POTW - Finally!

tonycondon

tonycondon

Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
Joined
Mar 9, 2005
Messages
15,459
Location
Wichita, KS
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Display name:
Tony
After months of submitting photos, I finally made the roundup. Of course, not even a picture that I took, but it was on my camera!

potw09_1350.jpg
 
Congrats, Tony!

You prolly don't have much competition with other submissions of planes missing engines.
 
Congratulations Tony! I like that picture.
 
Neither the planes or the pilots in that photo are missing the engines one bit!

With my "other" planes engine in a zillion pieces at the momentI can't tell you what a sense of freedom owning and flying a glider gives, ESPECIALLY when it delivers you to the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but meet nice people and hang out with your best friend.

My plane that's really missing the engine makes me want to tear my hair out:mad::lightning::hairraise::dunno::mad:



mikea said:
Congrats, Tony!

You prolly don't have much competition with other submissions of planes missing engines.
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Neat pic! How are the farmers when they see you coming into their fields?
 
It's a great picture. Unfortunately you've just shown the world you landed out :rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
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True Lance - However if it was a news story they would claim the "single engine Cessna" "Crash Landed"
 
CapeCodJay said:
Neat pic! How are the farmers when they see you coming into their fields?
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Over the course of my 10 or so off airport landings around Iowa I have never met an angry farmer. There are a few stories floating around the soaring world about them. Almost always the angry farmer is associated with crop damage. Thats why I usually try to not do any damage to anything except the glider. Most find it a great break in their day.

Lance F said:
It's a great picture. Unfortunately you've just shown the world you landed out :rofl::rofl::rofl:
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Hey now Lance. For some of us, landing out is the whole point. :D We never would have had nearly as much fun and met the interesting locals if we wouldve made it to the Hampton Airport 1 thermal downwind.
 
Very nice photo! You're really starting to annoy me with all these fun photos and write-ups... now I'm gonna have to get into soaring, too. Great. Thanks a lot. :rolleyes:

I like that Woodstock(?) on the left- reminds me of a fantastic old Bowlus I just saw down at the museum in DC.
 
So for those of us who are on the husky side, what's the useful load of one of those guys?

I'm 240-250, and I've never done any soaring, but I always figured that I was a bit on the heavy side.

~ Christopher
 
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tonycondon said:
Hey now Lance. For some of us, landing out is the whole point. :D We never would have had nearly as much fun and met the interesting locals if we wouldve made it to the Hampton Airport 1 thermal downwind.
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Totally tongue in cheek. I have many landouts in my logbook (although they were NEVER the whole point.) I never encountered an angry farmer either. One in Minnesota said to me after I'd apologized profusily for landing in his field, "Don't worry, the raccoons get more than that every night."
 
tonycondon said:
Over the course of my 10 or so off airport landings around Iowa I have never met an angry farmer. There are a few stories floating around the soaring world about them. Almost always the angry farmer is associated with crop damage. Thats why I usually try to not do any damage to anything except the glider. Most find it a great break in their day.
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From what I've seen/heard, most of the crop damage (and farmer anger) comes as a result of the retrieval when someone takes a 4WD monster truck pulling a sailplane trailer out into the farmer's field instead of carrying the ship out by hand.
 
jwriteclub said:
So for those of us who are on the husky side, what's the useful load of one of those guys?

I'm 240-250, and I've never done any soaring, but I always figured that I was a bit on the heavy side.

~ Christopher
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240-250 is on the high side but there are some gliders that will accomodate you. the schweizer 2-22 and 2-33 trainers are perfect for big people. check out www.ssa.org and click on "Where to Fly" on the right side (I think) to find a soaring operation near you. Once you get into soaring you will find that its a great motivator to lose some weight :)

Lance F said:
Totally tongue in cheek. I have many landouts in my logbook (although they were NEVER the whole point.) I never encountered an angry farmer either. One in Minnesota said to me after I'd apologized profusily for landing in his field, "Don't worry, the raccoons get more than that every night."
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most damage i was ever involved in was when the farmer pulled us out of the corn field with his quad. corn was only a couple inches tall and he didnt seem too worried so we weren't either. this was when Matt and I landed out in his Lark (heavy!)

lancefisher said:
From what I've seen/heard, most of the crop damage (and farmer anger) comes as a result of the retrieval when someone takes a 4WD monster truck pulling a sailplane trailer out into the farmer's field instead of carrying the ship out by hand.
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roger that Lance. Don Ingraham put a Grob in the corn field (full grown) at Faribault after a low altitude rope break about 3 years ago. corn was fine for the most part, and the glider was fine. Only way they could figure out how to get it out was to get a flatbed tow truck and drive out and get it, that cost him dearly.
 
That picture makes me want to try gliding. It may be the gliders or it may be the smiles. I don't know which.
 
tonycondon said:
Don Ingraham put a Grob in the corn field (full grown) at Faribault after a low altitude rope break about 3 years ago. corn was fine for the most part, and the glider was fine. Only way they could figure out how to get it out was to get a flatbed tow truck and drive out and get it, that cost him dearly.
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???Don't understand. I landed out in tall corn once (same deal - low altitude rope break) and like Don the landing did little damage. We took the wings off and hand carried (wings) or rolled (fuselage) the parts out between the rows. Plenty of room and no damage.
 
Your pic made me think "Invasion of Normandy" (or Polk City)
 
jwriteclub said:
So for those of us who are on the husky side, what's the useful load of one of those guys?

I'm 240-250, and I've never done any soaring, but I always figured that I was a bit on the heavy side.

