Condor Corner

Introduction

See this month’s In The Air column (link in Resources, below) for the background as to how we managed to convince Scott to make this great series available to readers of the New RC Soaring Digest. Suffice to say, for now, that the original version of this article first appeared in the January 2022 issue of Soaring magazine. — Ed.

Prologue

From April of 2010 through September of 2014, Frank Paynter and I authored an article for Soaring Magazine called Condor Corner. Frank was an avid competition soaring pilot who had used Condor to develop and polish his racing skills and was interested in helping others do the same. I was a relatively new Certified Flight Instructor for Gliders (CFIG), and having come from the educational community, realized the benefits simulation-based glider flight would provide the soaring community, including not only improved flight training, but also an increased level of safety through flight proficiency, greater efficiencies of time & money and an exciting venue for promotion of the sport.

In the spring of 2018, I was contacted by Eric Bick, the then-current editor of Soaring, and asked to help relaunch a long-running article in Soaring called Teaching Soaring. My contributions to that series of articles ran from June of 2018 through November of 2021, and while the Teaching Soaring article helped advance the issue of glider flight training, it lacked the broader appeal of the original Condor Corner article.

Redux

To that end, I proposed a revival (redux) of Condor Corner to Soaring’s new editor, David Hart and he graciously agreed to begin its publication. The format was a monthly submission of no more than one page, including an image or two, introducing or reminding the SSA membership of a new or existing application and/or benefit of flight simulation. Each article’s topic fell into one the larger categories of interest including flight safety, flight training, flight proficiency, advanced skill development (such as cross country flight, competition, aerobatics, mountain flying, ridge flight, wave flight, launch methods), Condor features, tips & tricks and using the software to promote the sport.

A Broader Perspective

I first began publicly advocating for the use of flight simulation at the 2008 SSA convention in Albuquerque. The ensuing years have seen a slow but steady increase in simulation’s adoption within the soaring community. So, in addition to my contributions, I am inviting SSA members, clubs, and commercial operations to contribute to the content of the article by contacting me regarding their positive experiences using glider flight simulation.

Next Month

In the next instalment of this column, I will talk about how Condor helped the soaring community thrive during the recent pandemic, which was also genereally instructive for a variety of situations where flight simulation is required to substitute for actual stick time.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave in the Responses section below, which you can access by clicking the 💬. You may also contact me through my website which is linked below in Resources.

©2022, 2023 Scott Manley

About the Author

Scott Manley has an undergraduate degree in secondary education and more than 45 years of teaching experience. He provides year-round simulation-based glider flight instruction at-a-distance (Condor/Skype) to glider rating candidates nation-wide, and consultation services to flight training organizations and individuals interested in adopting this paradigm. He holds Certificated Flight Instructor privileges for the glider category. The back of his pilot certificate reads: Commercial pilot: airplane single-engine land & sea; instrument airplane; glider.

Resources

• Simulation-based Glider Flight Education, the author’s website. — “to provide you with the information and resources you need to self-manage the flight training and aeronautical knowledge development required to qualify for a Private Pilot Certificate with a Glider Category…”
• Condor — “simulates the complete gliding experience on your computer. With it you can learn to fly gliders and progress up to a high level of competition skill. The core of the simulator is the state of the art physics model and advanced weather model aimed at soaring flight.”
• Soaring Magazine, the official publication of the Soaring Society of America. — “each issue brings you the latest developments on safety issues, delightful accounts of individual soaring accomplishments, a sharing of ideas and experiences, tips from the great soaring pilots of our times, and…”
• Soaring the Sky Podcast — The episode from the January, 2023 issue of the New RC Soaring Digest which features Scott Manley, the author of Condor Corner, as a guest.
• In The Air by RCSD Managing Editor Terence C. Gannon. In this month’s column, the ‘broadened editorial footprint’ — and the reason behind it — is described. It will have the New RCSD running regular features on the subject of glider flight simulation as well as other RC soaring adjacent subjects.

Condor image above the title provided by the author. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.