Flytec
Wills Wing

Oz Report

Volume 6, Number 152
11 pm, Monday, August 5 2002

https://OzReport.com
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:00 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic US Open – day two

George Ferris|Glen Volk|Jim Lamb|Jim Lee|photo|Timothy Ettridge|US Open

George Ferris|Glen Volk|Jim Lamb|Jim Lee|John "Ole" Olson|photo|Timothy Ettridge|US Open

(?-i)John "Ole" Olson|George Ferris|Glen Volk|Jim Lamb|Jim Lee|photo|Timothy Ettridge|US Open

Campbell Bowen|George Ferris|Glen Volk|Jim Lamb|Jim Lee|photo|Timothy Ettridge|US Open

www.flytec.com

The results should be up at 7:30 PM(after many many problems). David and Tim are here at the restaurant at the birthday party for Terry Presley – 48. Jim Lee was 49 yesterday.  We are all a bunch of old farts – other than Claire.  I’m writing the Oz Report at the dinner table as we wait for the food.  20 pitchers of Margarita’s were provided by the Terry’s wife, Linda.  I hope the cops aren’t outside.

The virtual goals are really helping out getting the scores up early.  We don’t have to wait until the scorekeepers bring in the results.  Does cut down on the excitement at goal.  Pilots just come in and then put their hang gliders in the hangar.  Does cut down on the costs of the meet to the organizers and to the pilots.

We called a task to the south, but then changed it to the same task as yesterday when few clouds showed up to the south before the task.  We also pushed it back 45 minutes, which was probably a mistake as the cu’s were working earlier.

Here in Big Springthe strong lift goes hand in hand with the big sink.  This is not like Chelan where you can be assured of a reasonable glide between thermals.  Here you should expect 700 to 800 fpm down between thermals.

The lift is either rough or smooth as can be. I got down to 500 feet AGL twice on the course and worked wonderfully smooth and consistent lift that got to 900 fpm to almost 10,000’ MSL.  Catching lift at 6 or 7,000’ often resulted in ratty thermals that required lots of bar movement to keep the ATOS in a circle.

Mark P. and I are together at cloud base (9,600’ MSL) at 2:45, the last start time, but with only one other flex wing in the area there just aren’t any gaggles at the start circle.  It is lonely out here and we are in the perfect position, so you’ve got to wonder what’s up. Other pilots did take the earlier start times.

As we head for the first turnpoint 15 miles to the northeast I see a rigid wing low.  They’ve obviously taken an earlier start time and gotten the first turn point, but now they are struggling.  Mark stops in ragged lift, but I continue on as I’m uncomfortable with it. No lift in the next two big clouds, and soon I’m joining the rigid who was low and now has landed.  I climb out over his field from 500’. Nice to find a friendly thermal.

Mark P. is over my head in a good one and I’m climbing.  Flex wings are spread out over the course with plenty not making the last start time at 2:45PM.

It’s downwind to the second turnpoint, 25 miles and I’ll get to 10,500’ MSL just before the turnpoint.  No one is in view, so I can’t say what the story is. Just after the turnpoint, I’m back down to 1000’ AGL.  I work 0-100 fpm until I find 700 fpm, and as I climb Jim Lamb in an ATOS- C and Terry Presley join me. We get plenty high at 900 fpm as we climb.

The wind is 20 mph out of the east or east south east, but we are high so no worries.  The clouds are drying up to our south and that is a worry.

Five miles from the third turnpoint, I’m back down to 500’. Big Springis a story of up and down, not climb and glide.  I get under a cloud that is building by racing downwind, and climb back to 9,500’ MSL and 800 fpm.  I can see Jim Lamb behind me but I’ve lost Terry.

Mark P. is ahead and making goal soon.  Campbell Bowen who started early will soon come in behind him.  After this climb I don’t get any more lift and glide to a landing 4 miles from goal.

Terry gets to 11,500’ MSL 3 miles from the last turnpoint, glides 12 miles to goal.  His Tangent says that he won’t make it, but he makes it by 300 feet as the wind component isn’t quite as strong as he punched in.

George Ferris in an ATOS will make the third turnpoint, hit the blue hole between it and goal, drift back almost ten miles, get up and finally make it goal at 8 PM, the last one into goal.

Glen Volk will win the day after landing short yesterday.  Again look at the results to see how your favorite pilot did.

