Smith's Soaring Blog

Soaring and art - more inspiration

2011-06-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

9 June 2011

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald today, with Australian artist John Olsen inspired by the view of Australia from the air.

This is how Olsen sees the Australian landscape. When he flew across Lake Eyre in May, the lake was filling with water from recent floods. With two young artists, Guy Maestri and Luke Sciberras, he sang bushmen's songs and looked for shapes and stories in the landscape below. A squid made of vegetation, a fish of salt, a shadow shaped like a woman's leg. Says Olsen "Unless you fly over it, you just don't get it,'' he says. ''That's the thing I've found about Australia - it's best viewed from the air. That gives the proper scale to it.''

I think this encapsulates nicely my thoughts about gliding and art - that the unique viewpoint and intimacy of gliding can provide a special artistic inspiration.

Southern Cross Gliding Club "Recruitment" Video

2011-06-08T19:17:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I was out at the club when the Club President was doing some filming with one of the club's scholarship students (the club provides reduced membership and free air time to eligible students). Pretty neat to see the cameraman fitting HD cameras to one of our ASK-21s.

This is the result, and I am the fat bastard waving off and running the wing at the start of the video.

(For some reason the Blogger embedder can't find the Youtube video, so here's a link instead.)

Southern Cross Gliding Video

Electronic pilot's log

2011-06-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

8 June 2011

I spent some time last night entering all my flights into an Excel-based electronic glider pilots log that I sourced from Roger's Soaring Blog (thanks for making it Roger!). It's a pretty good free resource and helped me find I'd made a counting error in my printed logbooks (NZ and Australian) and confirm that I'm rubbish at adding up time!

Accordingly, I find I have more hours and six more flights than I thought I had (I had strangely duplicated some flight numbers, so my numbers in my printed logbook went 55, 50, 51 etc). I've corrected them now, making my messy logbook even messier.

I can encourage anyone reading the blog to download Roger's file and give it a try. It provides some useful summary tables by type, periods etc. Most of the alternative electronic logbooks cost bucks! I will probably password-protect it and upload it to Google docs.

Another positive side of going through my old books was it revived nice memories of past flights.

Wave over New Zealand

2011-06-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

7 June 2011

I travelled to Christchurch New Zealand last week for work related to reconstruction of their transport system after the February 2011 earthquake. I was heading out to the airport early on the morning of my flight back, when I noticed obvious lenticular clouds over the city.

I got my Blackberry out when I was on the plane at the gate and took a few photos, but they didn’t come out very well. However, I got some better shots from the air, as we crossed the alps.

While the phone-camera isn’t the best, the photos are good enough to show the characteristic curved tops of the lennies and to show some stacking of the clouds. Pretty neat.

Being a Saturday, I expected to see some wave flights on the Online Contest (OLC), but there appears to be no flights in NZ that weekend (there was a fair bit of other cloud about, so that may have shut things down).

Smoke-obscured

2011-05-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

Friday 20 May 2011

Finally back in the air after a 7 month break. Rusty, so had two check flights - one in the ASK-21 and a flight to do spins in the DG-1000 - followed by two short flights in the K21s - basically 'sled-rides', as there was no lift about.

It's autumn, so lots of bushfire hazard reduction burning (burn-offs as we call them) around Camden, and a lack of winds along with a low inversion combined to make it increasingly hazy, with really poor visibility.

Fridays are relatively quiet, but today there was a recently solo pilot bringing two relatives with him for air experience flights, as well as a regular trainee pilot and a club member who had recently got his aerobatic endorsement and wanted to fly a two-seater to take some footage with a new GoPro HD camera. So, busy.

We got out the two K21s and the DG-1000 and no single seaters. Interesting to see all the nice new glass two-seaters on the field - we do have a nice modern training fleet now.

I got an early check flight, followed almost immediately after an end change by a second check flight with spins in the DG. I've only flown the DG once before, at the Cootamundra camp and it was the last flight of the day and a rush. I remember running the length of the field to get my gear and then running back to take the flight, so feeling tored and flustered. I didn't fly well, the plane felt enormous and so this time I felt a bit intimidated by the DG.

My take-off wasn't so good - I applied forward pressure to get the tail wheel off the deck, but apparently the DG only requires holding in tail down position and it flies off nicely. I also struggled a bit with over controlling in the tow before the instructor, Eddie, showed me it can be flown hands off in the tow. It took a while, but as I flew, I became a bit fond of the DG. Did several stalls, spins and a loop and then came down. There was a tiny thermal we came across, but it must have been pencil thick because no mater how we turned or when, we always ended up in sink. I ended up doing a very nice two-point landing though. I figure at some point soon I will need to fly solo in the DG and the K-13 before I can move up to the Junior single-seater (club rules - 10 solo flights, including one in each of the two-seaters). The K-13 I am comfortable with, but the DG's gear needs a powerful arm - I might have to just leave the gear down for a quick circuit...

After this the instructor went off for some instructional flights without signing me off for my check solo (he intended for me to fly, but hadn't filled in the check form), so I ended up sitting on the ground until he came back and could sign me off. By the time I got in the air in the K21 the haze had become quite bad. There was no wind to clear it and in addition, no lift to speak of. So, from a 3,000 foot launch I managed a 28 minute flight including a frustrating 10 minutes trying to centre a small thermal downwind of the treatment plant. Good circuit and landing. I can consistently touch down just after the first cones and pull up before the second set of cones (160m).

After I got back, I lined up for another quick flight, which turned out to be the last launch of the day. Up to 2,000, no lift at all and back down after 13 minutes. I had a bit of a scare up there. I had tracked out to Narellan to see if I could scare up some lift over some construction sites and then couldn't see the field! It was so hazy that i had a lot of difficulty, even from less than 2,000 feet seeing landmarks. For a few seconds I thought I might end up having my first land-out, but then caught sight of the strip and made a beeline for it in time to join the circuit.

I had taken my little FlywithCE logger with me and it worked fine for the first flight, but I must have bumped the button when I was strapping in for the second flight, because there was only one record. Luckily, I had also brought along my Galaxy Tab, which I had loaded with an app called Gaggle (I also have XCSoar on it, but haven't set it up yet). Gaggle logged both flights and I was able to export .kml files for my flights.

This reminds me, i should do an entry on the gadgets I'm using.

