Lee, do you know of any full size soaring outfits in the Appleton area? (My wife's boss wants to get a ride in a sailplane and knows about my obsessions.)

Unfortunately, there are no glider operations in Appleton. The closest club is Hartford. They do give rides usually on the weekend, but we have been flying on some weekdays when the lift if good. I suggest you check out the webpage for Wisconsin Soaring Society www.wisoar.org If you click on Aircraft / Rates you can see information about the price of rides. The contact us button will give you a chance to request a contact. If you wish I can get you a phone number and the name of a person to talk to.

Sylvania Soaring Adventures is in Beloit, WI. It is a commercial operation so you can arrange rides any day of the week I suspect. They also have a webpage http://www.soarmidwest.com

Good luck.

Lee

I should have added that when you travel, you might be near a soaring site. The commercial operations offer rides 7 days a week-365 days a year in many cases. Go to Soaring Society of America's web site (www.ssa.org) and click on About Soaring then Where to Fly. You will see a map and be able to click on the state where you will be visiting and see the glider ports. From there you can see if they are a club or a commercial operation. If you went to Disney World in Florida, you would be close to Seminole Lake Gliderport, one of the best in the country.

Lee

Perfect, thanks! I couldn't remember the club in Hartford. If/when this goes forward, I will be getting back in touch. Re: travel, I'm still kicking myself for living within 5 miles of a sailplane club in Waynesboro VA and never going up for a ride.

Hi All,

Garth and I attended "The Bruce" DLG contest last weekend. Scott Z. was unable to join us this year. The contest is located in Bruce Davidson's backyard in Shelbyville, KY (near Louisville).

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1565321

The temps stayed in the 100s all weekend, so the biggest challenge was staying cool. Even with the heat, the contest was a good time. The field is sloped with trees on three sides, and those trees make it extremely difficult to read the air. The wind stayed fairly calm on both days, so no ballast was required. There were 6 flight groups with 10-12 pilots per group, so the air and flight box got pretty crowded at times. There were 11 total rounds over two days followed by a flyoff on Sunday afternoon for the top 10 finishers in the preliminaries.

Overall, Garth and I flew well with each of us having our issues. On Saturday, I got off to a good start, but in the 5th round I got into a midair that damaged my glider enough to force me to use my backup for the rest of the contest. Thankfully, there are 2 throwout rounds, so round 5 didn't count towards my final score.

We shared our pop-up space with the Chicago/SE Wisconsin guys (Ben Roberto and Steve Meyer) as well as with the St. Louis/S Illinois guys (Robert Samuels, Mark Gauding, and Wayne Geffon). It was great to hang out and talk bull with this gang. There was a lot of fun talking about getting the 'middle of the pack' award, which was a shiny new Polaris DLG awarded to the pilot who finished in the middle of the standings after the preliminary rounds. Nobody from our group won the plane, but it certainly was fun to talk about.

Bruce does a great job with this contest, providing food, beer, and other events (Radian Pro Challenge). Overall, it was worth the long drive.

Ryan Thompson

Hi VAM members.
All the participantas had a great time at the Winnebago RC Flyers electric sailplane event today. If you couldn't make it out, you missed some fun. Final results for the contest were:

1st: Bob Johnson
2nd Mark Schmieding
3rd: Dave Hable
4th: Mike Phillips
5th: Bob Sonnleitner

Special thanks to Bob Johnson of the "Valley Aero Modelers" club for organizing the contest rules and scoring, and for supplying participants with "altitude limiters".

Attached is a picture of all the flying participants, which is also posted on our web site home page at : www.wrcf.rchomepage.com

We hope to organize one more such event this summer, hosted either by WRCF or VAM.

Dave Hable
Winnebago RC Flyers, Oshkosh