Advance has posted a short promotional video featuring the Sigma7 on their website. There’s some interview time with Kari Eisenhut and Thomas Ripplinger, and some nice footage of the glider in flight in Mediera. Check it out.

The long-awaited Sigma 7 is now certified in sizes 26 and 28 and entering production. Since the Sigma 6 is so widely acclaimed as a perfect XC glider it has taken Thomas Ripplinger and his team some considerable effort to surpass it. Advance say that in the new model they have managed to make improvements to stability, handling and performance. Brake pressure is also lighter. More technical details can be found on the Sigma 7 page.

Although the aspect ratio is just slightly higher than that of the Sigma 6, I think you’ll agree the higher arc and new graphic design make the glider look very similar indeed to the Omega 7.
Sizes 23 and 31 will be certified and enter production soon.
Demo gliders will be released in June and the first production units will ship in July.

Sorry about the long absence of the site. The reseller that registered my domain went broke and without their help to extend the domain registration it got locked into suspended animation. It’s taken a couple of months of trying to get the powers that be to notice the fact that a reseller went belly-up and then persuade the upstream registrar to take over the accounts and let me re-register the domain directly.
My rant for today, were I writing one, would be about ’service’ departments that don’t provide any, and ’service’ reps who don’t actually bother read incoming mail or help request tickets, but just fire off canned responses to whatever questions they imagined they were being asked. Even better is then having to pay extra for retrieving the domain name from the scrapheap because the time limit for a straight extension had passed, due the incompetence of said ’service’ reps.

Motto for today is; “You cannot complain about the service. There isn’t any.”

Anyway, hopefully things here on wingstaiwan.com are back to normal now and the site will run stable from now on. My apologies again for any inconvenience, and for ranting out of turn.

I had a rare chance to get down to Saichia for an extended break, and with the weather finally improving down there the opportunity was not to be missed. A few things have changed since I was last there. The LZ has now grown to stretch all the way from the little HG training hill all the way out to the microlight airstrip and the river. Only the betelnut plantation to the south is still there. This makes the landing area about three times it’s original size, if not four times. Apparently the land was all compulsory purchased by the Pingtung county government and then handed over to the Maolin Scenic Area Authority. They are also trying to purchase the launch, but have so far been unsuccessful.
The locals tell me that the site has hardly been flown this year, with the weather not breaking until now. When I first flew in Saichia almost ten years ago, the weather would break in October. Climate change at work?

Still, despite the ongoing problems it’s still a great site to fly, it’s just that it is now ‘on’ for less of the year, and if you’re a foreigner you’re going to get put over a barrel if you want to fly.

Dec. 25: High pressure day with clear morning, becoming overcast in the afternoon. I got a half-hour of scratching in the morning while Jaco had a similar short flight. In the afternoon I managed to scrape out an hour under the thickening high clouds.

Dec. 26: Similar to yesterday with clear morning skies. Around noon there were cu’s forming and a high layer of cirrus on top of that. I took off and went north after a pair of Ozones and Hsiaoliao in his Boom Sport. Those guys turned around at Tajin to head back into the dark while I went on to Liukuei under the steadily building clouds. (more…)

Chrigel Maurer is the first pilot ever to win the Paragliding World Cup (PWC) three times in succession. Andy Aebi was third and thus secured a second podium place for ADVANCE in the Formula 1 of paraglider flying. The Greek pilot Slavomir Matras finished among the protos with this Omega7. Gold medal for the ADVANCE Team who finished 1st at the Teams ranking !

Both these ADVANCE competition team members and test pilots went to Argentina leading the ranking of the 2007 PWC. This year they have turned in consistently good performances and with 8 victories between them set out in a dominant postion.

Unfortunately the contest at Tucaman, Argentina, was not blessed by good weather, but even so it was possible to fly 4 valid tasks in which Chrigel was able to defend his lead and thus become the first pilot in history to win the PWC three times in a row.

The Berner Oberlander must surely have flown himself into a place in the history books with this spectacular new victory. This third PWC caps an incredible list of ADVANCE successes, which take us back to the inception of the HiArc concept over three years ago (for more about HiArc look under OMEGA 7).

