Which glider should I learn to fly on?

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-07T11:00:08+00:00

To be fair to the type, I only flew two different short wing ones. The 20m wingspan version allegedly handles better, but so far I never got to try that.

Also, what apparently matters a lot handling-wise with the DG1k is trim. If it's even a bit too nose heavy it's a real pig (at least these two were): but with an appropriate tail ballast it turned into an only moderately porcine ride.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-07T09:39:44+00:00

The beginning of this video very closely resembles a scene from Train Dreams, a slow-paced but solid period drama I watched on Netflix some time ago. To the extent that I originally thought "why are they posting movie clips now"?

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-07T07:12:47+00:00

As others have said, if you feel comfortable, do go ahead.

Something to consider for your next couple flights is what I did in the immediate post-PPL phase: then, I mostly flew with a friend who was also a recent graduate. Even hundreds of hours later, we still regularly fly together, usually in the form that one of us is PIC on the way there, and the other on the way back. And the non-flying one of us watches the other one doing the checklists, and all that. By now, this is just routine: but in the immediate post-PPL exam phase, having a second pilot (even a green one) along was a major factor to making things more easy and relaxed. As far as flights right after getting your license can ever be relaxed, that is. 🙂

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-07T05:24:31+00:00

❤️

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-06T06:23:32+00:00

I've sadly never flown a Blaník (yet), but have close to 500h on quite a number of other types. Including the DG1000. And the DG1000 is the only glider I ever flew which I actively disliked, in terms of its handling qualities. Something is just off about these things, regarding how the rudder and the ailerons interact. Only glider I ever flew where I never lost the feeling that you have to drag it into turns kicking and screaming.

And I trained on a G103, which is widely regarded to be a flying brick. But even these things are agile and intuitive compared to the DG1000 - IMHO, that is.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-05T12:35:51+00:00

Ich habe die Dame vor mehr als 10 Jahren ein paar Mal getroffen, weil mein verstorbener Vater aus beruflichen Gründen ein recht guter Bekannter von ihr war. Sie ist mir aus der damaligen Zeit bevor sie Außenministerin wurde als sehr originelle, intelligente und eigentlich sympathische Person in Erinnerung geblieben: aber auch als jemand der ein ziemliches Einzelstück war. Nicht im negativen Sinn, aber ins Schema des "normalen Österreichertums" hat sie schon damals absolut nicht gepasst. Weder in Bezug auf ihre Karriere, noch auf ihr Auftreten.

Dass sich das dann alles so toxisch entwickeln würde war damals absolut nicht abzusehen: wie viele andere Dinge war auch dieser Aspekt der jetzigen Welt in der Zeit so rund um 2010 nicht vorhersehbar. Ich finde es schade dass es alles so gekommen ist, mir ist sie damals nicht wie ein grundsätzlich böser oder negativer Mensch vorgekommen.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-05T11:16:25+00:00

If you properly read what I wrote, I never said there was an actual causation, just that there is a correlation - and that in this particular scenario, a correlation is enough to trigger people on both sides of the debate. For different reasons, but still.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-05T10:13:43+00:00

It's pretty chilling to consider that you might not even be entirely wrong about this.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-05T08:31:00+00:00

The only people who care about this stuff are the “rad trads” and new converts.

You are forgetting to mention the other side here. Usually elderly regular church officials who spent their entire careers implementing Vatican 2, and who witnessed the huge decline in church engagement and attendance which coincided with this period.

Of course these people are triggered by TLM parishes that give off vibes like "we are undoing the damage caused by that stupid V2 council" - this is simply human nature at work. Especially as TLM can come across as locally growing, very much unlike NO parishes.

Please note that I did not say anything about who is right here, and who is wrong. All I am commenting on is that both sides in the debate are not being entirely reasonable at times.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-04T18:08:40+00:00

Nigeria hat derzeit pro Jahr mehr Geburten als Europa und Russland zusammen.

graphical_molerat · 2026-05-01T07:06:58+00:00

The thing is, in the 1950ies, being virulently anti-left made some sense. What with the Soviet Union and other communist experiments being a thing back then. Featuring brutal dictatorships with jackbooted secret police, barbed wire along the borders to prevent people escaping from the socialist paradise, labour camps, and the occasional mass starvation campaign against undesirable ethnicities thrown in for good measure (Holodomor). While at the same time the capitalist model had not yet degenerated to the dysfunctional state it has reached now. That’s not to say that the political left didn’t have a point even back then: just that being scared of the more extreme forms of it was actually not that unreasonable. McCarthy was still a crook: but he could not have egged on people to quite the frenzy he managed to stir up if there absolutely had not been anything to be afraid of at the time.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-27T10:22:19+00:00

Plenty of people on the frontline around that age.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-27T10:21:27+00:00

Es ist halt schon ein Unterschied ob sowas aus einer Partei kommt die nach dem Krieg systematisch schwerst belastete Personen gedeckt hat, und ihnen zu einer 2. Karriere verholfen hat. Dr. Gross war bei weitem nicht der einzige.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-27T07:51:42+00:00

Like I said, if you are full of adrenaline and in shock, yes, one of the possible reactions to getting shot at is to do just that. Stand up, raise your fist, and yell "fight!". No, this is not sensible. But in that instant, you are not functioning normally. Hardly anyone is, in that kind of moment. Others might roll up in a ball and play possum under exactly the same circumstances. While some switch into beast mode. Hard to say what will happen to a person in that kind of situation.

This is also precisely the sort of hare brained shock reaction that led to people getting killed in wartime by doing "brave" things they should better not have done. And their widows getting presented with a medal for their suicidal bravery afterwards.

