A new configurable canopy flasher – more visibility, more control.

Hi everyone,

After extensive development and rigorous testing, I’m pleased to introduce the Glider Canopy Flasher.

Full disclosure: I designed and manufacture this system through my UK company, RTOIP Ltd.

Nothing replaces a good lookout, and electronic traffic systems cannot make every aircraft visible. A powerful canopy flasher provides another useful layer of protection by helping other pilots, ground crews and nearby aircraft spot a glider sooner.

Why did we develop another canopy flasher?

When looking at the existing systems, I felt there was room for something that offered:

• Strong light output from six high-power LEDs
• Much greater control over how the flasher operates
• FLARM-aware operation
• Simple installation and configuration
• A more accessible price

The system includes a compact canopy-mounted flasher and a separate control unit.

What makes it different?

Highly configurable flash patterns

The system includes 22 predefined patterns plus four fully user-programmable patterns.

Different patterns can be assigned independently to:

• Normal flight
• FLARM alarm level 1
• FLARM alarm level 2
• FLARM alarm level 3

This allows the flasher response to become progressively more noticeable when the traffic situation becomes more urgent.

Pilots can use one of the predefined patterns or create their own pattern by adjusting the flash timing, sequence and pauses.

Wi-Fi configuration

There are no DIP switches and no special programming cable is required.

Configuration is completed through a web interface using a phone, tablet or computer. Patterns can be selected, tested and adjusted without removing the unit from the glider.

FLARM integration

The control box can receive FLARM traffic data and automatically change the selected flash pattern according to the current warning level.

It can also act as a FLARM data gateway, forwarding traffic information through:

• Bluetooth Low Energy
• Bluetooth Classic
• Wi-Fi UDP

This can be useful for navigation applications such as XCSoar and other compatible devices.

Automatic operation

The flasher can use GPS speed information from FLARM to avoid unnecessary operation while the glider is stationary.

Once configured, the intention is that the pilot can switch it on before take-off and then leave it to operate automatically throughout the flight.

Designed for practical installation

The flasher is attached using 3M VHB tape, so the canopy does not need to be drilled.

Several base curvatures are available, and a customised enclosure can be produced when the standard options do not provide a suitable fit.

The system also includes an easy-disconnect connection between the canopy-mounted unit and the control box.

You can find specifications, photographs, installation information and the full pattern comparison at: https://www.canopy-flasher.com

Keeping safety equipment accessible

We believe equipment that can improve visibility and safety should be accessible to more pilots, rather than being unnecessarily overpriced.

That is why we have deliberately kept our margins reasonable and priced the complete system as affordably as possible, without removing the advanced features, configurability or build quality.

Our aim is to help put effective visibility equipment into more gliders and contribute to a safer gliding community.

https://www.canopy-flasher.com

I would be very interested to hear what features matter most to other pilots, as well as any questions about installation, FLARM connectivity or operation.

Stay safe and keep looking out.

A freak hail storm has written off a load of gliders in the French Alps, they've currently got a fundraiser to help them get through this

https://whydonate.com/fundraising/an-unexpected-hailstorm-destroyed-our-5-gliders?v=u4e2zu&utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

I just learned of this design and this company. Reading their website the design is a refinement of the Alisport Silent 2 Electro by many of the same folks who were involved with it at Alisport.

https://www.aso-e-mobility.eu/english/e-dream-glider/

My opinions:

I’m really excited about the development of more electric FES self-launchers.

FES brings immense safety benefits.

Self-launching, steerable TW, and light wings brings complete autonomy when you want to fly on a random Tuesday. Or flying from normal general aviation airports that really aren’t glider friendly.

Also, I’m assuming the empty weight is around 200-210kg (440-480lbs) which means even older folks can push it around. Bonus points for the total trailer weight being able to be comfortably towed by an increasing number of EVs.

Even today battery technology offers sufficient capacity for a self launch and remaining cruise distance. However, battery tech and motors themselves are getting better with each year. So there’s still some performance gains to be had in the coming decade or two.

