Crestline Soaring Society

Welcome to the NEW CSS Pilot's Forum


You'll find posting here to be pretty straightforward, with some advanced formatting features available if you want to use them. The most important step is taking a moment to define your posts by picking a category or two from the lists above the 'Body' section where you type in your post's content. See Categories: Unleash the Power! before making your first post.

Here are some notes about using the new forum.

Posting: Simple or Complex - Your Choice

1. Plain Text posting to the new forum is pretty simple - just pick some categories, type away, and click 'Submit' or 'Preview' and don't fool with the options. You can use BBCode or a subset of HTML tags to enhace your posts. BBCode is the default input format - to use Filtered HTML (if you really want to) expand the 'input format' link and choose from the list. This post was formatted using BBCode tags. Carriage returns and blank lines are automatically detected; to ensure a blank line appears, type a space before the carriage return.
   

I have not deleted any posts or comments from the forum in quite some time. A forum user thinks some content has been removed. The site logs for the last couple of days don't show any deletions, but there's been so much activity that they only go back a couple of days at this point. {UPDATE: I've just increased the log retention}

[b]Normal procedure is for those with deletion rights (i.e. the CSS Board) to discuss it with other board members before deleting anything. We've only deleted a couple of items in the last four years.

So, the Simba weather station went off line a couple of Sundays ago and a simple reboot didn't get it back online. On inspection I found that the weather equipment was fine and that the mini computer between it and the internet wasn't connecting to the LAN via ethernet. The only way to communicate with the device is via the LAN, so I had to send it in for service. This is the machine we repaired this summer by replacing the motherboard, keeping the RAM and the Flash memory with the OS and programs already on them, to the tune of $300. I expect the manufacturer to cover the failure under warranty.

I got a new rotor and cups assembly for the weather station anemometer and installed them today. Last night I epoxied the cups into the snap-in brackets on the rotor. The cup I super-glued back on to the old rotor a couple of weeks ago held but one of the others came out in the last high wind event. I had put drops of super-glue on the other cup brackets, but not in the junctions.

I just went to the site http://www.hanggliding.org via my usual link and got a page from GoDaddy.com (domain registration and hosting service) saying that hanggliding.org is being parked for free. Does anyone know what the problem might be?

7/21/09 UPDATE:

The manufacturer replaced the motherboard and re-used the Operating System chip (no longer available) and the Flash memory from the old unit, so all settings were preserved. It was literally plug-and-play! The webcam time lapse images are also functional once again - they stopped working because the scripts that manage them depend on the weather data.

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Our webhost had some problems with the hardware at the data center such that they've migrated our account to a new machine. There have been problems with the weather station and webcam updating over the last few days, but as of the latest reboot the weather station is updating, so maybe the problem was at the remote end and not with the local hardware. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I might even be able to grab the actual data for the last few days from Simba, so we don't see those straight lines between update times.

natalia bonilla has started a website for women who fly! (just in case you don't already know) it's cool and she's put a ton of work into it! check it out!

http://www.flygirlsinternational.com/profiles/friend/listFeatured

The proximate cause of the webserver overload seems to have been some kind of fruitless but resource hogging spam bot attack, which I think we've dealt with. A couple of other minor issues, which have been dealt with by the webhost, may have been contributing factors.

I know everyone's post-fly-in enthusiasm may have waned a bit by now, but it would be great to have reports and pictures of that great event.

Comparing the replacement anemometer/wind vane ($139) with the old one, it is obvious that ice got up inside the old unit (when the mast bent over) and damaged the bearings or whatever. The old vane and cups wiggle around like a hula dancer.

Sorry it took so long to replace.

After voting (With a paper ballot! My candidate might win this time!) I went to the Ball's house to see what I could do for the weather station. They weren't home, so I couldn't get to anything, but looking at the sensor mast I saw that one of the lower mounts had shifted around a bit, making the mast only appear to be bent. One of the anemometer cups is off and David found it on their deck. If the cup can't be snapped back on (they have to be snapped on when the unit is unpacked) I can replace the anemometer/wind vane with the old non-heated one. The heated one freezes up pretty readily, so no big deal.

Our webhost applied some upgrades to the server last night, and our website naturally had a number of problems today. At first, only the weather pages were working, then the site was displaying properly but user logins were broken and the Oz Report Headlines weren't being fetched.

If you run into any odd/new website behaviors, please let me know.

Latest Glitch:
Fixed! Same Day! (1/17)

Want to add a jpg or gif image to your forum posts?
It's almost brain-dead easy - here's how:

You can upload an image the the CSS website and display it OR you can use an 'img' tag to point to an image that's already on the the internet on some other server.

First, the UPLOAD method:
In the 'Body' area, click the spot in the text where you want the image to go (so the cursor is blinking there). Between paragraphs, with blank lines above and below works best.

I've added pages for the proposed HAM class and the two summer fly-ins to the Events section and the Events menu. There's also a new 'Projects' page and menu item.

All website members can edit or add to these pages, so if you have ideas, pertinent links, have at it. Posting and editing works much like forum posting does. Email if you have questions. Don't worry about messing things up. You won't break the site, and we can fix or rearrange as needed.

I was flying Marshall on Saturday the 21st and I lost my Airspeed indicator. I launched from Marshall around 4:45 (without my indicator). I remember not putting it on my glider and mindlessly flying without it. If anyone has found it please email me or give me a call at:

505-496-9486

Thanks
Ross Davis

The controls for the tabular weather info listing in the weather page are once again functional, so you can change both the number of records displayed and the interval between displayed records. The page refreshes the table info once a minute (without reloading the page) so the latest info will always be shown. The data is also refreshed when you change the number of records or interval, or just push the 'set table' button (hidden until you click one of the boxes).

Some feedback has confirmed that posting to the Pilot's Forum seems cumbersome, so I've removed the categorization selections from the Post new forum topic page and reduced the boilerplate text above the form.

5 Feb 07 - Categories choices restored to Forum Topics - being able to group topics like the Elsinore changes and our LZ grass seems worth a little extra clicking and/or scrolling.

Trish Stitz, whose fiancee is WW's Rob Kells, sent a bunch of great photos from the recent Fly-In - I've posted them on her behalf. Thanks Trish! Also, thanks to Mishi for the pics she took the time to post.

I noticed a new member who's joined our website. Read Paul Schaefer's description for some interesting CSS history info. Welcome Paul, and Thanks!

I've added checkboxes for indicating pilots' instructor status to the Pilot Info tab of the my account page. With these fields we can easily generate lists of local HG & PG Instructors and Tandem Instructors, which will be available via links in the site info section(s).

There are a number of fields for website users to tell a little about themselves, so if you haven't done so already, log in and click the 'my account' link in the left navbar and choose 'edit', then 'pilot info' and fill out as you see fit.