Let me add my thanks Larry,

That was great and thanks for taking the time to type it out. Would love to
hear lots of detail about the ASW-22 mods, maybe Technical Soaring could be
resurrected for that kind of thing?

I got a great telephone report from the convention floor from my buddy Dave,
but I still don't see the Seeyou Pocket PC product on their website - I
eagerly await.

Jim

"Larry Pardue" wrote in message
...

BUT.......for us who could not make it to the Convention, could we have
some reports, stories. What gliders were on the floor, Talks, lectures,
items?

Thanks!

Dieter

I hadn't been to a convention for quite a few years and got a big kick out
of it.

The Charlie Spratt Roast, alone, was just about worth the price of
admission. After an all-star cast of roasters finished, Charlie himself
got
up and repeated some of his stories to yelled prompts from the audience.
We
got such classics as "Sailing at Hobbs" and "Blowing Up The Boat." I was
laughing so hard I could hardly get a breath. Can't wait for Charlie's
book, which is supposed to be out soon.

There was a slight scent in the air of shift of center of gravity from
Germany to Poland for glider manufacture. I think the Diana is probably
the
most impressive glider out there and the Diana 2 presentation was
impressive, not to mention that the Diana 2 is absolutely the most
breathtakingly beautiful glider design I have seen (my opinion). It has
the
ultra-slim (and tight for big pilots) fuselage of the Diana with a
beautiful
swept back and wingleted new wing, without the angles of the Discus.

I thought salesmanship was lacking at the Diana booth in stark contrast to
the DG people who were all over you trying to answer questions and
demonstrate features. The DG folks tried to explain the situation with DG
and LS and I guess I understand it a little bit better. They said they
expect a final resolution in a few days.

The Silent people had a glider and a videotape of the jet self-launcher,
that played all the time. Bob Carlton would not give performance figures
because of the very clunky box they had the jet engines mounted on.
Streamlining should help a lot there. Bob did say that heat on the tail
was
no factor at all. I think he said the vertical stabilizer got up to
something like 125 F during the worst case of taxiing in a crosswind. The
engines are canted out slightly. Bob also said the Silent flies better
inverted than anything he has tried. Much better than his Salto.

I found the Sparrow Hawk to be astounding and impressive. I think they
need
to come up with a better way to rig the ailerons than some half hitches.
I
am perfectly willing to trust my life to rope knots, but still do not like
them in this application. Dick Johnson is scheduled to do performance
testing soon. I spoke briefly to Dave Stevenson about his experience at
the
2003 Sports Nats and he had nothing but good to say about the glider. I
wish more people would fly it in contests so we could get a better feel
about it.

Dick is also going to test the PW-6 that was on display.

Dick Butler's presentation on the ASW-22DB (Eta Biter) was a highlight for
me. He has made many modifications, with factory help, and thinks the
performance is fairly close to the Eta. Some of the mods are retractable
tailwheel, which he does not recommend, increased span, new airfoil,
longer
tail boom and smaller (ASW-26) horizontal tail. He mentioned his wife was
a
bit skeptical as he was sawing the tail off. He made all these mods while
competing each year.

The star, of course, was Klaus Ohlmann who gave presentations on both his
3,000 km flight, and for the awards banquet his 2,000 km straight out
flight. Unfortunately there were audio problems at the awards banquet.
Klaus emphasized that Argentina is a glider paradise and we need to
preserve
it and use it with great care. Among the prerequisites are learning
Spanish. Klaus is worried that there will be some sort of air traffic
incident if a bunch of pilots start flying down there who do not know the
ways and the language well enough. He said he started planning when he
was
a kid and got out his atlas to see where the big long mountain ranges are.
He also made a lot of preliminary flights to learn certain areas. It is
hard to resent someone like Klaus, even though he does have the beautiful
French airline pilot wife and even though he has now retired from denistry
to be a full time glider pilot.

That's the best I can do for highlights . I don't have a good memory and
am
sorry for all the factual errors I probably made.

Larry Pardue 2I