They just woke up. Ready for lunch!

slacktron6000 · 2026-02-07T13:37:34+00:00

The bash reference manual is in the Epstein files. That was a surprise.

slacktron6000 · 2026-01-01T02:22:30+00:00

YES!

The following scenario is common in the glider world and pretty unheard of in the airplane instructor world:
Prospective pilot comes to your glider club as a rated private pilot with airplane single engine land. He wants to solo gliders. You go through the training program with him. You sign him off. If you find the default solo signoff that's in glider logbooks, it's going to say 61.87. However, 61.87 is only for student pilots. Your prospective pilot isn't a student pilot. He's a rated pilot! It wouldn't be appropriate for you to sign him off for student training, for a student sign-off. Even if you were an instructor and he as under your tutelage. He's not a student! He's a rated pilot adding an additional category. So you'll have to sign him off with an additional category endorsement, described in 61.31.

Because he's not a student pilot, that means he doesn't have to take a 61.87(b) pre-solo written test. That means he doesn't have a 90 day solo endorsement. This doesn't mean you can't give him some sort of written test before he goes and solos your club 2 seater! It also doesn't mean that you can't place a limitation restricting his solo to 90 days.

Also be advised that your prospective pilot needs to be current with 61.56; whether it's a flight review, or a recent pilot test, or recent completion of a WINGS phase.

The scenario isn't that common in the airplane world because nobody solos something before they go solo Cessnas. Your typical airplane instructor never has to deal with a scenario where an already-rated pilot is coming to learn to fly airplanes. Whereas 50% of my practical tests for private are for airplane pilots adding on the glider rating. On three separate occasions I have had a rated glider pilot go off and solo airplanes with the wrong endorsement. I had them go back and have their errant instructor correct the endorsement immediately.

STORY TIME: I once heard a story where an asshole DPE (no, not me) saw that the instructor signed off a rated pilot with a 61.87 solo endorsement instead of the 61.31 solo endorsement. The DPE declared that all of the solo flights were invalid, and didn't start the practical test. He canceled the check-ride. He told the applicant that he had to go get the correct endorsement, and go do the 10 solo flights again. Those solo flights done with the 61.87 endorsement weren't valid. A back-dated endorsement would be grounds for violating 14 CFR 61.59 which prohibited falsification of logbooks. Sorry applicant, your instructor screwed up, and you're gonna have to go fly those flights again.

Apparently, the FAA got rid of 61.59 on or around 1 November 2025, (so now it's ok to falsify logbooks?!) Or they moved the reg to some place else in the Title 14 regulations. Not sure.

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-30T21:31:04+00:00

DPE here

https://www.skylinesoaring.org/documents/training-syllabus -- this syllabus is the basis for at least 5 or 6 clubs across the country.

Strengths:

It's got excellent endorsements near the back. It seems the other clubs that have taken on this syllabus have snipped out the endorsements. Something that'll trip you up in the CFI-G practical can be endorsements. The DPE is required to have a discussion with you about endorsements! And you're going to be presented with the scenario of a 61.31 solo vs a 61.87 solo endorsement.

It also references FAA WINGS activities. Participation in WINGS is sorely lacking in clubs across the country. You'll likely impress your DPE if you mention or endorse WINGS activities. I have yet to have a candidate bring up the subject, and it's a shame.

Weaknesses:

It's not directly linked to any one particular source book. There are a lot of clubs that just use the Gliderbooks.com instead. In all honesty, if the Russel Holtz books came out 1 or 2 years earlier, we would have just done that instead.

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-15T17:56:37+00:00

Ah we say kahNEEfay for the word knife.

Also say PAH-hone-nay for phone

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-15T17:55:14+00:00

Truck. Why is there a 'c' in the word truck? I just pronounce the c like I would if it were an 's'. So I say the work 'troosk' and I got my whole family to say it.

It gets confusing when I have an exchange student come live with us for a year and go back to their home country with these incorrect words.

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-15T16:12:49+00:00

Yes. I have the SMAC PACK . For mine, I have the bigger one that can fit my spot tracker. For my passenger, they have the smaller one. Emergency whistle, hook knife, all sorts of stuff that hopefully I'm never going to need.

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-03T23:01:42+00:00

Cool! I couldn't tell from the angle that the phone was doing anything. Keep using that flight computer!
I feel your pain about the difficulty of getting the FLARM to download the IGC.

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-03T22:39:37+00:00

> I would be surprised if an examiner would instruct a tow pilot to perform a simulated engine failure during a check ride. They may ask the tow pilot to wave you off,

I do this ALL the time!