So, these flights have taken me out of the 'check solo' stage, onto 'daily checks'. Four more solo landings and I can potentially be checked out for the Junior! That's my current short-term goal - to get into a single-seater. The next is to get my C certificate!

Review: Sailplane Grand Prix in the Andes DVD

2011-05-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

I bought this from Cumulus Soaring in the US, along with some other gliding films, and only recently got a chance to really sit down with it.

In a nutshell, the DVD provides some breathtakingly beautiful and expertly filmed footage from the 2010 Grand Prix, but was a bit of a disappointment to me because it didn’t provide a record of the Grand Prix, in terms of results, daily competition footage etc.

I own the Gladiators of the Sky DVD from 2006 and the subsequent 2007 NZ Grand Prix DVD. Both provide Tour de France style narrated coverage of the GP event, day by day, combining video footage from chase aircraft and computer visualised telemetry to follow the races. It’s a great format, because it gets across both the drama of the competition and the changing fortunes of the national competitors, while also revelling in the beauty of sailplanes in a mountain environment.

The Sailplane Grand Prix in the Andes DVD (also available in Blu-ray) seems to be aimed more at making a case for the grand prix events as a spectator sport worthy of greater exposure, suitable for high-end sponsorship (there’s a lot of sponsor and product focus on the aircraft and through the DVD) and with impeccable green credentials.

Some of these objectives are clearly worthy – for example the filming, the amazing settings, the beauty of the aircraft, and the sophistication of glider tracking and visualisation technology mean that, properly promoted, soaring grand prix could be a successful TV sport. Greater public exposure and awareness can also result in greater involvement of premium sponsors (which is bound to be good for the sport) and one of the DVD items shows possible future full-colour gliders with all-over paintjobs.

However, the sustainable, green arguments for the sport, which the two introductory films push heavily, seem contrived and clunky. While certainly the fact that gliders soar on sun-generated energy lines without engines is a green-friendly idea (and one of the things that constantly amazes me when I fly), I think the conceit pushed in the DVD that grand prix soaring is perfectly matched to a sustainable global future would not survive even a cursory consideration of the impacts of towplanes dragging all the competitors into the sky, the transport from across the globe of gliders and crews, and the fuel use of the various chase planes and helos.

So, what are we left with – well, the DVD has 6 self-contained chapters. The first two are a longer and shorter edited version of a promotional film of the Grand Prix, which gives a professionally-narrated and produced summary of what sailplane Grand Prix is, some of the competitors, and some beautiful footage of gliders flying in the Andes, as well as some great footage of Condors. Some of the footage is of competition flying, but some seems to be either from practice days or specially flown filming trips, because on a few occasions you can clearly see one glider (I think Kawa’s Diana) popping its brakes to stay in position.

The footage of the Andes flying is breathtaking and the camera people have done an incredible job. It is romantic, dramatic and hypnotic and it would be great to show non-flying friends who want to see what gliding is about, but it also looks like it is designed to show some big-time decision makers in a boardroom somewhere. One thing I noticed that helped me come to this conclusion – in addition to the shots of sponsor artwork and pilots drinking from cans so the brand is clearly visible, there’s not a bucket hat in sight! Just bare-headed glamorous pilots like Kawa and Rocca (and Uli Schwenk – not so glamorous, but a great pilot)!

Next up is a piece called Dinamica – One Day in Sailplane Grand Prix, which provides a mix of in-flight footage, computer graphics and interviews, covering one of the competition days (day 6 I think) won by local hero Carlos Rocca. This is the sort of thing I wanted to see more of – I wanted something like this for each day. The graphics show how the lead changes, how pilots make good and bad decisions getting to turnpoints, while racing footage shows ridge-running, thermalling and close flying. Beautiful!

Aquarium is more than 30 minutes of sailplane footage with an electronic style soundtrack and no narration. Perfect for a gliding club to put on at a public display day, it is hypnotic and beautiful, mixing footage of mountain flying with flying over Santiago city, gliders dumping water ballast and flying with Condors.

Kawa in the cockpit has air to air and from the cockpit footage – lovely again; and finally there is a track dedicated to a speeded up computer animation of a day’s race, to show what the tracking system can do.

So, overall it’s a lovely DVD, though for me, it doesn’t satisfy my desire to have a record of the whole Grand Prix, where I can follow each day’s racing (since I couldn’t subscribe to the live coverage).

I had some issues with the subtitles. For a while I couldn’t find how to not have any subtitles on-screen (they really ruined the look). After Cumulus Soaring’s Paul Remde confirmed it was possible to switch off the subtitles, I finally found the sweet setting on my DVD player. Since subtitles were hard-coded to Automatic, I had first to change the language of the disc to “Original” and then the subtitles didn’t display.

Nick’s AEF

2011-05-15T18:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday 8 May 2011

A workmate, Nick, came out to the club last Sunday on my duty pilot stint, to have an air experience flight. He took some nice photos (some of which I wish I’d taken myself).

ASK-21 SXQ landing

Diving

Steep turn

Duty Pilot after an absence

2011-05-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Sunday 8 May 2011

Looking at my log book, I haven’t flown for almost 7 months! Starting a new job, with quite a bit of travel, as well as the usual complex family things that come with an elderly parent having to go into care, along with terrible weather in the Sydney Basin for much of the preceding period combined to ground me.

I had planned to celebrate my 50^th birthday in wave over Omarama NZ, but my birthday has come and gone and I’m still earthbound.

ASK-21 with Spin Kit Fitted

The duty pilot roster had me on duty on Mother’s Day this year. I didn’t realise the date when I had my chance to request date changes, so I had to do some grovelling before leaving my family early on Sunday morning.

It is getting colder in Sydney and as I approached the airfield a bit after 7.00 am, an alarm went off in my car to alert me to the possibility of ice outside – it was 3 degrees Celsius!

Well, it wouldn’t be a duty pilot day for me without complications and today there were a few. I was expecting a quiet day, being Mother’s Day, but it was pretty busy. In addition, one of the single-seaters – the Junior – had a flat tire and the tire on the tail dolly used for both of our ASK-21 two-seaters was also flat, even after a repair. This would make it difficult to handle our main training aircraft, especially on the hill down from the hangars to the strip. As well, both the tractor and Daihatsu towing vehicles were running poorly.

