On Feb 20, 8:26 pm, wrote:
On Feb 20, 6:54 pm, Tim wrote:

Come on now, what where some of the highlights from this year's
convention for those of us stuck at home for various reasons. With no
convention next year, there should have been a lot of "new" stuff.
Usually RAS is full of post-convention

Some information I would love to hear about would be....

How'd the Flarm/ADS-B forum go?
Extreme Performance/Sinha De-turbulator update?
Duckhawk update?
Anything else of interest?

Really, anythign will do...

EY (sitting here with Baby...)

Tim,
OK..I will start this off with three topics. As is typical of many
conventions there were some very interesting seminars, discussions and
displays...

1. Winches - Due to the increasing cost of tows, there was a lot of
interest in winches. Two were on display on the convention floor and
there were two seminars on winch launching. Winch launching is
uncommon in the US and for any organization that considers buying a
winch, proper training with formalized procedures will be critical to
ensure successful winch launches. Safety will also be critical for a
successful operation and this was discussed by many of the experts. It
will be interesting to see if we see an influx of winches into the US
in the next few years.....

2. FLARM and collision avoidance - This was also a subject for
discussion. With approx 10,000 FLARM units sold worldwide it is
probably just a matter of time before we see these units in the US.
They appear to be effective in minimizing mid-airs between gliders and
they also warn gliders in Europe on towers and cables in the Alps. The
company (FLARM) will need FCC approval and they are working on some
legal/liability issues, but hopefully there will be US availability in
the near future.

3. Jonker JS1 Revelation - A seminar was held on this new 18M glider
by Attie Jonker. Unfortunately, one was not available for display, but
the presentation was excellent and Attie went into detail on the
development of this new, high performance competition sailplane.
Hopefully in a few months the first JS1 will arrive in the US....

I hope these first few topics get the "conversation" started on the
SSA Convention!
Renny - Albuquerque, NM

On winching, insurance was a topic; roaming coverage for camps,
alternate locations, airport open houses, and air shows. Costello
Insurance and an AIG representative discuss product needs and
development during at least one breakfast and a luncheon. 'Hull'
coverage for the winches was also of interest. There were two
winching seminars and a discussion at the SSF meeting Weds evening.

There was also a round table discussion of a club audit by the IRS and
other club presentations. Why I instruct with Bob Wander was great.
Thanks also to Anne Mongiovi and Nieta Montague for their Promoting
Soaring presentations.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Jr Team talk by Kathy Fosha and Richard
Maleady and the discussions and ideas presented during the Getting
Kinds Into Soaring (Winch Roundtable) with Randy Rothe. The Good,
Bad, and Ugly, the state of soaring in 2008 with Bob Wander was
special. I'm not alone.

I think many enjoyed the evening trip to the SW Soaring Museum.
Missed the bus, so drove down and grabbed Bob Whelan and John Campbell
and headed for dinner on the way back. There are more in one or two
other buildings at the airport. At least one of the buses got
disoriented and had a tour in the dark of Moriarty Airport.

Pat Costello gave his always informative and enlightening insurance
talk. I missed the last few minutes and will have to follow up on a
couple of points that I heard about, one about winch liability.

Missed out on plenty due to being involved with Focus on Clubs track,
but good discussions and round tables there also. Others were very
pleased with the convention presentations overall. Enjoyed my fellow
banquet diners and seeing soaring friends. Interesting the banquet
speaker had arrived at the same actualizations about soaring that I
had, 'develop your bird brain' and 'be the sky' (well, he said 'be the
air'), but very much the same thing. He took a while to make the
points.

There were a couple of winch head dinners. Spent one evening chatting
with my Canadian cousins. They just love our politics.....

As always, too much to take it all in,

Frank Whiteley