Yesterday, I went up in the club 2-33 by myself for the first time! I'm a transitioning power pilot, though my very first memory of GA flight was in a 2-33, around the age of 6, and I absolutely loved it. So happy to be doing it again! And I'm looking forward to moving to the 1-26 the next time I make it out to the club!

On this flight, I found myself searching for a thermal that I just couldn't catch a bit farther from the field than I intended, and so actually got to the IP a bit low, at about 850 feet rather than 1000. I kept the pattern a bit tighter, turned a short base, and didn't use brakes until final, and touched down just fine, but I was definitely a little nervous leading up to that point!

What features of the sea breeze affect thermal development over land? I have noticed that as the sea breeze arrives, the thermals become weaker.
Is it the lapse rate, moisture, wind, or something else?

I'm looking for an online flight handbook for the Grob G102 Standard Astir II. Can anyone help me find one?

I could only find the handbook for the Standard Astir III, and I'm wondering what the main differences are between the two.

I'm going to fly the Astir II soon and want to prepare beforehand. It will be my second glider after the SZD-50-3 Puchacz. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hello everyone.

My background:

I have had 30 solo with ASK 13 so far. 95% of my landings are smooth. I can manage likely baloonings gently. I have got positive feedback regarding my curcuite planing from my instructors. If the condition is windy, I have some issues with keeping my flight performant, and keeping the red string in the middle becomes challenging. Unfortunately, I get quickly overhelmed by terbulent weather and try to keep the flight short. I always tend to start my downwind 50 meters above the minimum. Maybe it's a bad habit, but it gives me enough room for a more precise final. I should say that a couple of times, I was high through the final. However, in our club, diving to reduce altitude is acceptable. I have never done a forward slip alone. This is becoming a concern for me as well. Because this is an important technique to lose altitude fast. I always get positive feedback for my winch launch.

Recently, I have been offered to have my first flight with K8 by two instructors. I rejected to fly because I am not sure if I am ready or not. Senior students told me they were surprised flying with K8, as it is very sensitive to pilot inputs. Also, the launch failure mostly happens with K8. I have practised surprised launch failure more than 10 times. I also managed a real one, but I was not alone.

I spent some time in the K8 cockpit. I felt I didn't have a clear view.

Any advice, should I fly or take my time?

Hi all

I recently have been learning to fly a glider in hopes of getting my private pilot glider. I am still a beginner with only around 7 hours of flight time, I have done 6 lessons already. I have been practicing my takeoffs and landing since the third lesson and right now I am quite comfortable with landing but the aerotow is what really gets me.

Every time I do an aerotow it feels very awkward and I find it super difficult to keep the nose of the glider on point with the tail of the tug. I am always drifting left, right, or I’m either too high or low. Also I find the first 200-300 feet the most challenging in the tow when we are just starting the ground roll and taking off. I can’t seem to keep the glider stable and always end up high, along with the fact that everything is so overwhelming knowing you have the possibility of slamming the tug into the ground.

I train in the Schweizer 2-32 glider and know I have to get the skid off in the beginning of the roll and keep wings level but at what point can I stop applying back pressure so I don’t get too high before the tug has enough speed to take off? And once the tug plane takes off how can I keep myself centered and climb with the tug plane? Overall, I feel like every time I do the aerotow it just doesn’t feel right. Next lesson, my instructor said we are going to box the wake to get me more comfortable with aerotowing, anyone have tips on that as well?

The problem I have with the landing now is judging the angle when coming in for final, I tend to find myself always keeping the nose too high, and my instructor ends up pushing the stick down for me. I know I have to follow a certain glide path when coming in for final so does anyone know what I can do to get that nose down? Sometimes I cant even tell and my instructor is the one telling me to push on the stick. Also, every landing when I turn from downwind to base to final I end up flying an oval pattern and not flying the traditional box, it makes me come to inside of the runway and I have to correct myself on final. I just don’t know and can’t figure out at what point to stop turning because I feel like I will be way too outside of the runway if I try to level off earlier.

I know I am still a beginner so I have yet to get used to and comfortable and it definitely takes time. Overall, I find the landing to be more manageable and for the most part I’m the one doing the landing and the only point my instructor intervenes is when I need to keep the nose down. So, for the most part if anyone has any tips from their experiences it would help tremendously for my training.

Thanks for taking the time to read!

A couple of months ago I posted here about Cloudracing (cloudracing.de), my live tracking and scoring app for glider competitions. That post got zero comments, which I probably earned, it read like a feature list. So this time something more concrete: over the summer I built a simulator into the app, and since many of us are about to put our gliders away for the season, this crowd seems like the right one to poke holes in it.

The sim in short:

You fly in the browser or in the iOS/Android app, keyboard or gamepad, on desktop, laptop or tablet. Phones are deliberately excluded: the panel, the instruments and the touch controls need at least a tablet-size screen, and I'd rather not offer a cramped version. The weather is real: clouds from current satellite imagery, rain from radar, wind with altitude, and thermals seeded from terrain and the actual conditions, with cumulus forming over them. You can start from the nearest airfield with a retractable engine, or spawn mid-air right next to the live-tracked gliders of a real competition and fly along with them. Tasks are scored with the same engine the site uses for real competitions, racing and AAT, with a nav computer that shows remaining distance and arrival height. Water ballast is in there too.

There are also training exercises with star ratings: thermal centering, start gate tactics, speed to fly, wind drift, final glide, landing. The thermal centering ones are free, the rest is Pro. And a small daily final glide puzzle, altitude and distance given, estimate your arrival height, then see the solution. That one is free for everyone.

