We could definitely do this as a group. You can go to Condor-Club.eu and click “competitions” to see the multiplayer schedule. Right now I am registered and flying with US Nightly Soaring and Monday Night Soaring. Both are open with no password (but you do have to register). The TeamSpeak pw is given on the registration page. Or we could just do our own thing. The default scenery is Slovenia2 and it is very lovely. Other sceneries can be freely downloaded from the Condor Club but the download is throttled way back. I gave up and joined for 15 euro/ year. I’ll be doing this a lot so for me it was a no-brainer. And thanks for the nice comments. It means a lot.
For tonight’s task we returned to Slovenia. It was short at 65 km but had some technical terrain that proved hard to handle for many, including my mentor, Daniel, who crashed on the last leg. I did just fine but the reason was that I had failed to read the briefing which stated that even though the task was open to any glider only the Standard Cirrus would be scored. I took an 18 m Antares with a full load of water. Oh what a difference the plane makes! I was up there cruising along watching all the rest of the guys struggle among the rocks. Even though I didn’t get scored or placed, it was nice to have finished after the failure on Saturday.
Daniel keeps a blog at the SoaringEconomist . He writes beautifully about both his real flying and the Condor flying, much of which he organizes for the two groups mentioned. I posted here a couple of years ago the AAR he wrote about his world record 1000 km 1-26 flight. That can also be found on his blog.
Finally, for anyone who doesn’t soar, my AAR may have come off as a bit intimidating. I was honestly expressing my life-long admiration for pilots who soar. But I am also a bit of an idiot and easily impressed . Soaring is easy. That’s why a kid can solo a glider at age 14. Condor comes with a handful of training missions that you can complete in an hour and be up to speed enough to fully enjoy the competitions. I don’t yet know how the host/client thing works with Condor but if there is any interest, I’d be happy to take a stab at it.
Well, I probably shouldn’t have … but I just bought the base sim.
Wow… that is smoooooooth in VR. Lots to learn of course. My first couple of launches proved fatal because the controls were not mapped correctly… I probably should have done a proper control check!
I just loked at the website and you can get the standard version with Condor2 with 7 gliders, 4 towplanes and Slovenia landscape for 49.99€ + VAT and add the SG-38 for 7.99€ + VAT or you could get the pro version with 22 gliders, 4 towplanes and Slovenia landscape which include the SG-38 for 157.13€ + VAT.
@smokinhole Eric, are there any major holes in the base pack that you think a beginner like me should fill? This is new territory for me. I did fly the Grob 109b for a brief period over 20 years ago, but I flew it with the mentality of a powered aircraft pilot. A wasted opportunity I guess, but I had other priorities back then.
The 7 gliders you get is a good mix of classes. There really isn’t much need to buy anything else unless you have a particular nostalgic need to get something not in the standard mix.
The thing about gliders, which was argued by an experienced pilot on the task last night, is that there is not a world of difference in flying qualities between ships. They are all sensitive in pitch, slow in roll and generally quite stable overall. The statement made was, “there is probably more difference between a 152 and a 172 than there is between any of the gliders we are flying.” That’s an exaggeration for sure. And he meant flying qualities only, not performance. But it certainly holds true for the 4 types I have flown for real: The Grob 103, Schweitzer 2-33, Schweitzer 1-26 and Blanik L-13. If you look them up they all look wildly different. But they all flew pretty much the same.
Thanks for the info! I guess it is pretty much inevitable that I will start to add to my virtual hangar, but it is good to know that it really isn’t necessary to do so.
If you are allocating money, I would spend the 15euro for the condor-club. You will likely want to experience other sceneries, especially if you participate in multiplayer events. And to do so you will have to branch away from Slovenia2 (the included scenery). All sceneries are community created and free. But I have found that the only way to get access to so many gigabytes of data is to join the club. It sounds a bit like a racket but it really is a service. Hosting competitions and servicing all of that data can’t be cheap.
[EDIT] Good god! There’s a German competition hosted tomorrow using the scenery “West Germany 3”. At high resolution it is 53gb. At ultra-high resolution it is over 250gb!
You got “UP” as your contest number?! That’s awesome. I can’t believe no one else thought of that. Mine is “7A” (last two digits of my N-number)
You know the glide ratio of that Schneider is only twice that of a typical helicopter, right? So don’t feel bad about not reaching the distant thermals from a winch launch.
[BELOW:] Ahh, maybe that’s the boilerplate for people who don’t submit one. Now that I think of it I believe I’ve seen it before.
Dad had a total of 4:57 in 14 launches. That’s 4 minutes, 57 seconds…total. Rubber slingshot launches off a ramp, ontop of a knoll.
He also did 13 launches that were just sliding along the ground, pulled by a vinch and a few sliding down a ramp with a small jump at the end. These were not timed.
The SG-38s he flew did not have instruments.
This was in the summer of 1944. He won the glider course in a weekly family magazine.
No. Stopped there.
He got a degree in engineering and never looked back. But he always had an interest in aviation, that rubbed off on me…
The thing is… He was the most cautious person you’d ever meet. Never did anything without careful planning. Didn’t even drive a car.
Why he strapped that winged picket fence onto his back will forever be a mystery to me.
Maybe that’s what taught him to be cautious…?
He died of cancer when I was 17.
That F-16 shaped “Like” button seems very inappropriate right now. But yours was a nice, touching post. I am really sorry. If he was half the crafter you’ve become I am sure he would be extremely proud.
. Soaring is easy. That’s why a kid can solo a glider at age 14. Condor comes with a handful of training missions that you can complete in an hour and be up to speed enough to fully enjoy the competitions. I don’t yet know how the host/client thing works with Condor but if there is any interest, I’d be happy to take a stab at it.
… but I just bought the base sim. 
