TGC's new toy and a new toy from years gone by

[Alfashark]

Very late last year the Tauranga Gliding Club bought a serious cross-country machine - a Schempp-Hirth Duo Discus XLT... 20m span, and a 47:1 glide ratio.
The "T"in XLT meaning it also has a small retractable engine, useful for avoiding what could be very long retrieves by the ground crew considering the legs this thing has...
I gave another of Wolfgang's models a quick once-over until I get some better pics

Also, 52 years earlier, the club got it's hands on the latest and greatest 2-seater at the time - a Ka-4 Rhonlerche registered as GBQ.

[Ian Warren]

Steve , be bloody worth flying up there to the 'ranga' just simply to go for a flight with ya ... has to be 5/6 hours across the ranges tho

[Splitpin]

Great set of shots.....love #5

[Naki]

Great stuff ..must try more gliding in FSX..my towing skills need brushing up though. Is there anywhere I can downlaod the GXT repaint?

[Alfashark]

Thanks guys

Ian, hopefully I'll be back into it within the next 12 months...
Paul, I'll zip it up and email it to you when I get back home tonight.

If anyone's interested, all of my progress so far is located at my blog

[Naki]

Great, thanks... could you flick me the Cub repaint as well...cheers

[connor]

QUOTE (Splitpin @ May 23 2011,9:14 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great set of shots.....love #5

No. 5 for me!

[Charl]

Great stuff, Steve.
I thought your #2 of GBQ was the "real" part of sim vs real, then I scrolled further down and saw the old print.
Couldn't resist, sorry:



Every time you put up some of these, I feel the pull of the thermals, and go dig out one of Wolfgang's masterpieces...

[Splitpin]

Nice job Charl.

[Alfashark]

Great work Charl!
I'd have to say, FSX is pretty hard to beat when it comes to gliding... Especially for those who just want to grab one of Mr Piper's models and spend an hour or two floating around in near silence without having to worry about using an external program to generate lift.
For instance, in the past few days there has been a resident "house" thermal kicking off at about the mid-way point between Kulim Park and Matakana Island - roughly where I am in the 3rd screenshot...
No real-world weather involved, just pure FSX.

To be fair, the thermals it produces are massive in terms of width so you could easily get a gaggle of 5-10 gliders sharing the same one in a MP session

[Charl]

Yup the FSX gliding experience is pretty painless, and has that cute tug plane too.
But I have to say, setting up a big gliding experience using CCS (And remember I have the Alfashark How To Manual for that, thanks) and using a winch-equipped WP glider in the right scenery (= Pauanui) is a blast.
And now you mention it, I have not tried this since installing Active Sky!
So much to experiment with, so little time...

[Alfashark]

QUOTE (Charl @ May 23 2011,9:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yup the FSX gliding experience is pretty painless, and has that cute tug plane too.

*Gag!* I don't know where M$ went when they got a look at aero-towing gliders, but it can't have been anywhere good... That poor Maule ends up with it's flaps 2/3rds (and that's a whole lot of flap on a Maule) extended for the whole tow!

I've swapped the Maule for the Cub wearing BKJ's clothes, and at the same time disabled the flaps and detuned it to about 75 ponies via the a/c .cfg in order to get it slowed down to a solid 70kts (there is a well hidden file within FSX that controls what the tow-plane does and how it behaves, but nothing that I've tried actually seems to open it so that I can modify it)

[Bugdani]

Interesting !