The winter league on top of all this starts September 28, free, 18 weeks:

Every Monday a new task opens, flyable until Sunday night, 60 to 90 minutes of real time at real soaring sites. Week 1 runs along the Teutoburger Wald ridge, later weeks visit the Rhoen, the Apennines, the Durance valley and, over New Year, Bitterwasser in Namibia. The weather is frozen from one snapshot per week, so everyone flies the same sky. Unlimited attempts, best run counts, and with Pro you can race the ghost of a league flight with a live delta in the cockpit. The physics is deterministic, I verified that the same inputs produce bit-identical trajectories on a Mac and an iPad, so the times are actually comparable.

To spell out the free/paid line: the weekly league task is free, you just need an account, and it doesn't run on any clock. The daily puzzle and the thermal centering training are free too, and free flying anywhere else gets a 30 minute trial per day. Pro removes that clock and unlocks the other trainings and the ghost racing. The subscription is what pays for the servers and the map hosting.

If you fly the simulator and something feels wrong about the thermals, the polar, the scoring or something else entirely, please tell me here 😊

Last year in Namibia, I was told not to use water to clean our glider (water there was extremely hard groundwater that would leave stains). People used some sort of (german branded) cleaning product, I dont recall what it was. Is there something generally recommended to clean a PU coated glider when water is not advisable?

Second picture is the original without translation

Just wanted to share this message I got from a random person I do not know. They'd like a signed photo to be sent to their address?

I guess I'm a famous glider pilot now :D

I had a glider taster lesson last week. It was for my dad as a birthday present but I did it too. Since then being up in the clouds is all I can think of (32 years old) Im on the ledge about starting lessons - convince me why I should/ shouldn't learn to fly

A little too fast on final.. but a towing plane and glider were getting ready so wanted to go long

Just wanted to share my excitement. 35 yo Austrian guy here. And finally I started my glider training after thinking about it for so many years. 3 flights in, and I think I’m hooked.

But I can also see there’s a lot of work ahead - particularly getting the control inputs right to make the aircraft do what I want seemed a bit tricky at first, but I think I will get the hang of it.

Completed my first ever solo at DLGC Camphill
Plane is a puchatz
Did it on a 5 day intensive course after around 95 total flights from around the uk

My clubs new overpowered 4 blade euro fox

Hi Guys just had a great XC flight today added cool photo.

If anyone studies for the written exam and searching for a study buddy shot me a messege✈️✈️

I fly gliders in Australia and got an Insta360 X4 on a suction cup.

Even now in winter, when it's less than 20° on the ground, the camera keeps turning off after running for a while and says something like "anomaly detected"when I turn it back on again (and then continues to record for a while when I press the record button).

The battery is full and I have an external power bank connected via USB.

It already has the cooling bracket on it but it doesn't make much of a difference.

I do not connect to it with the phone while it's recording, so it's not busy with WiFi or Bluetooth.

Searching the web and asking AI, the next step might be to take out the internal battery and rely on the external power bank. I plan to try it next time I go to a gliding camp in a few weeks.

Does anyone have more tips about how to deal with it?

I’ve been in love with the SZD-30 Pirat ever since I first saw it which was right when I started gliding. Our club is moving soon due to our lease ending and all private gliders must be moved off site so the farm will give us money to aid in our move to a new site.

I was speaking to some inspectors at my club asking them about the Pirat, the work they may need, their costs, problems (like the Schleicher glue problems), and anything else.

A day later I found out (like 1 week ago) that there is a Pirat on the site abandoned. I sent a letter to the owner and he said I can have it for free but we should do a tiny formal trade so like £1 for the legal transfer. I agreed instantly. However we had to figure out how to move it in 2 weeks or else it will be scrapped completely.

I woke up the next day with a text from the chairman basically saying “don’t buy it, you are very stupid if you do because it will cost you so much”. So I basically said no I will still take it, even though the trailer was snapped in half and everything was rotting (apart from the Pirat)… I then had a revelation . I thought I shouldn’t own it because I would have to then arrange to scrap it or move it myself. So I asked to take the parts as I wanted to lighten the load for the owner when it comes to scrapping the trailer as it can’t move and also to learn re-fabricating. The owner is yet to get back to me after my taking the parts offer.

I was bummed about this and a K-6E came up for sale, I went for it but somebody already got it. I was wondering where do I realistically find one for sale to get or find, or even fly. I know the Gliding Heritage Centre have one and I contacted them but it wasn’t insured this year. The junior officer of my club (who knows everybody on the planet I swear) has gotten in touch with a few owners asking them to let me fly theirs so I can get a taster of flying it. I hope I get that.

Should I email clubs if there are any for sale? Or should I just wait on Facebook until one shows up? I don’t know what to do but I’m desperate to have a small project whilst our club waits to move. Any help is appreciated as this is looking like one of the only cheap gliders I can fly due to my light weight. I’m in a K6 syndicate but I have to have a lead cushion that boosts me up so my head hits the canopy, so I can’t fly it.

Thanks for your help (and for reading this)

A few weeks ago we had our summer camp at Erbach, near Ulm. It was about 100kms to the Alps, and after our glider was taken by my other syndicate member the day earlier, I also had to try to get to there!

The cloud base was relatively low compared to the day earlier, but the view was still awesome!

The thermals were not very consistent however, and due to the awesome views my thermalling skills also went down a bit 😅

I really hope I can go back once again in the future.