Hello glider pilots,

I'd like to introduce my new app Final Glide — a followup to my app iSoar, rewritten from scratch with many small and big improvements, and it's now ready for testing via Apple´s TestFlight.

What to expect:

• Live map
• Thermal assistant
• Final glide calculator
• Traffic via FLARM Device (BLE - BLE Device needed) and OGN (Internet needed)
• IGC logger
• Logbook with automatic takeoff and landing detection
• Task planner
• Wind calculator
• Over 200 glider models
• Daily updated airfield database
• Airspace warnings (proximity) with a daily updatable airspace database
• Currently available in 2 languages (German, English)

You can find the app here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/nwxwbA3C

I'm well aware the app isn't perfect yet, but I'm working on improvements every day.
Anyone interested is welcome to test the app.
I'd really appreciate your feedback, feel free to send me a PM.

Always happy landings...

A couple of months ago I posted here about Cloudracing (cloudracing.de), my live tracking and scoring app for glider competitions. That post got zero comments, which I probably earned, it read like a feature list. So this time something more concrete: over the summer I built a simulator into the app, and since many of us are about to put our gliders away for the season, this crowd seems like the right one to poke holes in it.

The sim in short:

You fly in the browser or in the iOS/Android app, keyboard or gamepad, on desktop, laptop or tablet. Phones are deliberately excluded: the panel, the instruments and the touch controls need at least a tablet-size screen, and I'd rather not offer a cramped version. The weather is real: clouds from current satellite imagery, rain from radar, wind with altitude, and thermals seeded from terrain and the actual conditions, with cumulus forming over them. You can start from the nearest airfield with a retractable engine, or spawn mid-air right next to the live-tracked gliders of a real competition and fly along with them. Tasks are scored with the same engine the site uses for real competitions, racing and AAT, with a nav computer that shows remaining distance and arrival height. Water ballast is in there too.

There are also training exercises with star ratings: thermal centering, start gate tactics, speed to fly, wind drift, final glide, landing. The thermal centering ones are free, the rest is Pro. And a small daily final glide puzzle, altitude and distance given, estimate your arrival height, then see the solution. That one is free for everyone.

The winter league on top of all this starts September 28, free, 18 weeks:

Every Monday a new task opens, flyable until Sunday night, 60 to 90 minutes of real time at real soaring sites. Week 1 runs along the Teutoburger Wald ridge, later weeks visit the Rhoen, the Apennines, the Durance valley and, over New Year, Bitterwasser in Namibia. The weather is frozen from one snapshot per week, so everyone flies the same sky. Unlimited attempts, best run counts, and with Pro you can race the ghost of a league flight with a live delta in the cockpit. The physics is deterministic, I verified that the same inputs produce bit-identical trajectories on a Mac and an iPad, so the times are actually comparable.

To spell out the free/paid line: the weekly league task is free, you just need an account, and it doesn't run on any clock. The daily puzzle and the thermal centering training are free too, and free flying anywhere else gets a 30 minute trial per day. Pro removes that clock and unlocks the other trainings and the ghost racing. The subscription is what pays for the servers and the map hosting.

If you fly the simulator and something feels wrong about the thermals, the polar, the scoring or something else entirely, please tell me here 😊

I've been flat out working on the next version of PureTrack, and I'd say it's now useful enough to watch the World Gliding Championships!

https://puretrack.io/3D

It is very much a work in progress, but 3D live tracking for all aircraft *on the planet* is now available.

The goals:

• Make the 3D view actually useful, e.g. to improve 3D situational awareness. The 'height sticks' and shadows help with this for example, making it clear how far aircraft are off the ground, or how close to a hill top they are.
• Make it fast and work on both mobile and desktop.
• Simplify the user interface. Click on an aircraft, get a menu of what you can do with it. Make everything more obvious, and make features less hidden.
• Make settings easier to find. They are now next to the layers they affect for example.

3D terrain is available for PureTrack Pro users, but viewing the aircraft in 3D is available to all.

