Unintentional Holiday part Deux

(Note to my readers: the first part of this tome is just below)

So here I was in Slovenia, unable to fly and three more days before I could return to my wife in Hamburg, unless I wanted to pay another $200 to change the flight.  Modern air travel, what a concept.
Undaunted and determined to enjoy my first visit to this lovely country  after two days in bed with a virus (the physical kind, not the airplane), I crawled back into the light and joined up with Rand for a thoroughly enjoyable factory tour, courtesy of Ivo's daughter Taya (she's also a partner in the firm), who speaks very good English indeed and gave us a very informative and enjoyable peek at how the company does it's day-to-day.

Yours Truly scaring the crap out of hisself

And what a factory!  High tech geothermal heat, solar power (enough to run the entire factory year round, and sell excess back to the grid) and open, sunny, airy spaces all make for a wonderful working environment.
Then Ivo invited Rand and me to join him and the entire Pipistrel crew for a "team building" weekend trip.  We followed the bus jammed full of Pipistrelians east for a couple hours and found ourselves in the middle of one of those ropes course-like facilities meant to scare the bejeezus out of people.  It's a fair-weather season facility that lives atop a ski area in eastern Slovenia.
Now remember, I was just out of a sick bed and still pretty wobbly.  And when I saw that the first task my teammates and I would have to perform was climbing up a 10 meter wooden pole (that's 33 feet, folks), lumberjack style (albeit safely belayed by ropes carabinered to a body harness), and then stand up on top of said pole, I got a tad wobblier.
The flat top of that pole was about as big around as a medium-sized pancake, maybe 9" in diameter, 10" at the most.
Are you kidding me?
After attaining that precarious perch (and not everybody did), to get max points for the team, we then had to gingerly pussyfoot our feet around on top of the pole until facing in the opposite direction.  Then we could take a leap of faith into space, expecting/trusting/hoping like hell we'd be safely arrested and lowered to the ground by our teammates who held the lifeline ropes.
Let me tell you right now: a 33-foot tall pole is an excellent harmonic device for magnifying the timid, overcorrecting uncertainties of your thigh muscle/knee joint mechanisms.
Let me say it another way: the more you shake, the more that damn pole gyrates at the top, like a plate spinner gyrating a plate atop a long stick...and you the plate!
So brother, you haven't lived until you've stood on top of an oscillating  pole, willing your legs (unsuccessfully) to stop quavering and unsuccessfully trying to convince your body to believe what your mind knows: that you're safely backed up by the rope harness...and that your teammates are paying attention.

SALSA's Rand Vollmer and the components for his soon to be built Sinus motorglider...

Looking down from almost forty feet (bugged-out eyeball elevation) to see your big boots completely eclipsing that pancake-sized pole top and, in the vast distance beyond those boots, the foreshortened bodies of people's little white heads as they look up at you to shout encouragement (in Slovenian), is one of those "WTF am I doing here?" moments in life that shouldn't be missed.
The purpose of the weekend trip of course was to give people who work so diligently together a chance to share some bonhomie away from the factory, which no one seemed to have any problem with at all.  The Pips  are a very friendly crew indeed.

...which will look like this!

Traveling out of country is great...even when you don't get to fly a single minute.  And spending that day with the crew, facing some other fun team challenges together, knocking back more than one glass of blueberry schnapps, sharing meals and tasting wine, feeling the warmth, good cheer and open amiability of all, watching groups at different tables at an ancient Slovenian winery dinner burst into song, made me wish for a spirit of nationality and camaraderie that seems missing on the American scene these days.
Anyway, no, I don't yet have a single Pipistrel flight story to share (other than the Virus I wrote up after Oshkosh which should be out in the mag very soon.)
But I do plan on getting my Private Pilot motorglider rating this winter, and escape the New England snows in the process: Rand and I hope to enlist Jim Lee of Phoenix Air USA, who impressed everyone with the Phoenix motorglider's 47 mpg performance at the GFC on conventional fuel power, to take us through the training down in Florida.

Taurus self-launching motorglider; also comes electric powered!

We'll fly Rand's 50-foot Sinus Touring Motorglider and I for one, shoveling the wet snow from our upstate New York Halloween porch just a few days ago, muttering "disgusting" to myself the entire time, can hardly wait to head south and strap on that sleek, beautiful airplane.
Meanwhile, keep your eyes on Pipistrel.  They've got a lot of excitement coming down the taxiway.
En route, I'll be looking at the virtues of getting your private pilot glider rating down the road too, since it automatically removes a lot of the Sport Pilot restrictions (10,000 altitude max for instance) with very little additional effort...and you don't need a medical to fly a glider either...even a motorized glider with retractable gear.  Not a lot of pilots are fully aware of that, so we'll be kicking it around once I start my training. 
Meanwhile here's Jim Lee's treatise on how to fly a glider without a medical certificate...or even a driver's license!  Of course as always, and as Jim notes, we want to be sure we self-certify that we are indeed fit to fly.

Unintentional Holiday

"I know that we are spending half a life at work and half a life where we sleep," says Ivo Boscarol, founder and the dynamo behind Pipistrel Aircraft, in his strong Slovenian accent.
"So it is important that the lifestyle during work hours is good, so I organize my factory the way that I feel good and my workers feel good.  They like to come to work, bebause actually this is quite serious business.  If something is not made well, everybody has trouble: me, my test pilots, my customers.  So we don’t put any pressure on the workers."
Ivo is tall, lean, direct and exuberantly intense, a true and tireless larger-than-life kind of guy.