As aircraft were being pulled out, washed and DI’d, a few folk got to work on the dolly tire. None of our pumps would fit the difficult valve location, so in the end the whole wheel assembly was swapped out for a spare.

The Junior tire wasn’t able to be repaired until later, so that ship was left at the hangars for the day.

The day also started with an end change (the pie cart was at the end of runway 06, but operations for the day started from runway 24) so there was a bit of extra time needed to get set up. But, we were finally ready to go around 10.30 am and luckily our two Air Experience Flight (AEF) bookings arrived a half hour early and together, so I took the opportunity to get them both in the air as the first two flights. While this meant they didn’t have very long flights (there was some extensive cirrus so it was cool and no lift), they did get smooth flights and while there was a lowish inversion, the air was otherwise clear, so they got some good views.

Lovely privately-owned Libelle

As usual when I’m at the helm there was an end change before noon, despite there being almost no breeze at all, so another half hour was lost in shuttling gliders and the pie cart from one end of the strip to the other. It was funny to see the Sydney Gliding self-launching ASK-21 easily taxi down the strip under its own power and quickly get airborne from zero-six. Luxury.

Once established on zero-six we got operating again. Initially all the flights were short ones due to the lack of any lift, including one member who took a tow to 7,000 feet (!) hoping to get away, or contact some wave he suspects lurks out to the west. However, after lunch the cirrus had contracted north-east and thermals quickly began to pop, with some small cus forming south-west of the strip.

Flights got longer and a workmate, Nick, who had come out for an AEF on “mates rates” decided to take a 4,000 foot tow and got a nice 46 minute flight including some aerobatics.

One of the unwritten jobs of the duty pilot is to make sure everyone gets to fly (except himself or herself as it usually happens) and for some young students who have been driven by their dads great distances for hopefully more than a 30 minute flight in a 9 hour day, so towards the end of the day, when some students were hoping to get a second flight and other members had turned up late hoping to get one flight, I was running around like a mad thing trying to satisfy everyone’s desires – racing to retrieve gliders. This resulted in the last landing of one of our K21s being at last light!

This was the first time I’ve had to put gliders away in the dark and it meant a late return home on Mother’s Day. And of course, in common with almost all my duty pilot gigs, after all that aviation-related activity I was the only one who missed out on a flight!

Some days are diamonds…

2010-11-24T15:20:00.000-08:00

Nope, I didn’t achieve a gliding goal, I’m referring to the next phrase – “some days are stone.” I was duty pilot again on the weekend and my only goal achieved was to barely keep things operating on a busy and very hot and sweaty day. I didn’t even get to fly myself which is a bit of a pattern for duty pilot days.

I attended an extraordinary general meeting at the club on the Saturday evening to help make a quorum for a vote on the club buying a new ASK-21 (which vote passed successfully). The club’s two metal IS-28s are essentially either unserviceable (awaiting parts) or life-expired. Now with the club’s only K-13 in the workshop (and the previous K-13, which would have required extensive work to bring it back to flying condition, sold), the shortage in two-seaters exposed the need to keep the fleet current and supported.

The current ASK-21 has been popular and resulted in a jump in use. Plus they are pretty bullet-proof, benign, so a good trainer, rarely subject to ADs still being made, have been around a long time, but still look modern.

I think this latter point is important for air Experience Flights (AEFs) and trainee pilots. While I learnt a lot flying IS-28s, I never liked the look of them – like a cross between a vintage car and a Russian tractor. Lord knows what an AEF would think of it. And while the K-13 is a pretty aircraft and nice to fly, it looks like a world war one vintage plane.

I think the ASK-21 is the right way to go for a glider that will be used potentially for training as well as air experience flights.

I slept overnight in the clubhouse ($8.00 – bargain expect for the mossies) but it was a hot uncomfortable night. However, it helped me to be there for duty pilot duties the next day without having to drive more than a hundred kilometres late at night and early in the morning.

It was one of those days – hot – about 35 degrees and incredibly humid, with a building sky threatening thunderstorms, there were a bunch of students, an AEF (and another who walked up with a gift certificate) and two families inquiring about flying for their kids. Along with a shortage of two-seater gliders for training and AEFs, it made for a busy day. A general absence of experienced club members meant that the workload was pretty high (experienced members will grab a car or tractor for retrievals etc) for me.

In addition, two new tug pilots were being trained and in addition to making some of the launches a little bit slower, the tug disappeared for a while over to the fuel bowsers for a new tuggie to be briefed on fuelling procedures. I gained a new respect for tow-pilots though, as one of the new guys positioned the tug just beyond the rope length from the glider, meaning I had to push gliders (complete with crews inside) forward a couple of times so I could hook up the tow-rope!

Organised a reasonable number of launches, but the day seemed to be hectic the whole time, not to mention hot. Two senior members took the DG-1000 off on a bit of a cross-country, which meant we only had one two-seater for a while, so after an hour I got Camden ground to call them back.

All in all, a busy day, not an enjoyable duty pilot experience and I didn’t get to fly myself.

Soaring and Art - Peter Lanyon

2010-11-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

An article in the Telegraph on an exhibition, at the Tate gallery, of the work of painter and sculptor Peter Lanyon caught my eye. The article mentioned that Lanyon was a glider pilot (With his discovery of gliding in 1959, Lanyon’s paintings became looser and more ethereal as he attempted to capture the rush of air and movement, the sense of floating between states of atmospheric pressure that are invisible to the naked eye) who died after a landing crash in August 1964.

Thermal - Lanyon

I have often thought about the connection between gliding and art and the extent to which flying sailplanes could inspire an artist. In addition to the graceful beauty of the aircraft themselves, you gain a special view of the landscape from a glider – the large canopy, the slow speed, relatively low altitude of most flying and the general absence of engine noise in gliders allows more time to appreciate the view of the ground and sky.

As well, every time I fly I marvel at the sense of buoyancy in the air and that some warm air can lift a several hundred kilogram aircraft and pilot combination.

So how did gliding inspire or influence Lanyon? An extract from a review of an exhibition Silent Rhythms by Simon Allen says “The St. Ives painter Peter Lanyon, who took up gliding in 1959, said of his aerial experience: "The air is a very definite world of activity, as complex and demanding as the sea... The thermal itself is a current of hot air rising and eventually condensing into a cloud. It is invisible and can only be apprehended by an instrument such as a glider. The basic source of all soaring flight is the thermal". These meteorological observations found expression in Lanyon's vigorous pictorial language. By untethering himself from the earth to fly above it, he discovered a new way of understanding terrestrial features and their interaction with the ever-changing sea and ambient light.”

