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  #11  
Old November 3rd 20, 06:55 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Roy B.
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Posts: 304
Default Old Folks Poll

"And, finally, a much different set of requirements to manage the technology. In the old days, it helped if you knew how to sand and fill metal wings to keep the gliders competitive. Now it helps to be tech savvy with interfaces, communications protocols, file formats, multiple tech platforms and OSs, etc. Then, as now, you can pay someone to do this and/or lean on your friends. But while the sailplanes themselves are evolving more slowly, keeping up with the technology from an IT perspective is more difficult."

Great response Chip - and I really hadn't thought about the evolution in necessary skills set, but it's true. Alot of things we learned to do over the years are now quite relevant and many things my students want to know about, I know very little of.

Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur . . . and it's getting cold outside.
ROY
  #12  
Old November 3rd 20, 07:02 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Michael Opitz
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Posts: 318
Default Old Folks Poll

At 12:41 03 November 2020, Roy B. wrote:
I thought it might be fun (and healthy) to start a poll or discussion

for
t=
he guys and gals who have been in the sport for + 25 years or

more. So,
my=
question for those people is : "What is the biggest change you

have seen
i=
n the sport over the years you have participated?"

For me, the biggest change was the widespread adoption of GPS -

which
chan=
ged everything about flight recording, contests, contest tasking

and badge
=
flying. Second place goes to the newer trailers which are so much

better
th=
an what we struggled with in the old days. Third place might be

OLC . . .
What do you think?

ROY

In the 1960's-70's, it was the transition to glass birds for
competition.

In the 1980's, trainers started to also go to glass The turbulated
airfoil designs added a performance jump that was not foreseen.
Then came the Nav/Glide computers - first dead reckoning, and
then with GPS. It took away the whole navigation aspect to
competitive soaring. All of the old great navigator pilots were sort
of relegated to obsolescence, and now it became much more of
a computer tech-savvy game. Now, we have in flight uploads of
data like SkySight with the latest wave or thermal predictions to
show you exactly where the next climb will be. The technology
invasion into the cockpit has been incredible.

RO


  #13  
Old November 3rd 20, 08:00 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Pat Russell[_2_]
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Posts: 73
Default Old Folks Poll

I miss the smells.

Butyrate, casein, D-76, acetate, hypo, burning camphor...
  #14  
Old November 3rd 20, 08:32 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Roy B.
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Posts: 304
Default Old Folks Poll

Anybody remember what a "prayer wheel" was?
When did you last see one?
ROY
  #15  
Old November 3rd 20, 08:40 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Papa3[_2_]
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Posts: 753
Default Old Folks Poll

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 11:47:45 AM UTC-5, Chip Bearden wrote:
You didn't think my response would be a one-liner, did you?

Everything already cited:
* better trailers (which, with the fiberglass revolution starting in the mid 1960s, made possible near-universal rig-to-fly style vs. hangars, the norm when I was coming up)
* GPS (more flexible tasking but goodbye navigation skills as a way to enhance contest points)
* availability--at a cost--of competitive sailplanes to the average pilot.. Less than a dozen top-ranked, well-heeled, lucky guys got one of Len Neimi's Sisus back in the '60s.
* universal availability of really good instrumentation (I used to spend a lot of time tuning my varios/TE with gust filters, restrictors, add/subtracting tubing lengths, capillaries, copper scrubbers in capacity bottles, etc. Now you just plug it all together and configure the software)
* greater consistency of manufacture for new gliders (no more hoping you got a good one from the factory)
* crewless contests (I recall when Erik Mozer showed up crewless for a Nationals around 1992, IIRC; I was truly shocked! Now I've only had a crew a couple of times since 2006. Hahaha).

But the two biggies for me a

1. Leveling of competitive skills that started with the Byars & Holbrook seminars and continued through Reichmann's book and other publications and programs. The top handful of pilots used to be far better than the rest of the pack. Now they're usually more tightly packed, although leeching (another trend that got much worse) and having comparable sailplanes have contributed to this.

2. Demands on time. There's just so much other stuff going on in our lives that conflicts with soaring: other activities, family, job, etc. Those were always there but when I was a 9-to-5 guy, it was easy to free up the time and I think the same was true for my father. Now many of us are pulled in so many directions.