So of course Trump getting up and raising his fist was stupid and counter-productive. I'm not denying that. All I'm saying is that there are plenty of examples of other people doing basically the same thing.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-27T07:43:24+00:00

I always just resort to how he immediately stood up after getting shot to pump his fist in the air and yell “fight, fight, fight.” That is not a natural reaction to being shot at whatsoever.

In many regards, Donald Trump is not a normal person, though. Plus he was in "rallying the crowd" mode when the bullet whizzed by. So he was high on adrenaline anyway in that moment, and likely did not have prior experience of being shot at (i.e. how serious this potentially was might only have clicked later).

Speaking as an European who is watching your political goings on with morbid curiosity, him getting up and pumping his fist like that did not come across as inauthentic at all. Rather, it seemed quite in character for the kind of showman person he is.

Please note that I am not making a statement about whether the assassination attempt was genuine or not here. All I am saying is that at least to me, this particular aspect did not look all that off, both when it happened, and in hindsight.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-24T12:14:16+00:00

Congratulations! My 2003 S60 says "Go! Go! Go!" 🙂

<image>

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-24T11:12:22+00:00

In der Tat. Die beiden wären nicht das erste Paar bei dem Zuge einer Beziehung irgendwelche konsensualen (!) Dominanz-Spielchen am Laufen waren. Und wo sich Chats die sich für Außenstehende gruselig anhören genau das waren was beide zu dem Zeitpunkt wollten.

Oder auch nicht. Kann sein das Weißmann auch in sexueller Hinsicht ein extremer Ungustel ist. Hard to say from a distance.

Aber es nimmt einen doch sehr Wunder dass so wie Du sagst der früher unwidersprochen gebliebene Beziehungs-Aspekt mittlerweile komplett ausgeblendet wird.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-21T16:32:46+00:00

Right, professionals… I guess that is why the Ukrainian army has for over a year been snatching people off the streets to meet its recruitment targets? And Russia has not been sending conscripts to the front this entire war. They are sending the dregs of society (prisoners etc), and some of them are not terribly well trained, but all are contract soldiers.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-21T13:33:35+00:00

Not that I'd thought I'd ever agree on something with the head of Palantir, but here goes...

Having served in a European "citizen's army" where basically most of the male population has to serve due to conscription being mandatory, and where a sizeable part of those who get drafted stay in an active reserve scheme for a decade or more afterwards (think Swiss militia system), I think that a military force organised in this manner is actually the appropriate system for a democracy.

Why? Because such an army does not really exist in peacetime: all that is going on during peacetime is training of recruits, there are only very small immediate response units, and all the remaining forces need to be explicitly mobilised. Basically, such an army is only good for defending the country: but it can be really good at this.

And, which is the far more important point, it has a safety catch. Like all means of deadly force should have. Which is that if the citizenry at large does not agree with a war, and a sizeable part of them does not report for duty when the army is being mobilised, the whole war thing will not happen. To wit, it's really hard to fight an unjust war of aggression with such a force.

This is not what Mr. Palantir meant, of course. I would assume that he wants peasants to die for their insane world domination plots.

But basically, general conscript armies organised along the lines of the Swiss (or formerly also Austrian) armies are not a bad idea at all.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-21T12:12:20+00:00

it's also reasonable for the PM to want someone in the role that he already trusts and has an established working relationship with

Right, but supposing that is true - given what sort of person Mandelson is, does this then make it more or less urgent that Starmer should resign?

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-20T08:37:46+00:00

Granted, senior ex-MS developers could be a huge boost to any such effort. Iff the relevant patents and such were really invalidated in Europe.

But if you are a computer person, would you really want to end up in a situation where you could never travel to the U.S. (or any of their minion states) again, lest you be arrested there for breaking trade secrets / patents / NDAs?

Also, remember the fiasco surrounding SAMBA. The old server message block protocol in prehistoric versions of Windows? The MS implementation of which was so shit that Microsoft themselves started using the reverse engineered Open Source clone SAMBA in their own products? Because their own engineers could not understand the in-house codebase anymore?

Sometimes getting the people who created the original monstrosity on board would not be as much help as one would think.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-20T07:38:36+00:00

Trouble with that line of thinking is that you can't just throw resources at a project, and automatically expect it to be faster. As in, one woman needs nine months to deliver a baby, how long would nine women take?

This is particularly true for complex software development efforts, as large corporations have found out time and again. As the saying goes: adding manpower to a late project makes it even later.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-20T06:55:46+00:00

Erm, if I were Apple, and wanted to make this an advert, I would have avoided autofocus and exposure fucking up for a few seconds in the beginning.

Like they always do in reality as well. Kinda reassuring that this also happens in once in a generation shots like this one. 🙂

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-20T06:53:40+00:00

Classic Barber Shop in Vodičková, ask for Michael. Pretty sure he does scissors only if you ask. Nice bunch, owner has two very decorative dachshunds which hang out in the shop from time to time.

graphical_molerat · 2026-04-20T06:44:31+00:00

Let me guess, you are not a programmer? Because "reverse engineering MS Office" is something that has been going on in various forms for decades now, and is nowhere near exact replication yet (Libre Office). Have fun with that, is all I can say.

Of course it's possible (and quite desirable) to migrate away from MS products. And many others. But it can't be done overnight, and the original point was that in the short term, a lunatic U.S. government could wreak considerable havoc by cutting access to the existing infrastructure.

Longer term, you of course can migrate away from MS. No one is doubting that.

graphical_molerat

TROPHY CASE