In his own words:

‘It is impossible for me to make a painting which has no reference to the powerful environment in which I live.’

‘Paint represents experience and makes it actual.’

Lanyon described landscape painting as 'a true ambition like the mountaineer who cannot see a mountain without wishing to climb it or a glider pilot who cannot see the clouds without feeling the lift inside them. These things take us into places where our trial is with forces greater than ourselves, where skill and training and courage combine to make us transcend our ordinary lives.'

Gliding gave him the chance 'to experience my county from outside returning to land rather than emerging from inside.'

All interesting perspectives I can identify with.

I managed to track down some of his gliding works online and I have to say I like them. Here's a few examples below.

Soaring Flight - Lanyon

In Soaring Flight (1960) I believe the red swipe represents his glider, with the blues and whites indicating the sky and clouds.

Solo Flight - Lanyon

Solo Flight is another I can identify with - the red track of the glider performing what looks clearly like a circuit with either some thermalling off the end of the strip, or a tow plane searching for lift, reminds me strongly of modern-day GPS log files of my own flights, viewed in Google Earth. It seems that you can see his downwind leg, base leg and final - a non-pilot may just see a roughly drawn box. it was apparently one of his first paintings after he learned to fly. he said, 'The red is the track of something moving over the surface of the painting, and, at the same time, the track of the aircraft moving over the ground below. Blue air merges with the land. I wanted to get the sense of something far away and down below inside the red track'.

In Ginger Hill, the black line is 'suggestive of a glider’s path across an autumnal aerial landform'

Ginger Hill - Lanyon

Maybe this represents some ridge or hill soaring with the curving line and the suggestion of a brown hillside seen from above and to the side.

Lanyon was born in St Ives in Cornwall, and began exhibiting in 1949. He didn't sell much but received notice from the art world, exhibiting in New York by 1957 and winning a number of prizes.

He took up gliding in 1959, soloed in 1960, got his C in 1961 and his Silver C in 1962. He was flying a Slingsby Skylark 3 (see picture of the type below) at Devon on 27 August 1964 when he had a crash on landing. An eyewitness described it as follows: 'I did observe the latter part of the crash and remember the left wing of the Skylark 3 he was flying in contact with the tarmac runway and bending a great deal. This occurred at Dunkeswell with the Devon and Somerset club before its move to North Hill. I recall being told that Peter was only kept in hospital because of a comparatively minor back injury and then suddenly died when the enforced inactivity allowed a blood clot, formed at a bruise on his leg, to reach the brain.

The glider was not terminally damaged as Ralf Jones repaired and flew it himself until colliding with an Olympia whilst competing in a competition at Nympsfield. I was there tugging in a Tiger Moth at the time and well remember seeing Ralf descend by parachute and land just outside the airfield. Pieces of Skylark rained down for some time afterwards. The badly damaged Olympia arrived on the site with the unhurt pilot still aboard having decided he wasn't high enough to jump by the time he'd got the canopy off.

Ralf subsequently took-off again to attempt the task in a 4 series Olympia he was in the process of buying. They don't make them like that any more'. Amen!

Lanyon died three days after his crash. Some research into UK crash statistics found that the Skylark's reg was BGA 974 and it's recorded as being written off on 1 July 1964.

Poet W S Graham later wrote a moving tribute to him, called Thermal Stair, 'Find me a thermal to speak and soar to you from.'

Peter Lanyon is the subject of a current exhibition at the Tate St Ives.

Little old man

2010-11-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

I was tickled by this Croatian newspaper article about a recent glider crash in the Czech Republic, where the un-named 71-year-old pilot ended up on the roof of a house at 8.30am on a Sunday morning (that’s an early launch!) as the occupants ate breakfast.

An eyewitness was quoted as saying “We thought someone must have died but then the cockpit popped open and this little old man emerged looking confused but unhurt.”

One of my first (and enduring) thoughts in learning to fly gliders was its dominance by “little old men”, so this article struck a chord and made me smile – what’s the odds the “little old man” was wearing a bucket hat?

Mid-week flying

2010-10-14T03:45:00.000-07:00

For the first time I have managed to do some mid-week flying at the club. My club operates 7 days and the weather forecast looking good for Tuesday and Wednesday coincided with some leave. With only a handful out at the cub on the Tuesday, I got two check flights in (the second one 35 minutes with the instructor showing me some thermalling techniques), followed by a 57 minute solo flight with lots of thermalling.

I had a few gadgets with me that day - my FlywithCE logger (more on that in a later post I think) and an 808 mini keychain video camera (ditto - more on that in another post). The logger worked fine, but the 808 camera hadn't charged with its supplied USB connection.

I planned a 3,000 foot launch (cloudbase was about 3,000 or a bit more by that time) but the tuggie took me through a pearler of a thermal, so I bunged off early, at a bit over 2,000 and then connected with good thermals right up to cloud base.

There were a lot of clouds in streets and these provided reliable lift of 2-6 knots, but with buckets of sink in between the streets. I practiced my thermalling techniques and wandered about the sky just enjoying everything (my track in Google Earth is on the right). At one point, after about half an hour, I heard glider control asking the tower to call me to ask me my location and height. Tower's comment before making the call was "you might not want to hear the answer!". So I was pleased to report that I was at 3,400 feet two miles south and at that point I was climbing in strong lift.

It was a delightful day's flying, and I could get back to cloudbase seemingly at will. At one point, heading back towards the field, I had to descend at 80 knots with full airbrakes out to get under a cloud that had a base below me. I also had to circle to throw away height to join the circuit.

The 57 minute duration was an added bonus - I have paid up for the Club's Bulk Flying Scheme - $420 up front means that all my flights are free up to an hour's duration, so all I had to pay were tow charges. Beauty!

The second day, the Wednesday, was forecast to be much better, until a thunderstorm in the afternoon, but the situation changed and the day was flat at the start - no-one could find any lift. I got some useful experience in helping to rig the Club's DG-303 and in my two short check flights with a perfectionist instructor I learned more about precision flying, and I finally managed a solo flight at about 3.00pm, with storm clouds brewing in the north.

