Hi Brian,
If you haven't done so, try the Pano site "Jockey's Ridge" and use the wind: "Slope Soaring: Jockey's Ridge 25-mph" (or one of the other Jockey's Ridge winds). It has very realistic slope soaring winds. It's pretty cool -- and not flat ground from Illinois!
I took your advice and found the hillier non-Illinois-like sites with the thermals, slope soaring winds and dynamic soaring winds (Valkyrie, Westville Miner's Summit, Blanca Crater, Jockey's Ridge and Hacker Mtn). The Hacker Mtn one in particular is awesome, to my taste at least. It reminded me a little of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix,Az. I stand corrected, you've got hills. I'm just a beginner but this is great. Sorry if my earlier comment mislead anybody.
I'm still going to try to create a 'west coast' style hilly pano though .... eventually, unless somebody else offers one up.
One thing that I noticed in the last couple of days is that the basic or advanced lesson videos don't seem to include any instruction for slope, dynamic or thermal soaring. Do you think it might be possible to have one of your gurus record a few such lessons to help people get into these aspects of flying (eg. how to get started, typical techniques in high/low wind conditions, how to milk a thermal for all it's worth, how/when to make best use of spoilers, how/when to use a crow setup, how to work with a tow plane etc)?
On the electric Swift, how does one kill the motor so it's not running all of the time? The motor kill key doesn't seem to work on the electrics.
cheers,
Dave