Tim started by asking what our interests were being under the impression we were interested only in computery things. Our reply was …”everything”.
So we had a wide ranging talk from Tim, initially covering the various essential technologies involved in communications and instrumentation such as altimeter, compass, airspeed indicator, variometer, specialized “sat nav”, emergency position beacon, piece of string over the canopy, etc.
Tim didn’t get very far before the questions started coming related to finding and staying on various sized thermals, the effects of terrain, being strongly forced upwards when crossing mountains, glide ratio, the effect of flying along ridges, for example along the cliffs of Dover, or flying from one end of New Zealand to the other.
I think Tim felt like some respite and decided to show us around his own personal glider, a very fine aircraft. Again he was met with a barrage of questions but we had the impression it was a labour of love this time.
We heard about water ballast, air brakes, flaps, those funny shaped things at the wing tips etc.
We greatly appreciated the time that Tim spent with us and a big thank you to Tim.