I had my new Panasonic Lumix TZ10 camera with me and took a few snaps below, including flying in company with the DG, trying to make something of some scratchy lift. Maintained height for a while, but couldn't centre it - was in as much sink as lift every turn, no matter how I adjusted.

Looking at my logs in Google Earth and SeeYou from that day, I was pleased to see how nice my circuit looked, especially my nice square base legs.

Stick and Rudder

2010-10-03T02:34:00.000-07:00

Wet day and no flying, so I picked up my well-thumbed copy of Wolfgang Langewiesche's classic book, Stick and Rudder. This book, written in 1944, has been a sort of bible for pilots, particularly glider pilots. I can't recall who recommended it to me, but I'm grateful to them.

The book's a bit repetitive and simplistic, but it has some important lessons for a glider pilot. Overall, it's an extended lesson about Angle of Attack and the importance of getting the stick forward if things look like getting unstuck.

It's a little quirky and old-fashioned in talking about flippers instead of elevators, and pressing for tricycle undercarriage on planes to cut down on ground loops, but it helped me to understand more about adverse yaw etc. It's the book for convincing (or amazing) non-flyers that the stick controls speed, the engine controls altitude and the rudder doesn't turn an airplane!

For all it's old-fashioned charm, recommended.

Washed out

2010-10-03T02:01:00.000-07:00

I was scheduled to be duty pilot today, but the weather forced us to cancel flying. Even though it's a long weekend, there weren't many folk who had put their names down on the flying intentions page. Two students and one AEF, so it would have been a quiet day. Here's the process I went through.

The club has a member who is a meteorologist and he has developed his own section on the club's forum where he makes predictions for upcoming days. Given I live 45 minutes from the club and weather conditions at Camden can be vastly different from home, I can't really look out of my window and work out what the day will be like. I called the Automated Weather Information Service for Camden just after 6.00 am, but it was inconclusive.

Sydney Weather 2 October 2010

I waited until 7.15am but the gliding forecast on the club's forum hadn't been updated, so I had to head out to the club. I got there at 8.00 am to find a grey day, cloud from 1,500 feet to 3,800 feet, and gentle rain. Our tame meteorologist had updated his forecast and indicated that 25mm (1 inch in the old money) of rain had fallen in the past 24 hours and a NOTAM was expected that would close the grass strips that we operate off (too boggy).

However, as Duty Pilot I can't make that call alone, so I had a series of phone calls to make to the Duty Instructor and to the AM tug pilot and the two intending students, as well as the man who had booked the Air Experience Flight (AEF) before wending my way home through the rain.

Disappointing.

Cloud Appreciation Society

2010-09-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

I recently joined the Cloud Appreciation Society. I've often visited their site to look at photos of clouds (I could look at them for ages) and after a commercial flight where I watched an English documentary about the founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, I joined my 5 year old daughter. It was cheap - just £4 and they sent her a lovely certificate on heavy card/paper and a little badge to wear.

Cb by Frank Hiemstra

Clouds are important for aspiring glider pilots. My daughter and I love laying on our backs on the grass looking at clouds and imagining what shapes they remind us of and I have been teaching her how to identify cloud types. She can easily recognise Cumulus and Cirrus clouds now and understands (I think) how Cumulus clouds mark thermals. My wife of course can even look at a sky and state that it's "over-developed," though I suspect this is often a ploy to convince me a day was better spent at home than at the gliding strip.

Even my two-year-old can now call out "look, a Cumulus cloud!" and be right most of the time.

So after some encouragement from my daughter, I joined up last week. I'm still waiting on my certificate and badge to arrive from the UK, but I'm member 23 thousand and something. It's quite an organisation and I encourage people to browse the many wonderful cloud photos on the site.

So to the cloud photo that illustrates this posting. It's a lovely big Cumulonimbus taken by Dutch National Gliding Team Member Frank Hiemstra in the Slovak Republic, during the training days for the 2010 World Gliding Championships. I saw it while I was browsing his Flikr stream here and Frank kindly gave me permission to use it here.

He's clearly a cloud fan because most of his photo streams contain one or two dramatic cloud photos but he didn't let them distract him from tasks in the Club Class of the WGC, taking third place on Day 7. So thanks Frank and good luck in future, and I encourage everyone to check out the Cloud Appreciation Society.

My longest flight so far

2010-09-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

After a long period of work and family committments, I found a Sunday when I could be entirely selfish and spend a day at the club. The day before had been a lovely warm Saturday, but with ominous cirrus indicating a cooler day to come. Our club's resident meteorologist had forecast reasonable days on the weekend, so in a gloomy overcast Sunday morning I fired the car up for the 55km trip to Camden.

Thermalling

The weather's often quite different at Camden compared with Sydney, so the local conditions near my house are no indication of what's happening at the strip.

It was clearer at the strip when I got there (and helped the duty pilot get the aircraft out and washed and DI'd), but there was a lot of high cirrus, with areas of cirrostratus to the north, so it looked like lift would be kept down.

I am now on check solo with the club, requiring a dual check with an instructor before each solo flight (5 in total before going to daily checks), so I had my first check flight, which the instructor considered as "a bit mechanical". He suggested a second check flight immediately, saying "you can be smoother Brian", and I was smoother on tow, doing coordinated turns this time and with a much smoother landing. He signed me off for solo and then the waiting started.

It wasn't too busy a day at the club - only one Air Experience Flight (AEF) booked for 12 noon and only three students including myself competing for two training aircraft (our ASK-21 and the ASK-13). The AEF didn't turn up, so it was not a long wait before I was able to go up.

The day had improved somewhat and the flight before mine had managed a 50 minute flight, with the instructor indicating that there was a little lift around (1-2 knots) but you needed to work for it. On my first and second check flights there were a few scattered Cu's, but not far above them, clear small lenticular clouds, indicative of wave. The two airmasses were crossing each other and making things bumpy underneath. By the time I lifted off for my solo flight (only my second at Camden) things had changed and there were larger dark Cu's in an overcast sky (higher cloud) with some blue patches.

Takeoff and tow were those wonderful sensations of lightness and bouyancy from being one person in a two-seater. Quickly got to 3,000 and bunged off and then started wandering about the sky. On this initial flight I had no more plans than making sure I did more than a circuit. I knew I could fly a circuit by myself, I now wanted to see if I could get around the sky and stay up by myself.

