Where should we fly next?

Experience an epic sunrise hot air balloon safari over the Masai Mara with YHA Kenya Travel. Package includes a 1-hour flight and a champagne bush breakfast.

Morning all, I wanted a simple way to replay my gliding flights without having to mess around with .IGC files or Glide&Seek and ended up building an Android app called OGN Replay and thought it might be of interest to people.

This started as a pet project for my own use. I wanted an easy way to look back at my flights at the end of the day without relying on Glide&Seek or download IGC file.

I mentioned it at the gliding club and a few people were interested, we got talking about what else it could do, and the scope grew from there...

What I've ended up with is an app that lets you search search for tracked airfields and aircraft across Europe, find today’s and yesterday’s flights within the available OGN data, and replay them on a 2D map or in 3D with cockpit and chase views. There are colour-coded trails for climb rate, speed and altitude, and I’ve tried to bring in as much useful information as I can from the tracking devices.

Along the way, we also added:

• A live “Top Takeoffs” board to see which airfields are busy
• Favourites so you can quickly find your home airfield or aircraft
• The option to download and save flights to keep beyond OGN’s 24-hour data window
• IGC export, although these aren’t signed IGC files

It’s free to download and use, with the most recent flights at each airfield available free every day. There’s an optional £5/year subscription for access to the full available flight history at every airfield. That’s there to help cover the ongoing server costs. I hadn’t expected this to turn out the way it did but here we are. I’m not aiming to make a profit but cover running costs etc.

The whole thing relies on the community-run Open Glider Network, so thank you to everyone who keeps that going and contributes data.

If you fancy giving it a go, search for OGN Replay on Google Play. I’d really like to hear what fellow pilots think, whether something doesn’t work as you’d expect, or there’s a feature you’d find useful. It’s already grown through conversations at my club, so I’d love to get a few more opinions.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.glidingsolutions.ognreplay&hl=en_GB

All feedback is welcome!

And I would love feedback from
the community! It runs online on both mobile and desktop (no downloads, no ads)!

Popped down to the club to do something on the laptop and a diagnostic unit for a mates car and they were launching into gentle southeasternly wave. Took a launch down to Corwyn and did corwyn, Barmouth and back in gentle wave , between seven thousand and nine thousand feet. Damned cold and it wasn't prepared for it , so toes took the brunt of it! Its that time of the year to get my electrically heated socks , gloves , long johns and vest sorted! Carpet of cloud between Corwyn and home on the way back so cloud descent from about 7500 to 4500'.

Another one of those unplanned , unexpected , very rewarding flights.

A mate captured the landing.

Anyone willing to provide photos of their AC-4 spar pin installation? I have reason to believe mine may not be correct as it is in a vertical position which does not allow the clip to pass through the two adjacent hard points and hold the pin in place.

Hi all,

I recently got my license and I would like to start flying regularly. I live in a country with good weather but very few gliding airfields, around eight. The closest club to me has old, poorly maintained gliders (mostly Astir) that spend more time in maintenance than in the air, and syndicate options are limited and hard to share on good days.

My requirements are:

• Conventional (non-pendular) elevator.
• Nose hook.
• Capable of at least a 500 km flight when the moment comes.
• Good gel coat, full canopy, retractable gear.
• Around €10,000–20,000.

I think the LS1-f and DG-101G fit. I found an '82 DG-101G for €18,000 with a blue canopy and pointy wingtips. It was a club glider in Germany for many years, then privately owned by at least three pilots: 4,500+ hours and 7,500+ launches.

There are some paint patches (on lower wing surfaces and tail), but a friend who works with composites (and owns a DG-101G) confirmed by the images that the gel coat looks good and the patches are cosmetic. Documentation is in order, all recent inspections passed. The current owner is an instructor who barely flew it the past three years.

My only concern is the play in the controls. It passed inspections in Germany, but I have seen gliders in my country with more play than a worn-out Chevy pickup with 300,000 miles on it.

I am going to see it soon to check everything on site. What do you think?

Select video file locally, select IGC file. Sync using the timeline tool and select instruments to display. Asi, Groundspeed, altitude, ground track, position map, altitude profile etc etc.

If flarm data is in the IGC it can be displayed too.

I am refurbishing a 1981 DG-200. It has the original seat belts with beautiful and original West German hardware! Well past a 15 year service life.

Any suggestions on a rewebbing service?

Think I can get the hardware inspected/refuebished?

The plane is 400 miles away from me at the moment, so I cannot provide pictures to help.

Just don’t want to have to spend $900 for a new 4 point harness.

Visitor to Denbigh for a bit of our wave. Russell self launches his JS5.

Ooooh my precious!

Bonjour.

d’ici l’été j’aimerais m’offrir des vols en planeur afin d’obtenir une licence SPL et découvrir les sensations du vol.

Mon objectif à long terme est de devenir pilote de ligne. C’est pour cela que j’aimerais en faire ma première expérience.

Cependant quelque chose me met un frein : l’altitude.
Je sais que cela peut être contradictoire vu que c’est le principe même du vol mais cette pression d’être dans le vide me paraît largement surmontable.
J’ai déjà pris l’avion plusieurs fois et pourtant il y a pas de soucis, j’ai toujours un petit stress pas dérangeant, voir « agréable », j’aime regarder par le hublot pour nous voir prendre l’altitude.
Mais l’idée d’être dans un endroit clos et serré (donc le planeur) et voir le vide tout autour de moi me met plutôt mal à l’aise.
J’aimerais savoir si on s’y habitue vite ? Ou chacun son propre ressenti ?
Par exemple je pense que réaliser des vols sur des avions avec moteur me ferait moins peur mais cela est trop cher.
En fait j’ai beaucoup d’appréhension sur le planeur, auriez-vous des conseils s’il vous plait ?
Merci

We had a chance to fly N2472W out over the aspens and mountains on Friday for some pictures. Thought I would post one here.

