Mistral flies at Byron

At long last, I finally had a chance to fly my Mistral-C in Byron late last year, December 15, 2007.

Here are two pictures: one before the first flight and one of my landing.





Thanks to Monique for the camera-work.

--Johan Larson

Hangar One Faces Demolition

The iconic Hangar One at Moffat Airfield, originally built to house airships, is in danger of being torn down. The Navy is currently considering its options for the hangar, which is not currently in use. The cheapest option would be to simply tear it down.

More information about the hangar, and the movement to preserve it, here.

--Johan Larson

Serendipitous Discovery

The search for Steve Fossett, who is presumed to have crashed somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas, has not yet located the wreck of his plane, but it has found eight other unknown wrecks.

It reminds me my junior-high vice-principal, who ordered a student's locker searched after being told he had brought a gun to school. They didn't find a gun, but they did find a knife, a chain, and a hashpipe.

-- Johan Larson

Men-Birds Soar on Boiling Air, 1938

The article Men-Birds Soar on Boiling Air, by Frederick G. Vosburgh, originally appeared in the July 1938 issue of National Geographic Magazine. It now available online.

Back in the day the pilots would deliberately fly into clouds without gyros. Yay!
They also deliberately triggered thermal bubbles at low altitude by diving and maneuvering at about 200 feet. No wonder they died like flies.

-- Johan Larson

Gliders--Silent Weapons of the Sky, 1944

I have uploaded to the web William H. Nicholas's article "Gliders--Silent Weapons of the Sky" from the August 1944 issue of National Geographic Magazine. (link)

Vintage Sailplane Regatta 2007

The Vintage Sailplane Regatta will be held at Avenal this year for three days, the October 6-8 weekend. I contacted the organizers recently about going down to have a look, as a spectator. Paul Hanson got back to me, and said pilots without old-school gliders are welcome to attend and fly. I think I may just do that, since I've heard good things about that club. It's the same place that hosted the WSPA Seminar.

Anyway, for more info, here's the event flyer:

And here's a link to the site. They are offering a special $30 club membership for the event. They are also asking folks to register by Septemer 6, presumably to make the planners' jobs easier.

-- Johan Larson

Oh, the Drama!

About a week ago, I resigned as editor of this blog. After receiving several very nice letters urging me to stay on, I have reconsidered, and will continue as editor.

I swear, it's a regular soap opera around here.

-- Johan "emo-boy" Larson

I'm Done

I am stepping down as editor of the Buzzard, effective immediately. To my disappointment the blog never really caught on as a focus for club interest, and I am only willing to chase after obviously reluctant writers for so long. In any case, I have lost interest, and am therefore stepping down.

If someone else is interested in taking up the editorship, I am ready to help reconfigure the blog accordingly.

--Johan Larson

On the Wings of the Wind

The very latest news from 1929!

I have scanned, OCRed, and uploaded Howard Siepen's On the Wings of the Wind from the June 1929 issue of National Geographic Magazine.

-- Johan Larson

Silent Wings

"Silent Wings" is a documentary about the American WWII glider program. It's new--released this month, in fact--and is available on DVD. In two hours, it covers everything from the beginnings of WWII glider efforts in Germany and the late American start, through the D-Day drops and a final effort across the Rhein in the war's last days. Other major operations are also touched on.

Overall, I am left with the impression that landing troops in gliders was fantastically dangerous. Thirty to forty percent casualties were routine. The gliders were vulnerable to flak, tended to crash on landing, and were easy to knock out with obstacles on the landing-fields. On balance, if I had to hit the dirt under fire, I'd take my chances under a parachute rather than landing in a glider.

So what's good about this DVD? Well, there's a lot of information about a good dozen operations. I had heard and read about some of them (Eben Emael, Crete, Normandy), but the rest were completely new to me (Sicily, southern France). The interviews with pilots on both sides who actually flew the ops are also interesting.

And the bad? There's a lot of reverent talk about the American GIs' heroism, and the vast and worthy task they were undertaking. The fact that this is mostly true does not keep the sentiments from tiring in the telling and retelling.

Final recommendation? B -- if you're into glider history, you'll want a look, but I doubt you'll want a second.

-- Johan Larson

German Support Aircraft & Gliders

"German Support Aircraft & Gliders" is an hour-long program available on DVD.
The title is accurately descriptive, and the program consists of German wartime
footage (in black and white), with narration by an Englishman. Much of the
time is devoted to the German air transport service, and its use of the classic
tri-motor Junkers Ju-52 cargo aircraft.

The bits that deal with gliders describe the use of gliders in the assault on
the Belgian fortress Eben Emael, and also in the invasion of Crete. The workhorse
gliders of the Germans were the conventional DFS-230 and the twin-boom Gotha 242.
The program also dwells on the huge Me 321 Gigant glider, big enough to transport two light tanks.

The DVD is available on Amazon,
and on Netflix. Worth a place in your queue for the coverage of the Me 321.

-- Johan Larson

A Challenge

Your mission, should you accept it, is two-fold. First, identify the motion picture that is the source of the following frames. Second, identify the model of glider depicted in them.

You may post your answers in the Comments section, below. I'll reveal the correct answers in one week, if no one has succeeded by then.

-- Johan Larson

Shameless Narcissism

Congratulations to Johan Larson who has completed the requirements for his
WINGS Phase I.

Well done.

How Do I Prepare for the Written Test?

I recommend you read at least two books, and possibly two more if you want superior preparation.

First, you need to read the FAA's Glider Flying Handbook. Consider it your basic text.

Then, read and work through ASA's Private Pilot Test Prep. This book is updated every year, and contains every question in the FAA's text bank, with answers and explanations. I recommend you work through all the questions relevant to the Glider test; they are marked ALL and GLD.

I was not particularly impressed with the coverage of weather services in the GFH and the Test Prep book. There's a lot of detail to know about how to read the various charts, how to interpret cryptic Telex-format weather reports, and what all the different reports are called. The GFM and Test Prep book really only teach a bare imperfect minimum. To fix this problem, I recommend reading Aviation Weather and Aviation Weather Services, but consider this supplementary.

All four of these titles are available on Amazon as of this writing. You should be able to look them up by name.

If you start from scratch, reading through the GFM and working through the Test Prep book might take you fifteen evenings at a comfortable pace.

Finally, while taking the written test is an important step in getting your license, the Flight Examiner will not rely on it when he administers the Oral. Expect him to ask many of the same questions you have already studied for and answered on the written test. This may be a bit frustrating, particularly if you scored high on the written test.

-- Johan Larson

Proposed New Procedure for Field Manager Report

One of the last tasks for the Field Manager at the end of each day is making a brief report on the day's flying. Once upon a time, this report went in one place: the FM notebook in the clubhouse. Right now it is also supposed to be echoed to NCSoar. Of course, since the FM can't take the notebook with him, he has to make a private copy somewhere, which is the third time the report gets written down.

I say reporting in triplicate is too much, and we should amend our requirements to avoid it. Let's do away with the notebook, and let the message to NCSoar be the actual FM report. This will do away with the first copy, and also the second, assuming the FM composes the NCSoar report directly.

This new procedure does raise the possibility that the next day's field manager will arrive without having seen the NCSoar report -- for whatever reason -- and will have no simple way of determining whether anything noteworthy took place the day before. To that end I propose that the FM leave a note of any really urgent items on the small whiteboard inside the clubhouse entrance.

Let's have one report; not three.

-- Johan Larson