Miscellaneous

FAR/AIM Reprint - Gleim, ASA, and others

   Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) change all the time and you must keep up to date. Although the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) covers a lot of ground on instrument procedures and airport markers and the like, there's much there for the glider pilot as well. This book used to be on my must have list but if you connect to the internet via broadband or DSL, there's little point. It's all online at Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM), FAR part 61 (pilot certification), FAR part 91 (general operating and flight rules). After the 11 Sep 01 terrorist attacks, pilots were advised to review their intercept procedures. This is where you'll find that - as well as a wealth of other info. Things like: airspace (class A, B, C, D, E, and G - restricted areas and other SUA [Special Use Airspace]), radio communication procedures, meteorology, potential flight hazards, and much more. Available at most pilot shops.
A Transition To Glider - Cumulus Courseware   "Discover Soaring - A transition To Gliders" is an interactive CD-ROM course, designed to familiarize the transitioning power pilot with gliders. Although novel in its approach, in my opinion, the project failed. It is with reluctance that I pass such judgment because much well intentioned work went into creating this production.

The photography is amateurish, with little or no attention paid to lighting. Many of the scenes are quite dark as shown by this screen shot demonstrating a stall - right. Or, how about learning about how to preflight the day's activities - note the shadow. I understand that the course developers used the VHS tape of the same name for their video source... but really. The narration is better. The narrative content is not in depth, which is expected from an introductory overview, but adequately touches on the high points of what it takes to be a glider guider.

The software is Neanderthal. The graphic output is not contained within a standard window but is just blasted out to the screen (see the full screen shot ). You can't background or move or resize the display and, if the display hides a desktop shortcut, too bad. You can't get to it.

The user interface is poor. There's a short test at the end of each section but it's impossible to skip past it, should you want to. There are no user selectable options at all, so you can't even turn off that annoying music that plays when you select a test answer. There's an alphabetical index so that you can randomly select a topic. I found out (much) later that the index contents only go up to the letter "C". You have no real way of knowing that and yet you are given the option of clicking on tabs A - Z. If you click past "C", the request is ignored - no error message, no nothing. On this shot I'm clicking on the index "H"s - hmmmm. ... the list goes on. The VHS tape by the same name is also available.

Sailplanes 1965 - 2000 - Martin Simons

   A beautiful book, recently hard to find, but now available again from the publisher. High quality paper and pictures (click for sample). A description of just about any production glider imaginable, organized by country of manufacture. Published by EQIP Werbung & Verlag GmbH, Köningswinter, Germany (http://www.eqip.de/)

Wings Like Eagles - Paul A. Schweizer

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Written by Paul Schweizer, the ultimate insider of the American soaring scene, this book details the who, what, and where. If you want to know who attended the SSA winter director meeting of 1957 on March 8-9 in Hollywood, California, and what was discussed, this book is for you. If you don't, there are a couple of nice black and white pictures.

Pilots handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge - FAA

   Although widely used by airplane students. This book is little known among glider pilots, which is a shame. It's an official FAA publication (AC 61-23C) and is a good example of tax dollars well spent. In many ways information in this book can also be found in the Soaring Flight Manual (see above) but in some cases it's done better - like the chapter on weight and balance, for instance. But the book also goes beyond what is covered in most soaring texts. Real life things like how to get a weather briefing (on the ground, phone 1-800-WXBRIEF - in the air, call Flight Service - often on 122.2), how to get local ground based automated weather reports via the Automated Surface Observation System [ASOS] (Fitchburg ASOS 135.175), and (should you ever have to land at a towered airport) airport operations. There's enough here to give this book a strong recommendation - Available at most pilot shops.

Stick and Rudder - Wolfgang Langewiesche

   OK, this book has little to do with soaring but it has a lot to do with flying. It was written in 1944 and has been in continuous publication since. No other aviation book and few other books can make that claim. It's been in continuous publication for over 60 years because it's good. Some of the concepts and terminology is a bit dated (elevators are called flippers, for instance), but the amount and the richness of information contained here is astounding. Forty pages are used to explain how an airplane (or glider for that matter) turns. You'd think that this is excessive but it turns (pun intended) out that it's not - and the writing style is so straight forward and clear that you want to read those 40 pages.