Hey all,

2500hr pilot (all GA, tailwheel, aerobatic, etc) looking to get into soaring. Specifically looking for a glider to fly in the Eastern Sierra, mostly between Lone Pine and Bishop. I see the PW-5's get a lot of hate online, somewhat understandably given their L/D and penetration limitations, but they intrigue me because they can be found for half the price of an ASW-20 or similar, while being 20 years newer with a quarter of the total time. The Pik-20 has also been on my radar, but the rain performance issue seems like a downside.

Thoughts on how a PW-5 stacks up against other <20k gliders?

Hey, I'm about to finally get my license after several years of training. I'm thinking about purchasing my own glider next year since our club is growing very fast and seats are getting a little bit rare especially if you plan to do long cross-country flights.

My budget is 30-40k€, I'm 1,93m and quite slim. The aircrafts I have in mind are LS3/LS4, ASW20 and DG300. I flew the LS4neo and loved it, also I could fit in very comfortable.

I would love to read some advices of pilots who are experienced in at least one of the gliders since I only flew the LS4neo.

Thanks!

SkySight’s new 100-metre Wind and Ridge Forecast model has left beta and is now generally available across all SkySight forecast regions. It works great for mountain flying, helping you find the fastest ridges and avoid getting dumped. It's very useful even in just hilly terrain, as the local flow peaks tend to be good for thermal formation.

We trained this model on 100m OpenFOAM CFD simulations over the entirety of our forecast areas, running on GPU's. We think this will be as big of a step forward as when we brought wave forecasts into the cockpit in 2017.

Would love to hear what everyone thinks, especially those who've been flying with it via Copilot. I'm available to answer questions.

The app is called Airmasss Wx.

What it does:

Thermal strength, height and width, cloudbase, cloud type (blue thermals vs cumulus, all stages and all clouds until overdevelopment), wind at , from HRRR (2 days) and GFS (14 days), and a high resolution thermal catalyst model and wind model.

• Ridge lift and lee sink worked out on ~30 m terrain, plus how high the ridge lift reaches and lee waves
• Thermal tops and cloudbase measured from the real ground, not the model's smoothed terrain
• Tap anywhere for a point forecast, Skew-T, Atmospheric profile, or wave cross-section
• XC speed and flight distance for your own glider polar, and a route planner that flies your task through the forecast
• Live radar, satellite, FAA sectionals and airspace on the same map
• A 3D view of terrain with thermals, cumulus, ridge lift, and waves drawn in
• Many other layers
• 18 hours and the surface layers are free, no account needed.

It covers the US for now. I'd really like to hear from people who fly: what's wrong, what's missing, and how it compares with what you use now (SkySight, XC Skies, Windy, ForeFlight). My goal is to create a professional app without the professional cost overhead. Screenshot below of the 3D view over California

I've been gliding a lot. This season 70h have been added to my logbook. Amazing.

The soaring season has also came to an end. and i thought, why not get a glider? My own glider.

I only fly Polish made gliders. So far, only the SZD-50 Puchacz and SZD-51 Junior. (This season i only flew the Junior). So this is what i will probably end up buying. Something from the laminated SZD line. Probably the SZD-41 Jantar Standard. Because that seems like a better deal then the 51. But first, i will get atleast 30h of rental time on it. I really want to "get a hold of it" before i dive deep and buy it.

I set aside 20k EUR. Everything from the actual sailplane, to the trailer and additional expenses.

Now that i'm a full time airline pilot, i hope to fly more often, especially on off time. Both unpowered and powered aviation. Hopefully i can add 100h to my glider hours.

Where do i even find a glider for sale? There are so many websites, with so little listings. Whats the best place?

Trying to figure out the endorsements to take my commercial written. I am an ASEL pilot and have taken my CAX written and scored a 98 on it but now am thinking I want to do my commercial glider as my initial commercial cert, I like the focus on stick and rudder skills and energy management. I used Gold Seal for my commercial prep and the endorsement is specifically for the Commercial Airplane written. Do I need to take a specific glider commercial course for the ground portion? I’m not opposed to ASA Prepware if that works.

And another note- is there a Sheppard Air equivalent for the CGX test bank? No sense in leaving anything to chance.

My instructor forced me to perform an outlanding. And forced me to deliver a wine bottle for the land owner.

During my gliding career, i did serval outlandings. Some happened over my own land lol (yes, i did give a wine bottle to myself). I always found who's place i landed at, and gave them a bottle.

But is this tradition common? And why is it wine? I only heard it from my instructor / club people.

Hello guys, I am planing of buying Condor 3 but i have hardware that I am not sure it will work good. I have Ryzen 5 3600 Rx 5700xt and 16gb ram. Have someone tired to run Condor 3 with this or similar hardware. Any comment will be helpful.

