Here us a quick overview of what I did to my Taranis to increase the audio enjoyment. Took a couple of hours but hey, it's winter!

Parts Express was the source for the new speaker. At first I thought it wasn't going to be a great fit but at the end, not too bad!

Okay, here's a run down of what I did. Hope the photos are reasonable. First look at the speaker I thought I ordered the wrong piece but upon further review, this was the one posted in the thread so I went ahead with the demolition. Taking apart the case I noticed that the original speaker is held in by three small dabs of glue. Slowly cut away and lifted the speaker off, simple. Of course I disconnected the unit from the audio board; this was harder than removing the actual speaker. Also removed the battery before disassembling the radio, of course.

Dry fit of the new speaker I noticed very little clearance between the posts that are molded into the case where the screws enter to attach the top to bottom. I needed to remove the inner most flanges of the post, since they seem fairly stout, I wasn't worried about the integrity of the posts. Sharp exacto did this well. I also needed to find the right size pill bottle or container to act as a resonance chamber/mounting cup.

One note, I wanted to do this with whatever materials and tools, supplies I had on hand, I didn't want to make this more of a project than it has become.

So the search for the pill bottle starts. After trying about 5-6 different...Continue Reading

Tuesday was a day that exemplifies, to me, what this great activity is all about. I wish I could wax poetic about my experience but, alas, I will make an attempt to describe the enjoyment of this day. What a day!

Early up and out is always the best welcome to a day of soaring but typical life duties called and thus we got started about 10:30am. Setting up the winch the air felt active and light with a whisper of wind coming out of the east but I decided to go ahead and launch into the prevailing west. If anything it would be good practice for downwind launches and then I could land back towards the flight line. Simple. Only one other pilot was to join me for the day and he soon arrived. The air was rich with activity; bugs being chased by thermal birdies, hawks roaming the field for an early lunch and buzzards at altitude scoping out their next lift and who knows what else. Skies were partly cloudy with many cumulus forming and high stratus indicating a great day of thermal activity ahead.

Good karma was already sending out vibes as my partner for the day found his recently treed DLG, sitting pretty in the woods beneath the behemoth that ingested it about a week prior, no worse for wear than a slightly dinged leading edge. He had spent hours prior attempting to dislodge it without causing any more stress on such a fragile toy, but the woods were not done with it, until today! Nice! Let's get in the sky!!

I staggered out to the line while Larry assembled his...Continue Reading

A couple of spectacular crashes on a great day of flying at the AAGMC field. Apologies to Mike for the demise of his Discus. I thought I was being gentle but that ship was a beast! Must have weighed the legal limit and no wing spar. Definitely not a good winch launch sailplane but I found out the hard way!

Thanks to Ken and Joe for the pics and commentaries.

Next Soaring Series Sunday is Sept 19th. Hope to see y'all there!

Just a quick note to Frank D for the great pics from The Bruce earlier this year. Not the most flattering images but it gives me a great sense for how I'm doing in these type of events. I guess I get a bit focused! lol