I don't know whether cost, per se, should be on the list. Prices seem astronomical now compared with the old days but compared to income, I don't know. George Moffat used to say, IIRC, that his limit was 1.5x annual salary.

One thing I might add but I'm not sure it's universally true is that good sailplanes seems to remain competitive for much longer; i.e., the evolution of "high performance" is much slower. The gliders I think of as enduring in the old days--Standard Austria, Ka-6, Sisu--were only at the top for a few years. Today, the ASW 20 (ca 1976) is still out there, though Sports and Club Class have made that possible in recent years. And many others with long histories: e.g., Discus 2, LS8, ASW 27. But I'm still competing in my ASW 24, designed in ~1986 and purchased in 1992. We always kept gliders a little longer than most anyway but we felt the competition pass us by while doing it. Now it doesn't happen as fast or to the same extent, which is a good thing, IMO.

And, finally, a much different set of requirements to manage the technology. In the old days, it helped if you knew how to sand and fill metal wings to keep the gliders competitive. Now it helps to be tech savvy with interfaces, communications protocols, file formats, multiple tech platforms and OSs, etc. Then, as now, you can pay someone to do this and/or lean on your friends. But while the sailplanes themselves are evolving more slowly, keeping up with the technology from an IT perspective is more difficult.

Just my brief thoughts. Hahahs. You asked, Roy.

Chip Bearden
JB


What Chip said (though I'm MUCH younger than he is :-) )

I think that GPS/recording had so many first order and second order impacts that it overwhelms the other. Whether it is competition tasking or "OLC Flying", the types of flights and ability to really benchmark oneself against others is a huge change. When I first started, I marveled at the descriptions by Striedieck, Seymour, Kai Gertsen about how they went here or dug out there or followed some "convergence" somewhere. Now, you can study every flight (if you're so inclined) and look at exactly what the big boys/girls did. To me that means current generation pilots can become reasonably competitive so much faster if they have the drive rather than having to sort of "learn by making every mistake in the book".

At the end of the day, it's still about pilot decisions more than equipment, so being able to grow the personal knowledge base more quickly seems to me to be a huge positive.

On the downside as Chip and Hank mentioned, it sorta feels like we're at the tail end of an era (probably already past it). I remember the first years I started competing (late 1980s) you needed a high ranking to be able to get into a contest. Today, if you can fog a mirror, we need you.

Same with airports. NJ had 5 active operations when I started (South Jersey, Colt's Neck, Somerset, Blairstown, Forrestal). Today only Blairstown remains.

Now, you kids get off my lawn and let me take my nap...
  #16  
Old November 3rd 20, 09:11 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Thomas Dixon
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Posts: 6
Default Old Folks Poll

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 12:40:12 PM UTC-7, Papa3 wrote:
On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 11:47:45 AM UTC-5, Chip Bearden wrote:
You didn't think my response would be a one-liner, did you?

Everything already cited:
* better trailers (which, with the fiberglass revolution starting in the mid 1960s, made possible near-universal rig-to-fly style vs. hangars, the norm when I was coming up)
* GPS (more flexible tasking but goodbye navigation skills as a way to enhance contest points)
* availability--at a cost--of competitive sailplanes to the average pilot. Less than a dozen top-ranked, well-heeled, lucky guys got one of Len Neimi's Sisus back in the '60s.
* universal availability of really good instrumentation (I used to spend a lot of time tuning my varios/TE with gust filters, restrictors, add/subtracting tubing lengths, capillaries, copper scrubbers in capacity bottles, etc. Now you just plug it all together and configure the software)
* greater consistency of manufacture for new gliders (no more hoping you got a good one from the factory)
* crewless contests (I recall when Erik Mozer showed up crewless for a Nationals around 1992, IIRC; I was truly shocked! Now I've only had a crew a couple of times since 2006. Hahaha).

But the two biggies for me a

1. Leveling of competitive skills that started with the Byars & Holbrook seminars and continued through Reichmann's book and other publications and programs. The top handful of pilots used to be far better than the rest of the pack. Now they're usually more tightly packed, although leeching (another trend that got much worse) and having comparable sailplanes have contributed to this.