Andy Aebi’s third place overall and his three wins this year confirm his status as a top ranking world competition pilot, and another ADVANCE team pilot, Stefan Schmocker, has established himself as a world contender this year. Stefan’s 11th place and a 22nd for Heli Eichholzer augers well for the future of our small ADVANCE competition team.

Slavomir “Slavec” Matras from Greece finally reached 52nd place with his stock Omega 7, achieving a place at the middle of the open class.

Last but not least : after 23 tasks, the small ADVANCE Team also won the gold medal in the Teams ranking, followed by Mac Para and Axis Para.

Source: http://www.deanlebaron.com/index.html

Dr. Gottfried Mayer is at this very moment battling sudden detection of colon cancer. He is in Germany for multiple operations and is unlikely to be able to assemble weekly editions of ComDig for several weeks (his forecast) or longer (mine).

For eight years, he has guided this publication with the principle that complexity science knowledge could be promoted by nurturing the network … by exchanging text and video information on items related to our interests, especially those with a practical application. Weekly readership of well over 10,000 attests to his proposition.

To honor Gottfried while he is convalescing, we have compiled Annual Editions of all the articles published every year, beginning with our beta test issues in 1999 and through the present. The Annual Editions may be downloaded from www.comdig.com. We know you will not read each one, but they will be in searchable Acrobat format. This week’s Complexity Digest presents the Annual Editions for the years 1999 and 2000.

A review of the range of interests and application of complexity attest to the contribution Gottfried has made to the field.

We expect him to resume his role shortly, and I know you join me in wishing him a fast and complete recovery.

Those with long memories will recall Gottfried flew a Superspace II at Green Bay mostly, with excursions to Puli and Saichia. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him a speedy and complete recovery.

With flyable days few and far between, I’ve spent more time on my bike than sitting around waiting for the weather to change. I decided to go join some guys from AlpineRoads.com on a road trip based around Livigno in Italy with the intention of riding as many of the high passes in that area as possible.
The forecast for Thursday was for scattered showers north of the Alps, and sunshine south of them. I plotted a revised course through Luzern, the Gotthard Tunnel and then the freeway past Bellinzona, thinking that riding on dry, boring freeway was better than trying to cross big passes in the rain. Wednesday had seen snow up on the big ones so I wasn’t taking the chance of getting turned back. I dodged showers from Willisau to Kriens on the old road, avoiding the highway so I could duck under cover if it got heavier. I took a bit of a meandering path to miss the obviously rainy areas. At Kriens there isn’t much choice but the freeway, and half of the stretch down to Altdorf is in tunnels anyway. In the occasional breaks out into the open I could see the rain was centered over the lake of Luzern (Vierwaldstattersee) and it looked brighter ahead. I decided to stay on the freeway until the tunnel entrance and see how conditions were.
At the Gotthard north services the light rain got a little heavier so I stopped for a coffee and a check on the pass status map. Once I’d had my coffee the rain went back to the ‘light’ setting and the sky looked much clearer in the direction of the pass. I decided to take a chance on that holding and took the old pass road (more…)

This is from today’s China Post:

A light aircraft crashed Saturday nearby a riverside park in the southeastern county of Taitung, causing the deaths of the pilot and an American passenger.The RANS-S6 airplane fell straight out of the sky at around 9: 00 a.m. striking the ground nose first. It was flying over a farmer’s field when it suddenly lost power, according to witnesses.

The pilot and passenger were seriously wounded when pulled from the wreckage. They died later at the Tzu Chi Hospital’s Kuanshan branch.

Local police indicated that the light craft was owned by a private aviation association in Fenglin township in Hualien county, eastern Taiwan. The pilot, identified as Chen Chun-jung, 34, had flown light craft for over seven years.

The passenger, Jon Eric Hope, 21, from Arkansas, USA was a member of an English teaching program organized by the Taipei-based non-profit King Car Educational Foundation, bringing English language instruction to children living in rural areas on the island. Eric taught English at Jueisuei Elementary School in Hualien county.

The police said Eric was on a sightseeing tour in Taitung with some friends. There, he spotted the light craft, and requested a pleasure flight.

Police have contacted both Eric’s parents in the U.S. with the assistance of the American Institute in Taiwan, and Chen’s family members in Hualien.

A probe by the Civil Aeronautics Administration has been launched into the accident, according to police.