Kari and Claire pants Terry Presley at the pilot meeting.  Photos by Timothy Ettridge.

B1 Bomber flyby at the US Open at 20,000’ MSL

Discuss "US Open – day two" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:01 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Gary Osoba resets the ultralight sailplane record

Gary Osoba|record|sailplane

OzReport.com/6.150

After a bit of confusion (see the next article) Gary Osoba redid his 500 kilometer speed and distance world record again today to beat his previous world records set two days ago.  Conditions were actually worse today with a cu nimb forming to the northeast of town late in the day.

Discuss "Gary Osoba resets the ultralight sailplane record" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:02 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic SeeYou feature or bug?

record

www.seeyou.ws

Garyhad to try to reset his world records as he relied on SeeYou to tell him what an FAI 500 kilometer triangle was.  He knew that the smallest leg had to be 28% of the total distance to be an FAI triangle, unless the triangle was greater than 750 kilometers.  But, SeeYou was declaring the triangle with a 25% leg as an FAI triangle and Doug, who was helping Gary and Gary thought that perhaps the FAI had rewritten the rules to make it 500 kilometers from 25% rather than 750 kilometers.  Therefore they accepted what SeeYou was telling them.  Wrong!

I wrote to Andrej at SeeYou:

28% smallest leg below 750 km or below 501 km?

SeeYou says 25% above 501 km

Correct?

Andrej wrote back:

You can set it up yourself through Tools->Options->Optimization.  If you set 750 it will be FAI from 750.00km onwards.

It is set to 500 by default because of some competitions (like OLC and Barron Hilton cup) which use this limit rather than 750 imposed by FAI.

Now I've checked my installation 1.83 and it says 501km. I then reinstalled 1.84 and it says 500km which is ok. Seems like that was a silly bug in the older versions.  Please change it to whatever distance you need and it will stick then.

Ooh, bad.

I wrote back:

We just wanted to be sure that it is okay with FAI to do a triangle of 501 kilometers with a 25% leg.

SeeYou showed this (25% leg) as a FAI triangle and we wanted to be sure that 28% wasn't required at either 500 or 501 kilometers.

What say you?

Andrej wrote back (after Garycompleted the new record):

FAI/IGC had prescribed 750km as the turn-around value for 25/28 percent rule.

If I want to do an FAI triangle for a badge or a record with the Apis for, say, 650km I will have to design a 28% triangle.

500km is there because the majority of our users fly OLC, DMSt and Barron Hilton cup where this rule changes at 500km. Additionally - my assumption is that anyone who is setting world records is supposed to know that : )

I hope it's clear now.

Well, yes it is clear now and I would consider this feature to be quite a bug in SeeYou.  SeeYou should not label a triangle as an FAI triangle when it is not an FAI triangle.  SeeYou should label it as an OLC triangle or a Barron Hilton triangle, or custom triangle, but not an FAI triangle, if, in fact, it is not an FAI triangle.

Now I can see how Andrej would have got this wrong, but pilots are now relying on SeeYou to be 100% correct.  More correct than the FAI rules that they read 2 years ago.

I hope that TeamCU, which is the most responsive software team I’ve every run into can see the point here.

Discuss "SeeYou feature or bug?" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:03 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic ATOS nose catches

Tim Cooper

John "Ole" Olson|Tim Cooper

(?-i)John "Ole" Olson|Tim Cooper

Tim Cooper

I’ve examined the ATOS nose levers here at the US Open.  I didn’t find any cracks.  Pilots should check their nose levers, but perhaps this is not a widespread problem.

Tim Cooper «timothy.cooper» writes:

My day job is an aeronautical stress engineer, weekend flex wing h/g pilot (but would rather be a full time h/g pilot.)

On the subject of the cracks in the fitting, the usual design rule for edge distance on fasteners (centre of hole to edge of fitting, or sheet/plate) is 2D, 1.5D absolute minimum, where D is the hole (or bolt diameter). In the case of the nose ATOS catch, the photo makes it look as though the edge distance is barely 1 D based on the bolt diameter.

The purpose of the design rule is to prevent early uncharacteristic failures by the hole edge shearing out, or cracking through, as amply demonstrated by the ATOS catch failure, the rule is based on years of experience by the aircraft industry designing out failures in fittings like that shown.

To add to the fittings problems, a second stress concentration (hole) is present a short distance from the bolt, with the cord attached.