2. Demands on time. There's just so much other stuff going on in our lives that conflicts with soaring: other activities, family, job, etc. Those were always there but when I was a 9-to-5 guy, it was easy to free up the time and I think the same was true for my father. Now many of us are pulled in so many directions.

I don't know whether cost, per se, should be on the list. Prices seem astronomical now compared with the old days but compared to income, I don't know. George Moffat used to say, IIRC, that his limit was 1.5x annual salary.

One thing I might add but I'm not sure it's universally true is that good sailplanes seems to remain competitive for much longer; i.e., the evolution of "high performance" is much slower. The gliders I think of as enduring in the old days--Standard Austria, Ka-6, Sisu--were only at the top for a few years. Today, the ASW 20 (ca 1976) is still out there, though Sports and Club Class have made that possible in recent years. And many others with long histories: e.g., Discus 2, LS8, ASW 27. But I'm still competing in my ASW 24, designed in ~1986 and purchased in 1992. We always kept gliders a little longer than most anyway but we felt the competition pass us by while doing it. Now it doesn't happen as fast or to the same extent, which is a good thing, IMO.

And, finally, a much different set of requirements to manage the technology. In the old days, it helped if you knew how to sand and fill metal wings to keep the gliders competitive. Now it helps to be tech savvy with interfaces, communications protocols, file formats, multiple tech platforms and OSs, etc. Then, as now, you can pay someone to do this and/or lean on your friends. But while the sailplanes themselves are evolving more slowly, keeping up with the technology from an IT perspective is more difficult.

Just my brief thoughts. Hahahs. You asked, Roy.

Chip Bearden
JB

What Chip said (though I'm MUCH younger than he is :-) )

I think that GPS/recording had so many first order and second order impacts that it overwhelms the other. Whether it is competition tasking or "OLC Flying", the types of flights and ability to really benchmark oneself against others is a huge change. When I first started, I marveled at the descriptions by Striedieck, Seymour, Kai Gertsen about how they went here or dug out there or followed some "convergence" somewhere. Now, you can study every flight (if you're so inclined) and look at exactly what the big boys/girls did. To me that means current generation pilots can become reasonably competitive so much faster if they have the drive rather than having to sort of "learn by making every mistake in the book".

At the end of the day, it's still about pilot decisions more than equipment, so being able to grow the personal knowledge base more quickly seems to me to be a huge positive.

On the downside as Chip and Hank mentioned, it sorta feels like we're at the tail end of an era (probably already past it). I remember the first years I started competing (late 1980s) you needed a high ranking to be able to get into a contest. Today, if you can fog a mirror, we need you.

Same with airports. NJ had 5 active operations when I started (South Jersey, Colt's Neck, Somerset, Blairstown, Forrestal). Today only Blairstown remains.

Now, you kids get off my lawn and let me take my nap...




All of the above comments. Boy do I miss smoking & fixing the barograph. Hoping the cameras workd and the turnpoint photos were good. Opening charts in the cockpit to navigate, following a compass course, Looking at turnpoint task photos to make sure I was at the correct one for a task photo. Can I really trus my "prayer wheel" for the final glide. Yes, Roy B I still have one and it is in my ship to confirm what my CN says. Now it's, will my batteries last, who is my go to IT guy when files crash or instruments need updates. Is that other guy just looking in his cockpit to see all his screens or is he looking out at the other gliders?
Boise, ID
  #17  
Old November 3rd 20, 09:20 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
John Godfrey (QT)[_2_]
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Posts: 321
Default Old Folks Poll

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 2:40:12 PM UTC-5, Papa3 wrote:
On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 11:47:45 AM UTC-5, Chip Bearden wrote:
You didn't think my response would be a one-liner, did you?

