• Amos Ishai : FAI President Of Honour : 1926 - 1999
  From : Max Bishop || e-mail : maxb@fai.org
• Log, Cost Tracking And Warnings Software For Aircraft Owners
  From : Richard Bériault || e-mail : rberiault@darwin.qc.ca
• Simu Gliding
  From : Roland Stuck || e-mail : rstuck@factorix.sdv.fr
• Re: Simu Gliding
  From : Alvaro de Orleans-Borbon || e-mail : ajob@compuserve.com
• Re: Simu Gliding
  From : Piero Morelli || e-mail : morelli@polito.it

It is my sad duty to inform you that Amos Ishai, former President of the Aero Club of Israel, FAI President and FAI Treasurer General, and until his death FAI President of Honour and FAI Finance Committee member, passed away after a long illness on Friday, 16 April 1999.

The funeral took place on the same day. Condolences may be sent to Mrs G. Ishai and the family at:

10 Tel-Maneh Street
PO Box 7415
HAIFA
Israel

As an amateur pilot and part-time software developper, friends have have asked me to develop a "grand-mother friendly" software program that would combine the following features:

1. a log program;
2. a complete cost tracking accounting package that will track flight, fixed and operating expenses with extensive reporting capabilities for any date period or by pilot (If aircraft is owned in a partnership);
3. would automatically convert liters, imperial quarts, imperial gallons, US quarts and US gallons to the user's default unit of measurement for Fuel and Oil;
4. warnings and reminders on inspection, expiries, overhaul warnings, etc.;
5. split costs between pilots in case the aircraft is owned in partnership;
6. report performance statistics on the aircraft such as fuel and oil consumption, cost per hour, etc;

The program is just about finished and my friends suggested that I should try to market this unique program to private aircraft owners over the Internet. (We have not found any similar product on the market yet!)

I am writing this e-mail to ask your advice. If you were in my shoes, how would you market such a product and make knowned to the aviation community this unique program with very limited funds?

Your help and comments would be greatly appreciated.

At the IGC meeting in Seattle, I was appointed as " specialist " for simulated gliding. The objective of the IGC is to monitor what is going on in this rapidly developing field. For us, simulated gliding is more than a fancy entertainment, it may also be a way to attract younger people to real gliding as well as an educational tool for training students. Therefore it may be useful to give you some information about this topic.

To my knowledge there are essentially three softwares allowing virtual gliding :

1. SFS. PC
   This is the only software really dedicated to gliding simulation, developed by Uwe Milde and Detlev Schwetzer from Germany. Details can be found on their website: ftp://members.aol.com/UMilde/sfs.htm SFS uses a very realistic model of the physical characteristics of a soaring plane.
   All manoeuvres which can be flown with the real plane can be done with SFS PC. Take-off,landing, soaring and hanggliding as free flight or with evaluation are possible. You can fly cross-country and race with other pilots. In my opinion, the main limitation of this software is its low resolution graphics which make it look somewhat outdated when compared to the graphics of the most recent flight simulators.
2. Flight Unlimited
   Flight Unlimited featured a glider ( Grob Twin Astir) in its first version but unfortunately this sailplane has disappeared from the most recent versions.
3. Flight Simulator 98
   The most popular flight simulator is FS 98 from Microsoft and features a Schweizer 2-32 glider which unfortunately is not very well modelled and has poor flying characteristics. The basic program also allows soaring on a few spots and in some situations but it is not possible to find lift anywhere in the FS world. However, FS 98 is a very open program and a lot of designers all over the world are creating planes, scenery and utilities. Some of them have designed much better gliders than the stock Schweizer, and with realistic instrument panels.

Here are some interesting links:

• http://members.aol.com/autofastco/soar.html (an American site with many gliders)
• http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WolfgangPiper/ (a German site with many nice old-timer gliders)
• http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/1018/ (a Dutch site with some gliders and gliding sites )
• http://www.angelfire.com/al/flyfar/ (an adventure that allows you to soar over California)
• and, of course, http://www.Flightsim.com/ which is the most popular web site for FS, where you may find anything.

At the IGC meeting in Seattle, I met Larry Sanderson, SSA President, who is also very interested in gliding simulation. Since he has some connections with Microsoft, he will try to persuade them to integrate thermal, ridge and wave lifts in FS and to improve their glider. I am nevertheless afraid that it will be too late to implement in FS 2000 which is to be released soon. I intend to make a demo of gliding simulation during the next World Gliding Championships in Bayreuth (Germany). I plan to use FS 98 with good scenery of the Bayreuth airport which is in the commercial add-on " German Airports " as well as thermals randomly distributed, with a program created by Ed Dumas Sr. If I can find a second fast PC, it should even be possible to organise races in a multi-player mode over the task given for the real contest. I have also another project which would be to "replay" with FS 98 a real glider flight using the flightlog recorded by a GPS recorder. With the use of satellite textures and 3D terrain maps, the landscapes are now becoming more and more realistic in FS and it would be very interesting to render a real flight in the 3D world of FS 98. This project is quite ambitious and I hope to find the necessary skills to realize it.

If you are interested in any of these topics, please feel free to contact me.

I am very happy that you formally undertook to promote "simsoaring" - I am convinced that with your knowledge and drive you will carry it very far, A few small comments concerning your project outlined above:

1. It may be useful to seek to have either a unified format for the flightlogs of real AND simulated flights, or a handy format converter between the real and the sim logfiles.
2. At FAI level, we should urgently consider to promote a simple philosophy: all logged flights, real or simulated, produce logfiles of the same family. For instance, it could be a "*.flt" file format, the *.igc format becoming a compatible subset of it. The *.flt format would essentially add info concerning the nature of the flight (real or simulated,gliding or aerobatic or air rally, etc.). The people who may concretely deal with this are Thierry Montigneaux and the GFAC wonder boys (and you guys don't shoot back, it's a compliment...)
3. You may consider talking to the various companies and individuals involved in developing evaluation software for gliding flights. Some of them may see a bigger market for their products if they introduce bridges from real to simulated flights, and may therefore do lot of the work for the project you mention above.
4. The quest for new gliding competition philosophies would become MUCH easier if we could have a "simulated testbed" for them. Many such new philosophies require new software to score the flights, which in turn is a big deterrent, because of the long development cycle involved if you had to develop & test the software only in real flights.

A final personal note: when I finally will get a decently fast PC , I will unpack your ASW20 for FS98 - meanwhile many thanks!

Alvaro



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Very interesting! I wonder whether winch launching with a particular glider (the PW-5?) can be simulated for training purposes. I know it is possible but, is it possible in a practical way (not too expensive, realistic,...) ?