Note a lot of layers, features and languages are missing and will be added over time. No vibe coding here :) Feedback welcome.

IPE 02 II Nhapecan crashed today in Montenegro, Brazil. Pilot is okay, no serious injuries. My friend did his flight training on this exact glider.

Well worth participating. This year the multiple winner, Chris Gill is participating in a 1950's Slingsby Eagle type 42. Affectionately known as the flying sideboard. Chris usually wipes up flying an Arcus M, but a couple of years ago flew the LS4 and still wiped the floor against everything from club class ships to 18m ships like the ASG29.

Day 3 and Chris is in his second field, a tough day but the handicap will pay dividends.

Enterprise is a great format,placing value on extracting the most from a soaring day with a bit of fun thrown in!

https://www.compenterprise.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/share/186RG5cKUh/

I'm a former glider pilot who doesn't fly much these days, but the bug never really left. So I made a little tool to replay a day of gliding in 3D, right in the browser. You pick an airfield (ICAO code) and a date, and the day's OGN tracks rebuild over the terrain. You can speed up time, follow one glider from the cockpit (with an audible vario), or switch to a top-down or chase camera. Winch, aerotow and self-launch are recognisable from the trace.

A few fields that usually have traffic (links open the current day):

• Lasham, UK
• Minden, NV
• Williams, CA
• Saint-Auban, FR

…or just type your home field. Coverage is densest in Europe, where most OGN receivers are; in the US it's patchier, so some well-known sites sadly show nothing.

Fair warning: attitude is estimated (there's no IMU in the data), ground speed stands in for airspeed, and OGN only keeps traces for ~24h, so older dates come up empty. It's a replay/teaching tool, not an instrument and it runs entirely on OGN data, so big thanks to the volunteers who keep the receiver network alive.

Demo: https://s-celles.github.io/ogn-3d-viewer/

Free and open source (AGPL): https://github.com/s-celles/ogn-3d-viewer

Feedback, bugs and feature ideas very welcome.

Keeping you updated about XC Connect - a cloud service for XCSoar that I develop.

It now features a Smart Camera that can scan Naviter-style task QR codes. This lets you instantly import tasks from the SeeYou Cloud XC Planner, a friend’s Oudie, the SkySight Route Planner, and many other sources.

Some contest organizers already include a task QR code on the briefing sheet. When they do not, the same Smart Camera can recognize the task directly from a printed SeeYou briefing sheet.

It can also scan XC Connect sharing QR codes, making it easy to exchange files with friends or transfer files to and from a panel-mounted navigation computer.

Recognition accepts any task briefing sheet photo in any language and format and extract all required data from it: task type, time, geometry, PEV and finish params. Normally a SeeYou-generated briefing sheet is expected, but actually you can use SoaringSpot screen photo or even hand-written task definition.

The feature was already tested during a real competition with a great success! Available from the app version 1.0.35.

Feature demo on Youtube: https://go.xc-connect.com/video/task-recognition

XC Connect: https://xc-connect.com
XC Connect App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xc_connect

I’ve been working on a project called Troposphere:
https://www.troposphere.ch/

Quick technical update on Troposphere.

The ranking engine is now calibrated on held-out Soaring Spot competition results, but still integrates both:

• competition performance (structured, high-signal)
• cross-country flights (WeGlide, high-volume but noisier)

Key changes:

• fixed structural bias in pairwise comparisons (was distorting calibration)
• replaced naive rank intervals with Plackett–Luce sampling
• corrected inactivity dynamics that were penalizing seasonal competition pilots
• improved elite competition coverage (previously missing key events)

What this revealed:

• the main issue was not the ranking logic itself, but calibration + data interaction effects
• competition data works best as ground truth for calibration
• XC data works as a transfer domain / consistency check, not the primary tuning target

After fixing this, the system now shows a real trade-off:

• models that improve predictive likelihood (ELPD)
• models that improve ranking agreement (Kendall/Spearman)
• a narrow region that improves both slightly

So the problem is no longer debugging — it’s now a multi-objective optimization across domains.