Over Camden

It helped that there was some lift about and I quickly found that I could find and centre (reasonably well at first and better later in the flight) lift under these Cu's and I worked up from 2,500 feet to a dizzying (for me) 3,800 feet, near cloudbase! This was wonderful - I circled and thermalled with the vario beeping at me, keeping a lookout for other aircraft (the glider I was in - NKC the club's ASK-21 - is fitted with a Flarm and it regularly told me about other gliders in the air with me, mostly west of me) and exploring. I flew south to the high ground of Razorback, pointed my nose towards the Oaks, (which I couldn't really see, it was hazy as anything up there), headed east back over Camden and well upwind of the strip and just generally flew the glider around. I saw jets and prop planes passing by overhead, spotted other gliders, looked down at birds below me and took lots of photos.

I was ecstatic and had to keep checking that I wasn't all tensed up. A couple of times I found myself with my legs and feet braced as though I was riding a horse and I had to remind mysefl to relax and enjoy things. It took me about 40 minutes before everything smoothed out and I really calmed down and actually enjoyed the sensation of flying about and seeing the sights. I ended up thermalling south of the downwind end of the runway, seeing a single-seater and the K-13 flying beneath me. Lovely.

After almost an hour I thought I should return the glider so others could enjoy the day. The problem now was to lose all the height I had built up. I flew upwind, finding lots of lift, but not pursuing it. Over Camden I circled to lose some height, but I was surprised how long it took me to get back down to joining height.

And as is usual with probably every gliding club in the world, downwind and base were a sea of lift. I had to extend downwind a lot more than I'm used to because I'd lost little height in downwind, so I had a nice long final down to a smooth and pleasant landing.

At one hour 8 minutes, it was my longest flight so far, and even more satisfying was starting to work out that I can do more than just fly a circuit - that I may actually be able to fly a glider successfully by myself!

Duty Pilot - 17 July 2010

2010-07-25T03:52:00.000-07:00

After soloing again in May, it's a long wait, because of work and family, until I have the chance of flying again. I am on the roster as Duty Pilot again and I'm so keen to get to the club that I turn out of bed at 6.00 am after getting back from overseas the night before.

Arrive at the club on a cold morning (5 degrees C) before 8am and, with the help of a couple of other members, start getting all the gear ready and off to the hangards to prep aircraft. It's a busy day - 4 Air Experience Flights, a visiting overseas pilot from South America and plenty of trainees and club pilots finishing their annual checks.

The weather is benign with gentle variable winds and the chance of some thermals around 1.30pm, once the ground heats up. The most frustrating thing is end changes by the control tower. We get two of these - shift everything down to 24 and then about an hour later, shift everything back to 06. Each end change kills about 30-45 minutes as the pie cart has to be closed up and laboriously towed by tractor to the other end of the strip; as well as the aircraft on the ground.

A total of 23 launches, all the two-seaters in use, lots of certificates presented and even arranged a few photos of the ASK-21 to be used as the background of first solo certificates (since it's a newish aircraft).

I finally get on the road home at about 5.15pm and I never even got to fly. One of the frustrations of Duty Pilot - I did all I could to make sure others flew (and some folk got in three flights - the longest flight was 1 hour 11 minutes - not bad for a winter day) - but I stayed on the ground.

At least I had the satisfaction of having my first real Duty Pilot experience go off well (with the welcome help of plenty of other club members).

Duty Pilot and Second First Solo

2010-05-22T05:05:00.000-07:00

A quick post today - out to the club for my first stint as Duty Pilot (tasks to open the clubhouse, download the weather and the club members' flying intentions, collect batteries, radios, cool drinks, camera and printer (for AEFs), then to the hangars to get out and DI gliders and then to coordinate operations for the day. I had the assistance of a senior club member for the first part of the day.

It was raining in Sydney when I left early this morning but it was clear and quite warm at Camden and by the time we were moving aircraft down to the strip Cu's were already forming. It was not going to be a busy day - 2 students plus me, an early solo pilot and a plethora of instructors.

I helped to allocate students and check flights to aircraft and instructors and logged flights, did some wing-running and retrieving (the usual stuff) and even got time for a joyride in the tow-plane (man those things are noisy). My camera was playing up so i couldn't take any photos. I had my new GPS flight logger with me but I had technical issues with that too when I tried to download my flights.

Since it was quiet, one of the instructors, R, offered to take me up for a flight or two (he's a very good instructor - good at teaching, not just showing people how to fly). After looking through my NZ and Australian logbooks, he concluded I was probably ready to solo after some tormenting, which included simulated rope breaks. I have to say I got pretty flustered and made a mess of the first rope break exercise, starting to turn back to the field when we were high enough for pretty much a full circuit, then crowding the circuit. I even started to line up for the grass 28 strip instead of 24 which we were operating on! Horrible. I got a pass on the landing and afterwards he told me he'd established a few things about me - I didn't panic, I looked out of the window and I could get myself out of trouble.

We had two more circuits, releasing at 1,500 feet, concentrating on moving in and out as conditions changed on downwind and talking about the importance of the turn to final and then he asked me if I felt ready to fly by myself, because he thought I was.

So I strapped up the rear seat harness of the K-21, got in the front by myself and the next thing I was in the air. My instructor told me he'd be watching and he'd call me on the radio if he thought my position wasn't good on downwind. Two-seaters are so light the first time you fly them alone and I ballooned a little before the tug got off the ground (though my initial position was good and low - we must have hit a little warm pocket and it went up a few feet, I then found the trim had come back by itself, probably when I was checking control movement) but I quickly got it back in position. The tow was nice and smooth, I released at 1,500 feet, took a look at the field and then made a series of turns and excursions perpendicular to the field before deciding it was time to join downwind. I made my radio call, did my downwind checks and then adjusted my position as I flew. There was almost no sink, so I extended downwind a bit until I judged it was time to turn base and then, as I turned final I realised I was a little high. I got some full brake out immediately, corrected my height and then did a half-brake final, rounded out a trifle high, ballooned just a little, settled the glider and then held off for the best landing I've ever done. A gentle kiss, stick right back by now and then full brakes, keeping the wings level and the aircraft straight and ended with the glider coming to a halt wings level and the gently leaning onto the left wing.