Everything already cited:
* better trailers (which, with the fiberglass revolution starting in the mid 1960s, made possible near-universal rig-to-fly style vs. hangars, the norm when I was coming up)
* GPS (more flexible tasking but goodbye navigation skills as a way to enhance contest points)
* availability--at a cost--of competitive sailplanes to the average pilot. Less than a dozen top-ranked, well-heeled, lucky guys got one of Len Neimi's Sisus back in the '60s.
* universal availability of really good instrumentation (I used to spend a lot of time tuning my varios/TE with gust filters, restrictors, add/subtracting tubing lengths, capillaries, copper scrubbers in capacity bottles, etc. Now you just plug it all together and configure the software)
* greater consistency of manufacture for new gliders (no more hoping you got a good one from the factory)
* crewless contests (I recall when Erik Mozer showed up crewless for a Nationals around 1992, IIRC; I was truly shocked! Now I've only had a crew a couple of times since 2006. Hahaha).

But the two biggies for me a

1. Leveling of competitive skills that started with the Byars & Holbrook seminars and continued through Reichmann's book and other publications and programs. The top handful of pilots used to be far better than the rest of the pack. Now they're usually more tightly packed, although leeching (another trend that got much worse) and having comparable sailplanes have contributed to this.

2. Demands on time. There's just so much other stuff going on in our lives that conflicts with soaring: other activities, family, job, etc. Those were always there but when I was a 9-to-5 guy, it was easy to free up the time and I think the same was true for my father. Now many of us are pulled in so many directions.

I don't know whether cost, per se, should be on the list. Prices seem astronomical now compared with the old days but compared to income, I don't know. George Moffat used to say, IIRC, that his limit was 1.5x annual salary.

One thing I might add but I'm not sure it's universally true is that good sailplanes seems to remain competitive for much longer; i.e., the evolution of "high performance" is much slower. The gliders I think of as enduring in the old days--Standard Austria, Ka-6, Sisu--were only at the top for a few years. Today, the ASW 20 (ca 1976) is still out there, though Sports and Club Class have made that possible in recent years. And many others with long histories: e.g., Discus 2, LS8, ASW 27. But I'm still competing in my ASW 24, designed in ~1986 and purchased in 1992. We always kept gliders a little longer than most anyway but we felt the competition pass us by while doing it. Now it doesn't happen as fast or to the same extent, which is a good thing, IMO.

And, finally, a much different set of requirements to manage the technology. In the old days, it helped if you knew how to sand and fill metal wings to keep the gliders competitive. Now it helps to be tech savvy with interfaces, communications protocols, file formats, multiple tech platforms and OSs, etc. Then, as now, you can pay someone to do this and/or lean on your friends. But while the sailplanes themselves are evolving more slowly, keeping up with the technology from an IT perspective is more difficult.

Just my brief thoughts. Hahahs. You asked, Roy.

Chip Bearden
JB


What Chip said (though I'm MUCH younger than he is :-) )

I think that GPS/recording had so many first order and second order impacts that it overwhelms the other. Whether it is competition tasking or "OLC Flying", the types of flights and ability to really benchmark oneself against others is a huge change. When I first started, I marveled at the descriptions by Striedieck, Seymour, Kai Gertsen about how they went here or dug out there or followed some "convergence" somewhere. Now, you can study every flight (if you're so inclined) and look at exactly what the big boys/girls did. To me that means current generation pilots can become reasonably competitive so much faster if they have the drive rather than having to sort of "learn by making every mistake in the book".

At the end of the day, it's still about pilot decisions more than equipment, so being able to grow the personal knowledge base more quickly seems to me to be a huge positive.

On the downside as Chip and Hank mentioned, it sorta feels like we're at the tail end of an era (probably already past it). I remember the first years I started competing (late 1980s) you needed a high ranking to be able to get into a contest. Today, if you can fog a mirror, we need you.

Same with airports. NJ had 5 active operations when I started (South Jersey, Colt's Neck, Somerset, Blairstown, Forrestal). Today only Blairstown remains.

Now, you kids get off my lawn and let me take my nap...


Electronics/Technology and mastery of same gaining importance in achieving performance.
  #18  
Old November 3rd 20, 10:03 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Chip Bearden[_2_]
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Posts: 93
Default Old Folks Poll

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 2:32:30 PM UTC-5, Roy B. wrote:
Anybody remember what a "prayer wheel" was?
When did you last see one?
ROY


I still have one in my cockpit (cardboard, homemade, ca 1978) to check against the nav computer. And I do fairly often, ever since a bug in GNII caused me to land a few miles short at New Castle years ago. The TP in the last cylinder was still miles away and I was over glide path where I was when I said "don't push it" and tapped "turn here" to go home safely. Immediately I was 500' below glide. WTF? Response from the developer was classic: "That shouldn't happen," the second-most dangerous phrase in IT (the #1 being "it SHOULD work").

