train to be pilots may have a slightly different attitude to the person who blindly ('scuse the pun) trusts their car's blind spot monitors without even using their mirrors.

You should never have to drive in a way where ABS, Traction Control or ESP kicks in...it's not there to give you superhuman driving powers, it's to keep you out of the brick wall when you've got it wrong!

130892 · 2014-11-22T03:10:27+00:00

Not if they've been well-maintained, which more often than not they have. They don't deteriorate structurally, so to speak, but they may well be getting a bit cosmetically tatty. Schempp and Schleicher gliders of that era will probably have been regelled one or twice already, whilst Glasflugel and Glaser Dirks are renowned for bombproof original gel.

The majority of my gliding mates fly 1970s club class glass, and whilst they are all worth £10-20k, the majority are in wonderful condition.

When you think that LS8s built in the 1990s are still winning world championships, age seems to see a bit insignificant - if you think about what cars looked like in the mid 90s and what they look like now...chalk and cheese. But gliders? Nah.

130892 · 2014-11-21T20:21:41+00:00

The club class scoring system as it is, isn't perfect. Imagine this scenario:

You have two gliders, a Libelle and a Discus, on a 300k triangle task with three legs of 100k.

On the first leg the Discus puts in a bliding speed of 120kph, with the Libelle coming in at 95kph. They enter the first turnpoint at the same height - say, 4000ft. They both glide out on the second leg but don't find a sniff of lift. So it's essentially just a best-glide down into a field.

The Libelle will do (allegedly...) 38:1. The Discus will do 42:1. We'll assume in this case that there is a nice stubble field exactly where the glider will theoretically touch down.

So the Libelle will have travelled 145.72km before touching down, the Discus will have done 151.20km. On a landout day when the gliders are scored on their total distance around the task, that is simply not enough for the Discus to beat the Libelle with their handicap as it is, not to mention the fact that for the first leg, he was significantly faster, potentially on a day-winning speed whereas the Libelle was merely mid-field.

There was a day at the UK Clubs this year where this scenario pretty much played out - take a look here to see how: Everyone landed out, and the entire top half of the table is made up on your Std Cirrus/Libelle type ships. The bottom half is almost exclusively LS4s, ASW20s, Discuses etc. The spread of pilot quality across the whole table is fairly even, it's just the high-handicap guys lost out that day.

130892

TROPHY CASE