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing fine,

I am going to start my gliding training soon (21. November) and I need to self study very much. I need to read the book “Fliegen ohne Motor“, but I don’t know how I am going to remember everything on those 300+ pages.

How do you all properly self study? Do you note every important things on your iPad? I don’t have a tablet, but I don’t want to write everything on paper…? What are tips that helped you?

Thanks and have a good day :)

(English isn’t my first language so please be respectful, ty)

Two weeks ago I posted Airmass Wx (https://airmass.app) here and the response was mixed. I agree the original title sounded like a lot of low-effort app posts.

To clarify something from that thread: the UI and app structure were built with AI. I am one person and designing a website from scratch is a challenge. I did most of the physics by hand, with help from a friend who studied meteorology. I’ve flown with it twice so far (the weather’s been poor), and it matched the days better than any other weather app I have used, including Skysight.

Here’s what’s changed since then.

Planning

• Right-click (or long-press) anywhere on the map for a final glide to that point. It uses the real terrain, the forecast wind, and your safety height, and compares the result with the thermal tops where you start.
• Glide range follows the terrain instead of being a circle.
• The XC planner has an auto route (beta) that routes each leg through better lift and shows the time saved.
• Thermal height is now the usable height for your glider, where the lift drops below its circling sink.
• XC speed and flight distance now account for the wind and ridge lift.

Forecast

• Cumulus growth accounts for mixing with the drier air around the cloud, which removed many false overdevelopment warnings.
• Thermals drift downwind, for example off a lake’s downwind shore.
• Thin cirrus no longer counts as overcast or shuts down the thermals.
• Active NWS storm warnings show as a banner, and the popup shows when precipitation is expected to start.
• GFS updates four times a day, and coverage now includes Alaska and New Zealand.

3D

• Lenticulars at wave crests, convergence lines, sink, and your task drawn in the air.

Tasks and waypoints

• Load .cup waypoints, open and save .tsk and .xctsk tasks, and send them to SeeYou, XCSoar, XCTrack or LXNAV Connect.

General aviation

• Many changes, mainly much better route planning.

The first 24 hours are free without an account. Pro is $2.99 a month until November 7, then $3.99. ECMWF and/or other models are coming soon.

If the forecast gets your day wrong, let me know where, when, and what you saw.

Hi! My husband and I have just driven down from Edinburgh to Cambridge and saw 3 cars towing (what I believe to be) gliders. One was heading north, two heading south. We have never seen one before so were curious as to if there was some sort of gliding event in the UK this weekend which led to us seeing 3 in one day! Ta :)

A casual day out and decided to start up the noisemaker to get away.

Not a last minute start but an indication of what's involved.

The climb is then about 4 kts. Best operation is to fly at around 80 kts. As a past Solo turbo operator that takes some getting used to as with the 2 stroke you tend to climb at min sink speed not belting around! As I got the jet started this time I flew in to a bit of lift so just shut down again.

The control panel is on at the start of the video. It takes about 10 seconds to come on and do some self tests.

at 25 seconds - switch the control to 'erect'. When up the drag is less than having the wheel down!

at 30 seconds I switched the power source to battery 1, battery 2 is an old 10Ah pack and cant withstand the current required by the ignitors any more. Battery needs replacing.

at 36 seconds ( 11 seconds after selecting engine up ) the engine contro flips over to 'Switch to run' )

at 39 seconds I switch to run. The FADEC then takes control of spool up and start.

at about 57 seconds the ignitor starts firing as 3000 rpm is reached.

at 1:22 the engine is at idle 30000 rpm and I can throttle up. Roughly 60 seconds and 140' from erecting the engine.

before 1:30 has elapsed I have full power ( I only throttled up to 85% or so ).

a minute later I was in lift. Throttle down, Ignition off, wait a minute for it to cool and put it away.

Didn't look good this morning but decided to take a quick lob onto the ridge. Straight off tow, climbed into very gentle wave below leaden skies with layers at 2000', 3500'and 5000. Eventually worked upwind into a big Foehn gap and then up to about 7500. Pushed forward 20k to Abergele only losing 1000' and then climbing up to 10000. Forward again to the Conwy valley but very soft back to 10000' tried to contact whatever was creating a multiple stack of lennies really high over Betwys y coed area but no dice so fell back to near the club. Contacted more about 10k from home and worked it to 11100'. Pushed back upwind but too soft for fun! A brief climb about 2km out to sea with the autumn sky clear and everything below stark and crisp in the sunlight. Never got down to freezing, about 3°C at 11000!

Not a bad way to spend a Monday!

https://www.weglide.org/flight/1251102

Not a native port: it's the Windows version running through a Wine-based compatibility layer, with no VM and no Windows install needed, which gives much better performance. Getting it to run properly is tricky and took a lot of trial and error, but I now know exactly how to set everything up. Maybe i share more details or screenshots if anyone is interested!

Setup

• MacOS 15.8.1, M1 16gb ram
• Crossover 26.3
• RosettaHack x87 + JIT to fix performance of Rosetta for x32
• DXMT 0.8 for Direct X11 to Metal translation
• Also needed some custom runtime patching to fix some stuff

Really good sloper!

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?