I let out a whoo, slowly climbed out and pushed the glider off the strip. But mine was the last flight of the day again and I waited for the two-car reflecting on meeting my resolution to go solo again before the end of May.

Now, the fun really begins.

Daily Inspector and last flight of the day

2010-05-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday 8 May 2010

I’m finally up to date with my blog! This weekend I came out to the club primarily to finish the DI course, with hopes of also fitting in a circuit or two afterwards. The DI course was to start bright and early out at the hangars and it was a cool sunny morning. The car’s thermometer read 9˚ Celsius as a drove through the gates at 8.15am. It was quite still on the ground and I was surprised to see a partially deflated balloon on our strip. A Sydney company, Balloon Aloft, operates out of Camden and this was the first time I had seen them here. As one balloon on the ground was being packed away, two more were approaching from the south-west. Apparently there was a SW wind aloft and they were using this to come back to Camden. As I watched, a second balloon descended for a perfect landing on the glider strip.

How do they do this? The third balloon apparently missed his slot and crossed overhead at about 1,000 feet to land east of the field, but two out of the three balloons landed where they wanted to, simply using what wind there was.

Apparently, the balloonists launch things called Pibals (short for Pilot Balloons) and then track them to judge ascent rate and winds aloft. Apparently they used to do this with special theodolites combined with lights on the balloons. Fascinating.

The second day of the DI course was interesting and involved getting hands-on with two aircraft – the club’s K-13 (complete with trick airbrake handle) and the single seat Astir, carrying out DIs in small teams (there were 6 of us doing the course) complete with little “traps”, being briefed on the idiosyncrasies of the different club aircraft and then finally pulling bits off to see how they work – the tailplane on the K-13 and the tailplane and port wing on the Astir. After this (all of us passed the course) I got to sign off an independent control check of the K-13.

The course finished about 2.30 pm and I headed down with some of the participants to put my name down to fly. I ate a late lunch and then watched the gliders and power planes doing bumps (including a nice little Chipmunk). It was a lovely calm Autumn day, and warm at about 23˚ C and there was lift to be had (a couple of guys in the club’s DG-1000 had a flight just short of 4 hours), but by the time my chance for a flight came around, it was the last flight of the day. I climbed into the K-21 with half the strip in shadow and took a tow to 2,000 feet in lovely smooth air. After release I obscured the altimeter with a little suction cup provided by the instructor and marvelled at the lovely late afternoon light as I wandered about south of the strip. I concentrated on constant speed coordinated turns at 50 knots until I judged it was time to join the circuit. There were no other aircraft up at that time (getting on to 5.00 pm) so it was a calming, smooth flight, with the field in full shadow and the last afternoon sun on the Razorbacks. I managed the circuit well I thought, and after my landing the instructor (who had been having student flights all day) said “you didn’t scare me once”. He wrote in my logbook “Flew a good circuit and landing” which I was most happy with.

After the flight I stayed to pack away gliders and the tug, then carried batteries back to the clubhouse, leaving well after dark. Satisfying.

Glorious Autumn Soaring

2010-05-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

Monday 26 April 2010

Looking back over my logbook, I find most of my training flights at Camden have been short, generally under 20 minutes, so it was nice on this day to have an almost 50-minute flight.

The club was operating from runway 24 and I arrived with the intention of doing spins, further to my last instructor’s notes. The aircraft available to me (it was a busy day at the club - pretty much every club twin and single and a couple of private ships were on the line - see the photo) when it was my turn to fly, was the venerable K-13.

My takeoff was a bit messy (two years since I’d flown a K-13) and I took a while to cancel out some bobbing up and down immediately after getting off the deck. Even with forward trim the damn thing wanted to climb and it took real effort to keep it in line behind the tow-plane. It was fine on the climb out.

I had signalled to the tug pilot for a tow to 3,000 feet, but it was a booming day and, as I was discussing potential landout options from the 24 runway in case of a rope break with the instructor, he suddenly bunged me off at about 1,200 feet. Earlier I had watched the pilot of a club single-seater get off tow just beyond the end of the runway and then thermal steadily to 4,000 odd feet before setting off. I had deliberately wound the altimeter around so it would be effectively useless for circuit and landing, which I wanted to do solely by eye. On tow, the variometer had shown steady lift beyond the runway. In reference to the land-out options, the instructor’s comment was “well, let’s take a closer look.” And pulled the plug. After I settled into flying speed and had done my release checks, he said “alright, find a thermal”.

The whole sky was going up and it was easy to find a big 4 knotter just west of the runway. This was glorious flying at Camden, where I had previously scratched around for tiny thermals over the suburbs. Here was a big fat thermal I could ride right up to 4,500 feet. It was still going, but I was getting close to the airspace limit (4,500 this close to Camden) and my intention was to do some spins.

The air was particularly clear, the clearest I had experienced in the normally hazy Camden and I could see out to Lake Burragorang to the west (though I wasn’t high enough to see the lake itself) and in the other direction I could see Port Botany and the Sydney CBD about 50km away.

We headed west towards The Oaks, a 3,100 foot small airstrip remnant from a WW2 satellite aerodrome to Camden, now used by the Sydney Recreational Flying Club - which the gliding club uses for outlanding training. I’d never seen it up close but with all this (relative) height in hand, we trundled over there to identify it. Here’s how it looks from the air (via the excellent Nearmap).

After a HASLL check, we commenced to spin. The instructor put me into spins both from banked turns and from straight ahead stalls, which I had no problems recovering from (I quite like spins, the sudden precipitous plunge and roll) and then we spent some more time enjoying the day. The sky was still going up so I searched for thermals and regained all my height. At one point I saw the club’s Junior above me and joined his thermal. It’s lovely to fly with another aircraft (though busier, in terms of keeping sight of the other aircraft) because of how graceful gliders look in the air. I managed to climb better than the Junior and just before I reached his altitude (about 4,000) he left the thermal and tracked away east.

Around this point I heard a radio call from a power plane approaching Camden from The Oaks and scanned until I saw him (my instructor saw him first, below and west and yawed the nose to point at it. It still took me a couple of seconds to spot it. Aircraft are hard to see at any sort of distance). The Cessna crossed our nose several hundred feet below.