~ Christopher
Click to expand...

tonycondon said:
240-250 is on the high side but there are some gliders that will accomodate you. the schweizer 2-22 and 2-33 trainers are perfect for big people. check out www.ssa.org and click on "Where to Fly" on the right side (I think) to find a soaring operation near you. Once you get into soaring you will find that its a great motivator to lose some weight :)
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Yeah, I'm up there too. The Schweizer 232 was the solution for me. A net search shows:
Empty Weight: 850 lbs.
Gross Weight: 1340 lbs.
Fuel capacity: 0 lbs. :rofl:
Useful load: 490 lbs.
2.jpg
 
Well, maybe I'll give it a try one of these days.

(Although I have to say it: I don't quite know why I'd give up a perfectly good engine).

~ Christopher
 
jwriteclub said:
Well, maybe I'll give it a try one of these days.

(Although I have to say it: I don't quite know why I'd give up a perfectly good engine).

~ Christopher
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It's hard to explain about not having an engine... Flying becomes a totally different experience when you go somewhere without an engine. A little 50 or 150 mile cross-country becomes a mission, an adventure, a battle of wits, a test of will, a... Voyage.

Instead of checkpoints, engine gages, watching the vor or gps as you progress along (towared a goal you are almost 100% sure of reaching) you become totally immersed in the sky, keenly aware of every nuance of cloud or terrain as a clue in the puzzle of how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to go. And you fit the pieces together by maneuving with stick and rudder, cranking in 2G spirals at the edge of a stall to climb thousands of feet, then diving into cruise near redline alternately pushing and pulling to milk every mile till the next climb or until exhausted and elated you put it down, maybe where no one has ever landed a flying machine before. It's like a multi week voyage compressed into a few hours. Fantastic!

MM
 
No autopilot? (mournful look)
No waypoints? (more mournful look)
No clearance? (lost puppy look)
No GPS? Hell with this!

~ Christopher

:)
 
wby0nder said:
It's hard to explain about not having an engine... Flying becomes a totally different experience when you go somewhere without an engine. A little 50 or 150 mile cross-country becomes a mission, an adventure, a battle of wits, a test of will, a... Voyage.

Instead of checkpoints, engine gages, watching the vor or gps as you progress along (towared a goal you are almost 100% sure of reaching) you become totally immersed in the sky, keenly aware of every nuance of cloud or terrain as a clue in the puzzle of how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to go. And you fit the pieces together by maneuving with stick and rudder, cranking in 2G spirals at the edge of a stall to climb thousands of feet, then diving into cruise near redline alternately pushing and pulling to milk every mile till the next climb or until exhausted and elated you put it down, maybe where no one has ever landed a flying machine before. It's like a multi week voyage compressed into a few hours. Fantastic!

MM
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Luddites, Geesh! ;););):D:D I gotta try it someday

BTW congrats on the pic Tony!
 
wby0nder said:
It's hard to explain about not having an engine... Flying becomes a totally different experience when you go somewhere without an engine. A little 50 or 150 mile cross-country becomes a mission, an adventure, a battle of wits, a test of will, a... Voyage.

Instead of checkpoints, engine gages, watching the vor or gps as you progress along (towared a goal you are almost 100% sure of reaching) you become totally immersed in the sky, keenly aware of every nuance of cloud or terrain as a clue in the puzzle of how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to go. And you fit the pieces together by maneuving with stick and rudder, cranking in 2G spirals at the edge of a stall to climb thousands of feet, then diving into cruise near redline alternately pushing and pulling to milk every mile till the next climb or until exhausted and elated you put it down, maybe where no one has ever landed a flying machine before. It's like a multi week voyage compressed into a few hours. Fantastic!

MM
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Huh- you know, I never thought about that- without an engine, you really are not worried about how much time you have or if you're on schedule for this or that waypoint... I suppose dead reckoning, too, just doesn't figure into it unless you're making a really long trip. Just pilotage and "feel", with a lot of quick decision-making... I really want to try it, eventually.
 
rottydaddy said:
you really are not worried about how much time you have or if you're on schedule for this or that waypoint...
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If you're flying cross country, that's not true. Any given soaring day only has so many hours of usable lift. Those who dally wll run out of time before reaching their destination and end up "landing out." Cross country/competition flying is not relaxing (but that doesn't mean it's not fun or very rewarding :yes:).
 
yea cross country flying with a destination goal really is a race against the clock. at www.knightglider.com/flightreports.htm check out my story about my flight to nearly my hometown. "Tony goes out for Pizza" or something like that. I got started 20 minutes later than i wouldve liked and came up about 20 minutes short of the goal!
 
Now if you took the engine off a weed whacker, and attached some folding blades . . .

I can't help it. The engineer in me looks at an aircraft and immediately asks: How could I put a bigger engine on this? How could I make this go faster? (note that the bigger engine question is more important than the go faster question).

~ Christopher
 
jwriteclub said:
Now if you took the engine off a weed whacker, and attached some folding blades . . .

Have one of those too. It's called the Monerai. Early design by John Monnet I believe. Mine has a 3 cylinder motor pod (removable) for self launch. The builders of these made dozens of modifications to make it a flyable machine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monerai


You make gliders go faster with your mind alone.
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jwriteclub said:
No autopilot? (mournful look)
No waypoints? (more mournful look)
No clearance? (lost puppy look)
No GPS? Hell with this!

~ Christopher

:)
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Waypoints - Check
Clearance - Check (I've been in a block at 20,000')
GPS - Check
Flight Director - Check
ADHARS - Check

Autopilot? That's what Flight Simulator X is for.

Seriously, there's enough technology and geekdom in soaring to satisfy the worst of us. But what's even cooler than the gadgetry is the fact that a good soaring pilot can smoke a lesser pilot, no matter what's in the panel. And soaring definitely brings the best hangar talk content per hour flown.
 
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