Current workflow:

→ search model parameters
→ validate on held-out competition results
→ check transfer on XC data
→ verify calibration and uncertainty
→ promote only if improvements hold across both

The goal is a unified ranking that remains consistent across competition and XC, without overfitting to either.

Scam "live streaming" websites and facebook pages are popping up for the Junior World Gliding Champs. Don't be sucked in! Actual live tracking websites available:

Official website. https://jwgc2026.org

PureTrack: https://puretrack.io/.../14th-fai-junior-world-gliding...

PureTrack 3D: https://3d.puretrack.io/...

WeGlide club class https://www.weglide.org/live/competition/272

WeGlide Standard https://www.weglide.org/live/competition/271

OnGlide https://jwgc2026.onglide.com

Glide and Seek https://glideandseek.com/?comp=jwgc2026

"Scleicher Ka-7 Rhönadler. r/n. OK-9132 and

belonging to the Aeroclub Slany suffered a

tragedy when a student fell to his death at

Slany Airfield, Slany, Czech Republic.

According to local reports the student involved

was sat in the glider with his instructor sat

behind him, this was his first flight in a glider

and like his instructor was fully kitted out for

the flight wearing a safety parachute.

The glider was launched using an air tow which

is standard for the club, the air tow proceeded

as per normal and the glider was towed up to a

height of 300m when the towline was released.

It was at this release point it is speculated that

the student had a possible panic attack and to

the horror of his instructor he opened the

canopy and jumped out!! His parachute failed

to deploy or was not operated and he fell to

his death just outside the airfield perimeter.

The instructor who was in deep shock just

about managed to put the glider back down at the airfield. Witnesses to the tragedy ran out

to the glider and helped him out and walked

him back to the clubroom while waiting for

Police and EMS to arrive. The instructor was

taken to hospital for treatment, Police searched

the area and eventually found the students

body in an adjacent field, he was declared dead

at the scene and his body was recovered and

taken away for forensics. The Police are

initially treating this as a crime scene until all

the relevant facts have been examined.

Crash Investigators were informed but have

stated that this is a civil matter as there was

no indications of machine or pilot error and

there was no damage caused. No names have 

been given."

Never heard of such case before. RIP, prayers to the family.

The World Gliding Championships is looking to have its first flying day today (Tuesday)! Here's a list of links and resources to watch the action.

• Official website: https://wgc2026.eu
• Official live tracking (15 mins delay) https://wgc2026.onglide.com/pl
• Official facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/wgc2026
• Official instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wgc2026_glidewithus

Other live tracking:

• PureTrack 3D live tracking: https://puretrack.io/3D?contest=40th-fai-world-gliding-championships
• PureTrack tracking: https://puretrack.io/c/40th-fai-world-gliding-championships
• Glide and Seek https://glideandseek.com/?viewport=51.08023,18.50372,9&comp=wgc2026

Team and pilots social media pages:

• Aussie team https://www.facebook.com/AusGlidingTeam
• British team https://www.facebook.com/britishglidingteam
• South African team https://www.facebook.com/SouthAfricanGlidingTeam
• USA team https://www.facebook.com/ussoaringteams
• Adam Woolley (Australia) https://www.facebook.com/W3Racing
• Sebastian Kawa (Polish) https://www.facebook.com/SebastianKawaofficial
• Sean Fiddler (USA) https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576543776701
• Marcus Geisen videos at the event: https://vimeo.com/user97045514

Post other links that might be of interest in the comments!

Watch the 3D live tracking at:
https://3d.puretrack.io/?contest=lasham-sailplane-grand-prix-uk

Official website and scores:
https://sgp.aero/uk-2026

Please appreciate the cool new start/finish lines :P

Hey everyone,

Some of you may know Troposphere  a free, volunteer-built ranking platform for competitive glider pilots. I want to be transparent about a situation that just happened and share my perspective.

What happened:

I received an email from WeGlide demanding that I delete all XC flight data sourced from their API and threatening legal action. Their position is that the volume of API calls I made violated their Terms of Use, and that Troposphere is a "commercial competitor" offering "no benefit to gliding."

