birdlogic · HackerTrans

Are you actually getting heading (where the nose is pointing), or are you getting something derived from the ground track? Those are different and really critical for backing out the wind. Have been thinking about this because gliders rely on having really accurate heading info to calculate realtime wind - used in the Hawk and LARUS variometers.

birdlogic

anno scorsodiscuss

What year do you place “2.5 years after mainstream public buy-in” for aviation? I think you’ll find that in most periods, people with the means were paying a lot for the ability to “get there faster”, despite a bad early safety record. It did work great when it didn’t kill you, and despite that risk it was a hit (for those that could afford it).

birdlogic

2 anni fadiscuss

Yes! As a PPL that recently picked up gliding, I hugely recommend it. It’s a proper sport with a super high skill ceiling, supportive clubs, and competitions/racing when you’re ready. In studying for the glider rating, you’ll cover quite a bit that’s also applicable to flying “power”.

Plus, the economics are great. I bought a glider earlier this year for about 15k. I recently flew 5 hours from a $50 aerotow to 2500ft on a weak day and had a blast fighting my way around the course I was trying to fly. That’s compared to the $170/hr my club Cessna rents for, and which is nowhere close in terms of joy-per-hour.

Airplanes are for transportation, gliders are for sport!

Find a club near you (US): https://www.ssa.org/where-to-fly-map/

birdlogic

2 anni fadiscuss

It’s a fun coincidence that this is named “Glider”, since a fair number of glider (sailplane) pilots use e-ink displays (rooted kobo/kindle readers usually) due to great sunlight readability, commonly running something like XCSoar: https://www.xcsoar.org/hardware/

birdlogic

2 anni fadiscuss

I’ve done this for the past 3 years - two startup clients for 20 hrs/week each, just over 500k total pretax. Mostly staff-eng work, lots of independence, got to run some projects, pretty indistinguishable from full-time except for fewer meetings and no health care or equity. I’ve loved it - and so have the startups - they get a staff-level eng for the cost of a mid-level, just for half the hours. I think there’s value there.

Just wanted to put out a data point that it is possible and enjoyable.

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