Head honcho Ivo Boscarol and $1.35 million

My congenial traveling pal Rand Vollmer, head of San Antonio Light Sport Aviation (SALSA), a major dealer for Pipistrel in the states, calls Ivo a "rock star".  Indeed, after his company's Taurus Electro G4 won the recent CAFE Green Flight Challenge (and a cool $1.35 million) in impressive fashion, Ivo's not only lionized wherever he goes in Slovenia (including being feted by the President of Slovenia), but he's increasingly well-known globally.
"After our victory in Green Flight Challenge, we are invited all over the world to show the airplane. So," he says with a big grin, "we must go."
Such uncomplicated directness is just one part of what makes Ivo both likable and worthy of respect.  He's a guy you can talk with, but who knows how to get things done.
Equally magnetizing is his straight-ahead approach to aircraft design.  His approach is elemental, like fire: he gets a wild idea for a new aircraft, calls in his design team, and says "Let's build this."
At first, eyes may go wide and mouths drop open at what seems implausible, impractical or downright impossible.  But swept along by his relentless vision, enthusiasm and total confidence in their abilities, they find a way.

The breathtaking Panthera 4-seat cruiser will have Lycoming, hybrid or electric power!

A good case in point is the upcoming Panthera four-seat, all composite, Ferrari-like cruiser that is planned for debut at next spring's Aero show in Friedrichshafen, Germany.  The truly gorgeous airplane will be built in three power configurations: traditional Lycoming power, hybrid generator/electric power...and pure electric.
Some teaser specs:
Cruise: 202 kts. (Lycoming), 142 kts. (hybrid), 118 kts. (all-electric)
Range at Cruise: 1025 nm/660 nm/ 215 nm.
Expect to read a lot more about this stunning, revolutionary design in the months to come.  Meanwhile, here's a pic: don't be embarassed.  Go ahead, drool, I did when I saw the components being assembled in the factory.
In the time I spent at Pipistrel's beautiful, ultra-modern, super green factory in the small town of Ajdovšcina, just 90 minutes drive east from Venice, Italy, Ivo Boscarol candidly shared the philosophies and vision that has made the company one of the top European light aircraft makers.  I'll have much more in my next column for Plane & Pilot, as well as flight reports on their aircraft (including the Virus which I flew at Oshkosh).
Ivo's first production aircraft 24 years ago was a very successful trike (500 sold) that was flown in the waning light of dusk to avoid problems with the aviation-repressive government of Yugoslovia, of which Slovenia vas once a part before the country split up.
See, in the dim light the locals thought the trike looked like a giant bat.  Ivo conscripted the notion and named his company Pipistrel, which means bat.

The Taurus Electro G4 and Pipistrel factory

Anyway, excited about visiting the factory where the prize-winning Taurus Electro G4 was created, along with several other LSA aircraft (the Sinus motorglider, Virus, Virus SW and Taurus motorglider are all recently ASTM certified and available in the U.S. as S-LSA), I booked a five-day visit to Slovenia in mid-October.
Reality check: the factory is built in a beautiful valley below a long mountain ridge that rises 3,000 foot directly above the town of Ajdovšcina.  That ridge has spun off 7 hour-plus soaring flights and is enough to make any soaring pilot happily weak in the knees.
But when the burja winds blow, the valley below that ridge acts like a perfect venturi.  Translation: they've reached hurricane strength velocity (120 mph) and can blow for days and days.  Ivo says the burja blows about 100 days a year.  Now you know why Pipistrel is building another facility in nearby Italy.
Anyway, you'll never guess what happened during my trip...yes, the burja blew so strong, there was no flying activity the entire five days I was there.  I never even saw an airplane outside of a hangar.
What?  Me worry?  Hell, let's go climb a pole.
(You'll have to check back in tomorrow to see what I mean...this post is getting too long.)

Cycles and Suffragettes 5th November

A great event is taking place in Leicester on 5th November. Talks, flash mobs and a cycling tour of the sufragette movement...get dressed up in period clothing, learn and celebrate the wonderful combination of bicycles and feminism!

The way to look feminine in the ring...

Is this the bell for women's boxing to be taken seriously?



http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/15452596.stm

Paula talks about the change in IAAF rules and the declassification of her World Record in long interview.

Thanks to Nike, her main sponsor, Paula has a platform to discuss the rule-change for women marathon runners. Nike have created a campaign called 'HISTORY STANDS' to challenge the IAAF wiping out several course and world records set by women. Check out the long interview in this YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPEMdFV7xYo&feature=related

Paula Radcliffe says IAAF rule on records 'penalises women'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/oct/13/paula-radcliffe-iaaf-records-women

CFA: Sport Studies Symposium

Call for Abstracts
1st Annual Rockford College Sports Studies Symposium:
An interdisciplinary conference on the study of Sport.
Date: April 28, 2012
Rockford College
5050 E. State. St.
Rockford, IL 61108

Whether one is a participant, a casual spectator, a die-hard fan, or a critic, sport, in all its varieties and forms, play a significant role in the lives of most people through out the world. Sports and competitions have long been a part of human civilization and raise a wide range of important philosophical and ethical issues.
This symposium will bring together a panel of scholars to discuss philosophical themes or issues arising in the study of Sport. The focus of the panel will depend, in part, on the submitted abstracts. Each presenter on a panel will have 20 minutes for their presentation. This will be followed by 10-15 minutes for panelists to respond to each other and then 15 minutes or more for audience Q&A. There will also be a panel on the Rhetoric of Sport.

Abstract Submission:
Submissions are welcome on any philosophical theme or issue arising in the study of Sport. Abstract should be 300-500 words. Send via email (as PDF) to sklein_at_rockford_dot_edu.
Deadline: January 6th, 2012
Notification of Acceptance: February 1st, 2012
If you have any questions, please contact Shawn Klein (Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department) at 815-226-4115 or sklein_at_rockford_dot_edu or Michael Perry (Assistant Professor, English Department) at 815-226-4098 or mperry_at_rockford_dot_edu.