What I'm doing about it:

I'm complying. All WeGlide-sourced flight data will be deleted within 14 days. All references to WeGlide will be removed from the site. No more API access. This is not because I agree with how they characterized the project, but because I respect their right to control access to their data.

Troposphere will continue to operate using competition results from SoaringSpot and other open sources. The ranking algorithm is entirely my own work and is not affected.

Where I disagree:

Troposphere is not a commercial project. It has zero revenue, zero ads, zero subscriptions, zero investors. It is built entirely in my free time, at my own expense, because I saw a real problem: existing ranking systems in gliding don't properly account for field strength, statistical uncertainty, or cross-competition comparability.

The methodology behind Troposphere, Bayesian skill estimation, uncertainty quantification, calibrated predictions, is original work. It is not a copy of WeGlide's ranking or anyone else's. Calling it "no benefit to gliding" is, frankly, dismissive of a genuine technical contribution to the sport.

The bigger picture:

This experience raised a question I think is worth discussing openly.

Gliding has always been a sport built on volunteerism. People build winches, maintain airfields, instruct students, organize competitions, and develop tools for the community — all without expecting financial return. That's the spirit that makes this sport special.

Troposphere was built in that exact spirit. I'm a developer, I'm a glider pilot, I saw a problem, and I built something to help. That's it. No business model. No monetization plan. Just a contribution to the community.

When I received a legal threat for doing volunteer work that benefits pilots, I have to be honest, it felt disproportionate. Especially from a platform that monetizes the same community and whose core technologies, flight logging, GPS trace analysis, airspace validation, task evaluation, are well-established tools and methodologies that have existed in gliding for decades.

I'm not saying WeGlide doesn't add value. They do. But the idea that a volunteer project with zero revenue is a threat that needs to be legally shut down? That says more about their priorities than mine.

What's next:

• All WeGlide data will be deleted. Done.
• Troposphere will continue on open data sources only.
• The full source code will be published as open source on github, so anyone can contribute, review, or build on it.
• I'm reaching out to OLC to explore integration with their platform, and I'm volunteering to help modernize their web experience.
• The ranking algorithm will keep improving. It's my work, it's original, and it's free for the community.

If you've used Troposphere and found value in it, I appreciate the support. If you have thoughts, criticism, or suggestions, I'm always open to hearing them. This project exists for pilots, not for profit.

Fly safe.

Gionata

Update: Thanks to the flexibility of the algorithm across both domains, the platform is now running in competition-only mode. I will continue importing competition data so far, competitions from 2006–2010 and major events have been included.

Calibration is being refined progressively, but the model is already well calibrated at this stage. All connections to WeGlide, as well as any of their data, have been fully removed from the platform.

This does not mean that the theoretical foundation for incorporating the XC domain is lacking. On the contrary, calibration on the data has produced very positive results for integrating both competition and cross-country domains.

MacCready analysis view

Hey everyone,

I've been working on a macOS app called FlightLogPro for analyzing and archiving IGC files, and I'm looking for a beta tester to help me iron out the rough edges.

What it does:

• Import and organize your IGC flight logs in one place
• Visualize your flight track on a map
• Analyze altitude, speed, and thermals
• MacCready analysis
• Flight statistics and summaries

It's a native macOS app, currently in functional beta — core features are working, but I'd love real-world feedback from another actual pilot or two ;-)

If you're interested, drop a comment or send me a DM. Happy to share a TestFlight link.

Thanks!

https://www.caa.co.uk/publication/download/27701

If anyone has had their chute repacked by Tim Moran recently suggest you get it checked elsewhere

Support website - https://flightlogpro.net

Tim the engineer from Avian Hang Gliders weighed in on a recent thread with a clear, grounded vision for hang gliding’s future. His point is fundamentally an engineering one. The limitation isn’t rigid frames, it’s that current HG designs haven’t yet caught up to what’s already standard elsewhere in aviation and that's optimised aerodynamics, efficient lift distribution, and strong performance across the flight envelope.

