Volcano erupts in Iceland

[Q.G.]

Holy Smoke, Batman! What are all those streaks across the sky i see today?!

They are con trails, produced by airliners flying overhead, Robin.
And don't use Smoke's name in vain!

Have you heard the news? Flying again. Since yesterday evening.

[marco.taje]

Whew! Wanted to let you guys know -Q.G., you were really worried about me, weren't you?- that I managed to fly across Europe today, first time after the "volcano effect", and with both engines running and dumping dirt trails!!

;-)
:-D

[sanking]

Whew! Wanted to let you guys know -Q.G., you were really worried about me, weren't you?- that I managed to fly across Europe today, first time after the "volcano effect", and with both engines running and dumping dirt trails!!

;-)
:-D

Good news for me. I am about to leave for Madrid, with final destination La Coruña in northwestern Spain. I was not concerned about Madrid as it has been open to flights from the US, but a few northern airports in Spain had some flights cancelled due to the volcanic ash. Hopefully they will all be open tomorrow morning when I am ready to take the connecting flight.

Sandy King

[Sirius Glass]

Why, even gliders are grounded! (And you know how high they go, and how many engines they have that could fail.)

Last time I checked, gliders need tow planes. Do you know another way that I do not know?

Steve

[Poisson Du Jour]

The saga continued. Here in Australia, Qantas has maintained that it will not be flying out of the UK or Europe today (Wednesday), despite UK and Europe airports re-opening, the reason given that it's a long haul flight and it needs to guarantee departures, which it can't do due to "conflicting, puzzling reports". I'm wondering how the mail gets through on the UK-Australia/Europe-Australia run? Maybe it hitches a ride on the HMS Ark Royal — how snazzy...

[Photo Engineer]

And, a friend of mine has told me that many airlines have increased their air fares by up to 4x.

PE

[resummerfield]

Last time I checked, gliders need tow planes. Do you know another way that I do not know?

Steve

As opposed to the US, where most gliders are launched by an aero tow, in Europe most gliders are launched by large winches on the ground.

[Photo Engineer]

As opposed to the US, where most gliders are launched by an aero tow, in Europe most gliders are launched by large winches on the ground.

Catapults, Bungee launchers and several other methods.

PE

[Q.G.]

Last time I checked, gliders need tow planes. Do you know another way that I do not know?

Yes, i do.

A winch.
A long cable, stretching from one end of the strip to the other, hooked to the glider. A winch that starts reeling in that cable, towing the glider along the strip at speed.
You'll be amazed how quick they get up in the air that way. Very steep too.
They unclip the cable when level, and a small parachute attached to it makes it fall down a bit gentler as it otherwise would.

Using a motor plane to pull them up requires somewhat of a 'grown-up' airfield, with all bells and whistles. The local club can't afford to run such a thing. They can't afford a tow plane either, and have been winching gliders up since the 1930s.

They can't get up very high, need to gain altitude by doing what the sport entails: find and use thermals.
And that cable has to be towed back to where the planes are waiting to go up after every launch.
But it works fine.

Yet, they were grounded...


P.S.
Obvious that i didn't read on and see resummerfield's answer, isn't it?
Sorry for the redundancy.

[Galah]

Last time I checked, gliders need tow planes. Do you know another way that I do not know?

Steve

Actually, there are at least two other ways: tow by a motor vehicle and tow using a winch.

Se here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliding#Launch_methods