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New Steve Fossett Book - and other new stuff
Hi,
I just read the new book "Chasing the Wind: The Autobiography of Steve Fossett". Below is my review. I am a big fan of Steve Fossett. I have closely followed many of his record breaking endeavors over the years. I met him briefly at the Soaring Society of America convention in February of 2005 just a few weeks before he made the first nonstop around the world flight in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer. He impressed me as a very friendly and down-to-earth person. I've also been pleased to sell a few soaring instruments to his team over the years - shipped to New Zealand and Argentina. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about his early life as an Eagle Scout and his business career and especially liked reading about his adventures related to endurance swimming, sled-dog racing, mountain climbing, yachting, ballooning, and flying airplanes and gliders. He has an extremely adventurous spirit and a "can do" attitude that I admire. While I have no desire to climb mountains or go around the world in a balloon, I enjoyed reading the entire book. Upon first opening the book I was a bit disappointed to find that there are no chapters dedicated to soaring and no photographs of gliders. In recent years he has obtained many world soaring records. Thankfully, there are about 7 pages in the beginning of the last chapter dedicated to his soaring adventures. The section gives a good overview of his adventures setting world soaring records in gliders with Terry Delore and flying with Einar Enevoldson going for high altitude flights with the Perlan Project. After the book was published he and Einar Enevoldson set a new world altitude record in gliders of 50,671 feet (15,447 m). I feel that all cross-country glider pilots have a bit of adventurous spirit in us. I certainly felt like an "adventurer" while doing my first long distance cross-country soaring flights and while going after state soaring records. I found the book to be very motivational. It has rekindled my desire to do long, memorable and record setting soaring flights. The book is available he http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/books...ingTheWind.htm You can also buy the book for a little less money at amazon.com, but please buy from your favorite soaring book supplier. Other new items at www.cumulus-soaring.com Glider Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge by Russell Holtz http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/books...tsHandbook.htm Flight Training Manual For Gliders by Russell Holtz http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/books...ForGliders.htm Sailplane Design, by Vittorio Pajno Discount - Slightly Damaged Copies Available The first shipment of these books was unfortunately damaged on the way to me from Italy. 11 of the 20 books were perfect, but 9 were damaged slightly. Being a perfectionist and not feeling comfortable selling the slightly damaged books as perfect books, I received a discount from the vendor so I could sell the books at a discount. The damage consists of "bruises" to the spines of the books and one or 2 with dents in the side of the spine (see photo below). I will be selling them for $59.95 which is $25 off the standard price. None of the books are badly damaged. I think the discount is an extremely good value. You can select a discounted (slightly damaged) book when you order. I will ship the least damaged books first. You can see a photo of the damage on the web site. http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/books...laneDesign.htm TomTom Navigator 6 Street Navigation Software The only complaint I had about version 5 was that you couldn't enter GPS coordinates and then navigate to that location - as would be necessary to navigate to the GPS coordinates of an off-airport glider landing. Version 6 can do that - which is nice. It's a great value at $149.95 for anyone that already owns a Pocket PC and GPS. I also have a few copies of Navigator 5 left in stock that I'm selling for $75. http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/tomtom.htm Good Soaring, Paul Remde Cumulus Soaring, Inc. http://www.cumulus-soaring.com |
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