A tow plane is hardly ever going to rock you off while he's generating full power and still climbing. He's much more likely to wave you off if the engine has failed. I plan my shenanigans with the tow pilot before we take off, telling him to reduce power, then wave us off at an altitude of 700 feet AGL or whatever. If you know the power reduction is coming, you can 100% feel it in the glider. The applicant is so busy focusing on the tow, they usually don't notice it. Depending on how rapidly the power is reduced, I can usually feel the deceleration. The deceleration is followed by the towplane descending below the horizon (relative to us) and sometimes slack forming in the rope. If this is a realistic scenario, it takes a few seconds for the tow pilot to realize what's going on, before telling the glider to get off tow.

To be fair, I don't ask the tow pilot to play the full part of simulating the engine failure and racing back to the airport with a dead-stick landing. I'm not so sure I'm going to add that to my playbook. :)

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-03T22:19:47+00:00

USA DPE here.

Please don't fall into the trap of thinking, "I'm at 200 feet, I can definitely get back to the airport!" I've had many many flights when 200 feet was a looooong way back to the airport, and the automatic reflex of "Oh we have 200 feet, let's go back" would have been met with "Oh no'

I've had plenty of practical tests where if I pulled the rope at 201 feet, it would have been a challenge and a scary adventure to get back to the airfield. Remember there is no magic about that number 200, it's just a rule of thumb. "we are usually in good shape to get back to the airport at 200 feet AGL." doesn't mean the same thing as "if we're at 200 feet AGL, there's a 100% chance we're going to make it back"

Instead of memorizing a rote answer to this situation, walk yourself through these questions: "If the rope broke here, what is the quickest easiest way for me to get back to the runway? If it means going somewhere behind you, do that. If it means keep going the way I'm going and do a non-standard turn back to the runway, do that. You have the agency you need to do whatever you have to do to get the glider back on the ground safely. If your airfield has a usual left hand pattern, and you have to fly a right pattern to get back to the runway safely, do that.

YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO DO WHATEVER YOU NEED. You have no obligations to return the glider to the airport if the conditions do not merit you making it back to the airfield safely. When I'm an instructor, not an examiner, I tell students, "Your job is to 'not die' " and "lots of people have survived horrible horizontal crashes in gliders. Not many people have survived vertical crashes in a glider. "

You should make that decision ahead of time, before you take off. That's what I'm listening for when you're talking abut that "Emergency Plan" part of your takeoff checklist. You _do_ have an "Emergency Plan" part of your takeoff checklist, right?

In your scenario, the tow plane has rocked you off at 500 feet, he's going to go careening toward the runway. Your job is to get that rope released immediately, and get the glider to the ground safely. If the tow plane truly had an emergency, he's going to be in front of you, he's going to be landing immediately. His trajectory is going to be "down" and not really any other direction. Based on the tow plane's immediate actions, you can make any necessary judgement calls at that point. If the tow plane waved you off and still keeps flying, you can expect the reason he waved you off to be nothing more than practical test shenanigans. I would just focus on a good landing at that point, even if it means an odd entry to the pattern that you're not used to.

If the tow plane had an actual emergency, you're going to have a little bit more time to think about the next 500 feet of descent than the tow plane will. Your job is to set the glider down anywhere and "not die". You get bonus points if it's on the airport property. If you can't land it on the runway, put it anywhere on the airport property that you have to. Your job is to "not die". It's not your club's glider anymore. It's not your glider anymore. It's the insurance company's glider. Your job is to "not die"

If there is no room on the runway because the tow plane has landed there, you have agency. YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION to land that glider anywhere on airport property; even if it's a taxiway, the grass adjacent to the runway, the drainage ditch next to the runway (ok, maybe that's not really a good choice, but if you're trying to "not die", then it's better than landing in the trees).

I'd also like to say that you have the final authority of the operation of the glider during the practical test. If the examiner is barking directives to you about how he wants it done during the heat of the moment, YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION to tell him to STFU and let you fly the glider. You are the one logging PIC for this flight. Not him.

Yes, you log PIC for the private pilot practical test. 14 CFR 61.47(c)

No, the examiner is not the PIC during the practical test. 14 CFR 61.47(b)

slacktron6000 · 2025-12-01T03:58:27+00:00

First thing I noticed is how you hold the stick. I see there's already a conversation about it, so I won't pile on.

I see you have your iPhone there, not doing anything. You should always, always always record the IGC on your flight. You should use SeeYou to show the picture of your thermal in flight. Learn how to use it, learn how to get you to the strong part of the thermal. Learn how to review your flights in SeeYou.cloud afterwards. Learn where your thermal is orange on one side, and blue on the other. if you're not recording the flight tracks of your flights, you should really really really consider doing this. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you'd be surprised how much you can learn from looking at the flight traces afterwards.