Dear glider pilots and enthusiasts,

Over the summer, a glider belonging to my club and employer “Soar Truckee” was totaled in an accident. This glider was the primary training glider for me and my fellow interns. Previously this glider was funded in part by the community program by the Truckee Airport. I am posting this in hope to reach a fundraising goal of roughly $1000 dollars. Without this glider, most of the interns will not be able to fly next summer. If you so wish, you can donate using the link provided below, ANYTHING helps! If you do donate, please send a dm so I can keep track of your contributions.  **Please help us keep Soar Truckee flying.**

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DONATION LINK!: https://www.soartruckee.org/donate-to-ttsa
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Thank you very much!

Join together ✌️

Join us at the Point of the Mountain Utah. Training, schools,shops,xc, speed fly, hangglide. What ever your into, stay right on launch.
[House of the Wind](https://www.houseofthewind.com)

In case you are, would you mind sharing the pages from its POH that pertain to weight and balance computations? That is, the weighting report of your plane, plus the W&B computation instructions for it?

Reason I'm asking is because I am curious about the exact W&B behaviour of this variant. Our hybrid club (both PPL and SPL sections) has two non-tug 912iS B23 as general PPL planes. They are lovely aircraft, but do have the issue that with two larger guys and even minimal luggage on board one cannot use all the fuel, lest the COG goes off the rear end.

I know that the 916iS has the engine slightly further forward, to counter the B23 being somewhat tail heavy: and for a tug (which usually operates only with the pilot on board) this whole thing is not as much of an issue as it is otherwise anyway. However, if one also were to occasionally use such a tug B23 for general travel, it would be important to know whether this version also has the "only half the tank can be used with two bigger guys on board" tendency as the 912iS ones.

Hot late summer day in Illinois.

Having a taster a few weeks ago, I started my journey to learn last week. Today I had my third ever glider flight and it was amazing. Wave soaring over Denbigh Moors in Wales in dg1001 club neo with an amazing instructor behind me. After quite a high tow to 5k ft and getting a nice, though gentle lift up to 7k then chasing clouds for extra lift, I experienced something I cannot even start to describe. I'm still learning proper coordination with the stick and rudder, and since my instructor was happy (some of the time), I call it progress. Between the turns when climbing, I actually managed to enjoy the views, and Snowdonia looks absolutely amazing from up top.

The flight was well over an hour long, and admittedly, at the end, my brain was just mush. Nothing worked, my hand and legs stopped talking to each other. I guess like with everything else, it takes time and experience.

Loved every second.

Tired like a dog.

Booked another session.

On this one, about the 3rd of the day Student asked to video one .... so we did. Hopefully his video is better than mine. ) my camera was a fixed phone, pity I didn't have my 360 running )

We go into wave and had to do some syllabus stuff so spins seemed appropriate.

Follow-up to my post from a few weeks ago: the free winter league starts on 28 September. First task runs along the Teutoburger Wald ridge, a new one opens every Monday after that. Use the app or go to Cloudracing.de

Two things changed since that post, and both are in the screenshots. The ground can be an aerial photo instead of a drawn map, anywhere in the world (Settings, 3D, Aerial imagery). And the clouds have shapes now: torn edges, dark bases, and streets that line up with the wind of the day. These shots are from the Inn valley near Innsbruck.

Rest is as described: one task a week, flyable until Sunday night, unlimited attempts, best run counts, league flights are always free. You need at least an iPad sized screen to use the simulator.

There are also a lot more tweaks under the hood, check the change logs in the start menu!

You can create or join clubs with friends and see, when at what they are flying. Not yet multiplayer flying, but maybe in the future :)

Water ballast usually increases your XC speed. But in weak, narrow thermals, the climb rate with a ballasted glider can take a big hit.

In Condor soaring simulator, you can test the effect of wing loading on the maximum climb rate, ideal bank and airspeed for various thermal profiles.

In this weak thermal example, the climb rate of a fully ballasted JS3 drops to half compared to a dry glider.

https://reddit.com/link/1wgrrgu/video/5o5lkgqihmph1/player

A quick flight today. Testing some instrument settings and a 'fix' on the airbrake caps that have been fluttering at relatively low speeds.

Released in strong rotor at 2000', contacted smooth wave at about 3500' and then all the way up to FL184. A little 125km tour of North Wales with groundspeed topping out at 194kts or 358kph!

Crystal clear air, warm with freezing level only up at FL130, instruments now very sorted with Hawk making sense. Airbrake caps tested up to 125kts and all good.

What a glorious day.

Surreal smoothness at 15000'