Unless the bolt is for decoration only be worried, i.e, if it takes any loads at all, it will always fail at a load much below the bolt bending strength due to the very poor design of the fitting detail.  The block should be much chunkier than what is evident from the photo to develop any load carrying capability in the bolt.  Also the catch probably gets dragged/dropped I expect when rigging and de-rigging, further adding to its woes.

I guess the block material is aluminum alloy of some description, quite a lot of these are susceptible to stress corrosion cracking at low stress levels, easily achieved in this block design by tightening/bottoming out the bolt alone.

Discuss "ATOS nose catches" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:04 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Bad web site names

Sotos Christoforou

Sotos Christoforou «sotos» writes:

I have read the article about the deleted domains and I would like to point out an other problem with domains.

Many famous websites that cover hang gliding and probably have a lot of traffic from our hang gliding community don’t have the right domain name, although it is available and you can buy it also for less than $10 today.  For example there is a site about towing with lots of pages with detailed articles for each kind of towing system and has also a site in yahoo groups with lots of members, (I am also a member) and the domain of it is a subdomain of another domain.

The same is true for other sites related to rigid wings and although the domain "rigidwing.com" or "rigidwings.com" were available and the price of them were less than $10/year instead of $30-$50 the cost two years ago.  No one has registered the right domain for those sites.

As I am a website designer, I would think that it would be very silly for me to spent many days making a website and also many days every year to keep it up to date with out a easy to be remembered domain name.  So I am an owner of some domains and I also have some domains related with hang gliding as the "winchman.com" "rigidwing.com" and "rigidwings.com" the second one is registered a month ago and the third one yesterday.

I didn’t register these domains to keep them frozen until I found the opportunity to resell them for extra money.  They are registered because I will make websites which contain material related to the names.  If someone likes the content it is not necessary to bookmark them as they won’t never forget the words "winchman" or "rigidwing". If I don't use these domain names then I can give them to someone who has done very good work in the areas that these domains address.

Discuss "Bad web site names" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:05 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Speaking of bad domain names

PG

http://www.flasd.com

Parker «parkerwb» writes:

My name's Parker and I'm an Oz Report fan and a paraglider (yes, we read it too!). Anyway, I just finished developing a user driven global foot launched aviation site directory and was hoping you could announce it in your report.  Hoping it will eventually become the place to go for site information for foot launch pilots.

Discuss "Speaking of bad domain names" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:06 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic SparrowHawk and the Sailplane Homebuilders Association

Gary Osoba|Janice Armstrong|sailplane

www.sailplanehomebuilders.com

Janice Armstrong «Danarmstro» writes:

SHA Workshop, Sailplane Development Panel, and Barnaby Lecture Week Monday August 26th throughMonday September 2nd, 2002

We are expecting the Sparrowhawk and the Light Hawk to be here in Tehachapi, along with other sailplanes.  The SHA, led by President Gary Osoba, has been at the forefront in the interface between hang gliding and sailplanes, and Oz Report readers are welcome to come join the fun!

See schedule of events on their web site.

Discuss "SparrowHawk and the Sailplane Homebuilders Association" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:07 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic No V-tail yet

Tom Pierce

Tom Pierce «tommyp_25» writes:

Sorry about the big screw up with the tail.  I would never have taken your tail if I thought there was even a chance you would be without one inTexas.  Felix gave me the impression several were already being shipped toBig Spring during the World's comp.  Hope they have arrived by now

They haven’t.

Discuss "No V-tail yet" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Aug 5 2002, 4:00:08 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Hang Gliding is my Religion

Matthews, Gene L «gene.l.matthews» writes:

"Hang Gliding Is My Religion" link.  Maybe I ought to buy out that Hang Gliding Is My Religion.com domain name.  :-) http://home1.gte.net/skydog/MYTHOLOGY.htm

Discuss "Hang Gliding is my Religion" at the Oz Report forum   link»

The Oz Report, a near-daily, world wide hang gliding news ezine, with reports on competitions, pilot rankings, political issues, fly-ins, the latest technology, ultralight sailplanes, reader feedback and anything else from within the global HG community worthy of coverage. Hang gliding, paragliding, hang gliders, paragliders, aerotowing, hang glide, paraglide, platform towing, competitions, fly-ins. Hang gliding and paragliding news from around the world, by Davis Straub.

The Oz Report is being read from (approximately) these locations:
Locations of visitors to this page