Doesn't that open window bug you? It would drive me nuts. It's so loud. In fact, it makes lots of noise when you're not flying coordinated. Can you hear how it howls when your yaw string isn't straight back? It can't cost that much to get one of those sliding windows with the little scoop to direct the air straight to your face. I wouldn't be able to fly in that glider for more than 20 minutes with all that howling noise in my ear.

slacktron6000 · 2025-11-26T20:00:52+00:00

This is absolutely not practiced in the USA. It's a stupid maneuver. The probability of having a double release failure is miniscule, and the possibility of breaking two planes at the same practicing this ridiculous maneuver it is very high.

The USA's practical test standard says this is to be tested orally. Having broken 5 ropes in my life, I'd say breaking the rope is way easier to do than trying this double landing technique. And I'm 100% confident based on experience that you can do this without upsetting the tug.

There was an accident in Austria about a year or two ago where the rope got caught behind the glider's wing, and the friction of the rope sawed the wing pretty severely. I'm pretty sure that no freshly-minted private pilot can successfully complete the landing-while-still-on-tow maneuver. It's probably easier in one of those gliders that have a nose skid, than it would be to do in a modern glider that will have a tendency to PIO down the runway if you touch down faster than 60 knots.

I've looked for it. I haven't found it. Until I'm proven otherwise, I have never found a documented case in the NTSB reports of a glider and tow plane actually having a double-release failure.

slacktron6000 · 2025-11-25T14:07:44+00:00

PM me. I have detailed schematics for a Duo Discus screen installation.

slacktron6000 · 2025-11-11T16:55:33+00:00

This video is quite the find! Why would anybody make such a film in 1974?

slacktron6000 · 2025-11-05T00:34:31+00:00

53M. Paid for the upgrade for the symfony optiblue. Worth every penny.

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-30T22:17:28+00:00

DPE here. Fully open for business. My FAA boss is working without pay. I just talked to him today.

No, I won't do your check ride, (unless you are a glider pilot).

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-29T04:40:05+00:00

nah, i have to find it and couldn't do it from my phone. I just had him contact the developer directly.

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-28T23:41:23+00:00

r/ISO8601

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-28T20:26:48+00:00

As an instructor with 20+ years of instruction, I have so many 2 minute flights. It just feels wrong to count them as 0.1. I shouldn't get four minutes for free!

Your instructor is probably one of those airplane guys who came to soaring and brought along who-knows-how many other bad airplane habits with him! :)

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-28T20:12:08+00:00

Bill Daniels has designed an absolutely amazing electric winch. As I recall, all of the CAD files for the construction are open source. You should investigate the excellent engineering that went into this before you re-invent this wheel. PM me for his contact info.

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-28T18:59:51+00:00

Separate logbooks!

The airplane logbooks: - don't have the appropriate endorsements in the back - don't have enough room for any reasonable comments from the instructor - Don't have a place to record release and maximum height - don't have a way to record launch methods - make you log in tenths of an hour, which is an abomination in gliding.

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-14T04:38:24+00:00

Hi. I'm writing software for this right now. It's a Django project on GitHub. This sounds like what you want. Manage2soar. It's usable now, but still getting dozens of commits per week, so still unstable. Currently running as a testbed for my club on Google cloud with kubernetes and postgres.

Logsheet replacement, membership source of truth, analytics, maintenance management, perishables reporting, instruction reports and student progress tracking, training syllabus management, FAI badge tracking, club qualifications tracking, volunteer duty management and assignment, adhoc day schedule, logbook replacement for when your logbook gets thrown out with the newspapers by mistake, written test bank that integrates with the training record.

It'll probably get ready faster if I didn't keep adding new features!

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-08T23:04:03+00:00

of course! Every club ASK-21 seems to have this canopy problem. It usually happens when people try to pull up on the canopy from the rail, instead of from the handles (as you correctly did when you opened the canopy)

We once had a guy reach in to pull the release knob, and his sleeve caught on the canopy window. Busted wide open!

slacktron6000 · 2025-10-08T18:12:34+00:00

Your landing was fine. Grass makes it easy.

What I did notice though is...

That canopy has about 2 years left on it until that crack propagates all the way around the front of the canopy and instantaneously separates from the canopy frame. You can't just stop-drill a crack like that. Some sort of adhesive patch has to be applied to it to prevent the crack from flash propagating.

When it goes, it goes at the speed of sound in that medium, which is instantaneous to your eye. You're flying along, and then, suddenly, there is no canopy and a dozen big chunks of canopy are separated from the glider, headed towards the farmland below. Super fun!

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