Anyway, whether it's 5 or 6 miles per thousand or a prayer wheel or whatever, it pays to common sense this stuff. In the old days, that's all we had.

And, yeah, preparing paper maps (which I still do), peering out anxiously at the desolation trying to find Caprock Station at Hobbs or Gabbs at Minden, or wondering how far along the last leg you were gliding into Lancaster, SC over farms and trees, or using Excel in the van to desperately convert a non-functional contest TP file from degree-minutes-seconds to decimal degrees (or vice versa, it was a long time ago) was a hassle.

But as RO says, when you took navigation off the table, it changed the competitive mix. Two good pilots landed out at that Lancaster (nee Chester) contest when they got lost. When GPS came along not long after, it was a great equalizer for them, not so good for me. Oh, well.

The title of this was Old Folks Poll so I figure P3 and I are allowed to complain. LOL

Chip Bearden
JB
  #19  
Old November 3rd 20, 10:46 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
[email protected]
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Posts: 465
Default Old Folks Poll

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 4:04:03 PM UTC-5, Chip Bearden wrote:
On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 2:32:30 PM UTC-5, Roy B. wrote:
Anybody remember what a "prayer wheel" was?
When did you last see one?
ROY


I still have one in my cockpit (cardboard, homemade, ca 1978) to check against the nav computer. And I do fairly often, ever since a bug in GNII caused me to land a few miles short at New Castle years ago. The TP in the last cylinder was still miles away and I was over glide path where I was when I said "don't push it" and tapped "turn here" to go home safely. Immediately I was 500' below glide. WTF? Response from the developer was classic: "That shouldn't happen," the second-most dangerous phrase in IT (the #1 being "it SHOULD work").

Anyway, whether it's 5 or 6 miles per thousand or a prayer wheel or whatever, it pays to common sense this stuff. In the old days, that's all we had..

And, yeah, preparing paper maps (which I still do), peering out anxiously at the desolation trying to find Caprock Station at Hobbs or Gabbs at Minden, or wondering how far along the last leg you were gliding into Lancaster, SC over farms and trees, or using Excel in the van to desperately convert a non-functional contest TP file from degree-minutes-seconds to decimal degrees (or vice versa, it was a long time ago) was a hassle.

But as RO says, when you took navigation off the table, it changed the competitive mix. Two good pilots landed out at that Lancaster (nee Chester) contest when they got lost. When GPS came along not long after, it was a great equalizer for them, not so good for me. Oh, well.

The title of this was Old Folks Poll so I figure P3 and I are allowed to complain. LOL

Chip Bearden
JB


I last built a prayer wheel (Stocker type calculator, as described in Reichmann's book) when I got my current glider, 10 years ago. I carry it in the cockpit as a backup, but never actually use it.

That project was a marriage of the old tech and the new tech: I wrote some software that, given a polar, create a PDF file with the needed curves. Print it on a transparency (if you can find one!) and add the numbers by hand and you're done. Scaled for the underlying sectional map. If anybody's interested in such, send me the polar and I'll make you the PDF.

I do worry about the lack of navigation skills in the newer pilots (whether young or old), and have spent some time pondering how to teach them to, at least, sanity-check what they think the glide computer is telling them.
  #20  
Old November 3rd 20, 10:54 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
James Metcalfe
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Posts: 50
Default Old Folks Poll

Anybody remember what a "prayer wheel" was?

I didn't recognise this phrase, at first, but soon worked it out from
context. In the 80s in the UK we knew it as a John Willy - after a well
known coach, John Williamson, who marketed a range of such devices,
calibrated for all sorts of performance of glider.

I think I still have one in my Ventus, but haven't used it in decades as
(ironically, considering today's electronic wizardry) I can monitor the
situation mentally quite well enough.

(I don't know whether "John Willy" has the same alternative connotation
in the US as in the UK?)

James.

 




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