[Bob Kuczewski]

I've been reading Bill's great description on how to de-submerge a glider that's been flipped on water, and that got me doing some more thinking about how we can do drawings in the training manual.

At the same time, I've been working with a program called "Blender" at work, so I decided to build a model hang glider inside of Blender. Here's what I have so far:

full_wing_and_control_bar_800.png (41.06 KiB) Viewed 2262 times

It's a double-surface model and I can rotate it, zoom it, translate it, and even animate it. I'll probably need to add a keel and floats to go with Bill's description, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

If anyone else is interested in 3-D modelling, I suggest going to the Blender web site (blender.org) and downloading the program. We can start a "Blender for Hang Gliding" working group to build models of gliders, pilots, mountains, trees, and anything else we'll need for the training manual or hang gliding promotion in general.

[SamKellner]

Good job BobK,

Looks like you are on to something. Already making progress with the animation.

,
Sam

[Bob Kuczewski]

Here's an animation based on Bill Cummings' description of how to desubmerge a glider. I'll be adding it to the training manual topic as well:

Flip_001c.gif (1.1 MiB) Viewed 2252 times

There are a few things I'd change before making this an official part of the training manual. For example, it should show the wind direction ... either with an arrow or a flag or a wind sock. It should also show the boat and the person manipulating the glider. I also didn't do the rotation about the right point since the pontoons should end up floating higher at the end.

But it's a pretty good example of how we can use animations to make things much easier to understand than plain text alone.

This animation took me most of the day to create. I'd say 50% of that time was building the model of the glider (the wires were the hardest). Another 40% of the time was me trying to learn how to use Blender. It's a very powerful program, but it takes a lot of investment to learn. The last 10% was animating the glider for the water scene. I originally used opaque blue for the water, but I decided to add transparency so you can see what the glider looks like under water.

It's not a perfect example, but it's a pretty good start. If we can get lots of people building and contributing models and animations, I think we could put together a pretty nice training manual.