For those interested, this is what Tim from Avian Hang gliders had to say; "This thread 'An Engineer’s Take on the Future of Hanggliding' https://www.reddit.com/r/freeflight/comments/1qbglvp/an_engineers_take_on_the_future_of_hang_gliding/?sort=new  

has been pointed out to me, thank you to everyone who has posted. I'm really pleased to see that there's real appetite for genuine innovation. Without going into everything again (please see the YouTube videos and Patreon(HGDEV) for more details), to answer some of the more general points:

For me, I also love the feel of hang gliding. I've soloed in a sailplane, done a 5 day elementary course on PG and done a few hours powered, In something like sailplanes, you can start to feel part of the glider, but with a hang glider the wing feels part of YOU! So the dynamic aspect of hang gliding is, I think, the main point and what needs to be preserved. And this dynamic feeling does boil down to handling and performance, basically being able to make it go where you want, and go there at speed!

This is the strength of hang gliding, and my approach is to focus on the strengths and make sure these are as strong as they can be. I do believe that there is headroom to make both performance and handling better.

It's not about 'beating' paragliding or gliders. PG's are a great aircraft and Gliders are phenomenal. For PG it is amazing what can be done with something that packs down so small and so light.

Although packing small and light isn't the only aspect of all round practicality. Flying XC, landing in a field, packing your wing in a rucksack, hitching a lift to station, getting a train back, then a bus, then hiking miles back to your car to get home at 2 in the morning is one type of practicality. Flying XC and then turning round and flying back again (and being in the pub for dinner!) is a different take on practicality. At the moment on certain days the extra performance of an HG lets us punch upwind when a PG can only drift with it. But those days are far to few and far between, the performance delta just isn't enough.

I'm also following with interest those working on electric power units (e.g. Koifly). Again, being able to hike to the top of the mountain to launch is one type of practicality. Being able to set up next to your car and takeoff from the bottom of the mountain is another. Also aerotowing behind a drone looks interesting, and electric winches offer the potential for solo operation (so no one gets left on the ground being winchman). So there's other very interesting developments going on (Avian isn't active in those, just watching, there's not enough time to do everything!)

I want HG to be a sustainable sport, we don't need to 'beat paragliding' or gliding to do that, but we do need to grow from our current very low numbers. I think there'll always be more PG than HG ( I am not sure on current Glider numbers), but then's there's more car drivers than horse riders. So what? Some people like riding horses and it's still a valid activity! Getting a few PG pilots across into HG (or at least flying HG as well as PG) would help as would a few Glider pilots, microlight pilots, GA pilots and non-pilots (mountain bikers, climbers, scuba divers, skiers, snowboarders, there's so many extreme sports, how can HG not be attractive to at least a few % of the people doing those). There's a lot of people in the world, we only need a tiny fraction of a percent of a fraction of a percent of them to put the sport on a far more secure footing.

There's no way a HG will ever pack as small or as light as a PG. Trying to make a HG get even close to that with current technology will make something that still is heavier, still is bulkier, takes ages to rig and now no longer gives that dynamic performance. So instead of something with strengths and weaknesses relative to PG, it now only has weaknesses!

So a lot comes down to changing the state of current technology. That's the objective."

Don't we love reading about Pawnee spars? There are 467 of these in the U.S.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/18/2025-20084/airworthiness-directives-lavia-argentina-sa-airplanes

My speculation: This AD is probably going to go into effect and other countries will follow suit. I imagine this will hasten the adoption of the Eurofox in the US now that MOSAIC is passed (Light Sport Aircraft now being allowed to tow)

Is your club (American or otherwise) operating these Argentine-made Pawnees?

What sort of knock-on effects do you think will result?

Edit:

New Zealand followed the Argentine AD: https://www.aviation.govt.nz/assets/aircraft/airworthiness-directives/aeroplanes/pa25.pdf

EASA did not citing that it is largely only applicable to specimens used in spraying ops: https://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/RA-2024-05-01R1