Editor's comments
Abstract
Editor’s comments
On the opposite page is the announcement of the OSTIV Joachim P. Kuettner Prize and Trophy for a 2500 km free straight distance soaring flight. The reader may remember the Kuettner prize for a 2000 km free straight distance soaring flight was accomplished by Klaus Ohlmann and Hervé Lefranc ‘surfing the wave’ downwind of the Argentinean Andes as reported at records.fai.org/file?i=2&f=8153 and at www.pa.op.dlr.de/ostiv/infos.htm. They flew in a Nimbus 4DM the longest flight in a straight line to a goal (2138 km) on 23 November 2003 from Lago Argentino (near El Calafate, the takeoff airport) to St. Juan. To date, this record still stands. A description of the flight is given by the article in this issue by Marty Taylor.
Next appears the call-for-papers for the XXXI OSTIV Congress. The Congress will occur between 8 and 15 August 2012 at the site of the FAI World Gliding Championships for the Open, 18m and 15m classes in Uvalde Texas USA. All OSTIV members and non-members, as well, are encouraged to submit papers for presentation. These papers, then, form the ‘core’ of the content for OSTIV’s international journal Technical Soaring.
This issue continues the publication of papers presented at the 2010 OSTIV Congress in Szeged Hungary. Gerhard Waibel discusses the load requirements for light and small sailplanes; what are they and are they reasonable? Andreas Gäb and Christoph Santel present a detailed numerical model of a sailplane-winch launch system. Simulations of safe and dangerous launch practices are consistent with experience.
A contributed paper by Herbert Winter presents an analysis of the energy exchanges between a sailplane and the atmosphere. From the analysis, he proposes an ‘ideal variometer’ that may help the pilot take advantages of the exchanges.
The following persons located the reviewers and supervised the review and revision of the papers in this issue: Associate Editor Helmut Fendt (Waibel paper), Associate Editor Mark Maughmer (Gäb and Santel paper) and Guest Associate Editor Jack Langelaan (Winter paper). To assure accuracy of the published manuscripts, each senior author received a ‘galley-proof’ for corrections-only prior to publication. I applaud the team that produced this issue on time: associate editors, peer-reviewers, authors, copy-editor/layout person, printers and distributors. Thank you!
You are invited to send me comments on papers so a useful dialogue with the author(s) can occur in Technical Soaring. Guidelines for comments can be found at www.ostiv.org (editor)H.
Back-issues, from Vol. 32, No. 4 (October-December 2008) to the current issue, are online at Hjournals.sfu.ca/ts/H; earlier issues will be put online as possible.
Ward Hindman
OSTIV Chief Editor and Technical Soaring Editor
Hwww.ostiv.orgH (editor), journals.sfu.ca/ts/, Hwww.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~hindmanH
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