After a bit more flying it was time to get back down to earth to allow others to fly the K-13, so the instructor decided to throw away some of this height via aerobatics. We did two loops in a row (nose down to 100 knots, then a smooth pull up for 1G at the top), followed by two big chandelles/wing-overs. I’ve never been airsick, but after these manoeuvres done in a short period of time, I felt a bit crook and had to breathe open-mouthed for a while before the stomach settled down!

Having shed some height, I joined the circuit for 24 and managed downwind, base and final without reference to the altimeter. The apparent nose-down attitude of the K-13 meant that I had to really watch my speed as I wanted to have the nose higher for the sight picture I normally see in the other club two-seaters. My final was a little high because I waited a little while before applying airbrakes to establish the overshoot on my aiming point, and ended up having to get more than half-brake out on mid-final. On touch-down though, the plastic grip on the airbrake handle came off in my hand, just as I was applying more brake to shorten the ground-roll! It gave me a bit of a fright, as for a split second I held it in my hand working out what to do with it. I kept the glider under control however. I noticed in the glider’s DI book that the loose handle had been a minor defect for some time. I made sure to put an updated note in the book for subsequent pilots.

So, spins are signed off and I hope just a few more circuits are required before I can have my second first solo. I’m definitely feeling better about judging angles by eye and I can tell I’m more relaxed because final feels so much longer, with seemingly more time to think. In some previous flights things had seemed so hectic and fast after the turn to final.

Daily Inspector Course and an Autumn flight

2010-05-09T03:02:00.000-07:00

Saturday 17 April 2010

Last year I started the Club's Daily Inspector (DI) course, to qualify me for carrying out (no surprises here) daily inspections of gliders, to certify them fit to fly for the day. The course is in two parts, each a half-day long, separated by a couple of weeks. Day 1 briefly covers the theory and also involves looking at some of the club aircraft and exploring the practicalities of undertaking DIs as well as quirks of different ships, while the second day is all practical application. I did the first day, then some family emergency prevented me from doing the second day, so I remained uncertified.

Finally the course came around again and I signed up to do the whole thing again. This Saturday was the first day and it proceeded pretty much as it had the previous year, with a video and discussion in the clubhouse followed by some hands-on mostly with the club's IS-28. It's entertaining and about equal parts instruction and ritual humiliation, with the instructor emphasising the need for thoroughness by hiding tools and setting other traps around the glider. Screwdrivers under seat cushions, wrongly attached harness straps, loose screws or missing fuses, poorly secured outlanding gear and his piece de resistance is a bunch of heavy spanners and tools in the rear of the 28's fuselage just forward of the tail, retrieved by a long reach from the access hatch.

After the end of the instruction at about 12.30pm, we students hoping to fly trooped down to the flight line to register with the Duty Pilot. It was a glorious day (see photo) with lots of likely looking Cu's around. I didn't have time for lots of flights or long flights (it was busy) but I managed to fit in a glorified circuit in the K-21. Tow to 2,000 feet, more work on my judgement of angles to the field approaching the
break-off point and in circuit.

I feel like it's starting to come together. I'm happier working out when to join circuit, judging angles in the downwind leg, turning to base and final and landing. I did a nice job I thought and my instructor wrote in my logbook "flying well. Spin checks and a few more circuits." Getting closer.

Air cadets

2010-04-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

28 February 2010

Further to being a useful gliding club member, I volunteered to help some of the club members (ex Air Force and/or Air Force Reserve) operate a flying day for the local Air Force Cadets. About 20 cadets would have flights in a club two-seater through the day and there was a call via the usual email contact for members to help out.

I arrived early as usual and helped get the aircraft ready and listened in to the briefing of the cadets, I was offered (and accepted) a quick first flight in the K-21 before the cadet flights began (about 10.00 am). The day started as still, with a misty sky and high cloud. No thermal activity at all and so perfect for circuits. Tow to 2,000 feet was the smoothest I’d ever felt. I could have flown the tow hands-off I reckon.

No lift, but no sink either once I was up there. I worked on judging the break-off point and angles to the strip. I flew my circuit a little wide and still ended up a little high (turned in a bit too early), had to get a fair bit of brake out, then was able to put some away and come in on half brake. I felt more comfortable managing the brakes to keep the aiming point where I want it than I had for a while.

I lost a little directional control on the ground though and end up slewing a little left in the landing run. Not sure what happened. But man, the wheel brakes are good on the K-21, unlike any other glider I’ve flown.

After this first flight (14 minutes), I helped out with getting cadets strapped in, briefed and launched, including making sure each of them participated in a launch – retrieving the tow-rope, signalling the required tow height to the tug pilot, hooking on and waving off etc.

There was lots of this and as the day progressed the weather heated up and the unmistakable signs of an afternoon thunderstorm could be seen in the west (unusual, the usual direction for summer thunderstorms in Sydney is the south).

There were other club members flying in addition to the cadets and at one point, later in the afternoon, the club’s DG-1000 was without a taker. I quickly took up the offer (though I found the DG a handful on my last flight in it, in Cootamundra) and took a tow to 2,000 feet for more circuit practice. Not a remarkable flight and I was happy with my circuit, approach and landing. My instructor wrote “General flying good, work on circuit.”

After a few more launches for the cadets, we’d got the last of them off as lightning started to flicker and a wall of black cloud built up. There was a dramatic storm later, which I raced ahead of down the M5 Motorway home.

Too hot to fly

2010-04-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

9 January 2010

One of the things about being a member of a gliding club is that there's an expectation that members will "put in" to do their bit to help the club operate, rather than just turn up and fly. I've always been conscious of this and make an effort to be part of the club's operations. This usually involves arriving out at the clubhouse early to help pull gliders and the towplane out of the hangar, wash them (I haven't finished my DI course yet so I'm mostly muscle at the moment) and tow them down to the launch point and then later running around to help launch and retrieve gliders.

On this day, which was an unusually hot summer day even for Sydney, getting to about 44 degrees C (over 110 degrees F), I made the decision not to fly when I was due for my second flight, because I was exhausted from the launch and retrieve duties I took on.

By getting out to the club early (about 8.30am which requires me to leave home around 7.30am) I got my name at the top of the list to fly. Initially I was slated to fly the club's K-21, but when in my walk-around (the ABCD checks my club does before beginning the CHAOTIC check) I discovered the plane had not been signed off after its DI (this necessitated tracking down the DI-er and getting him to sign it out), so we pushed it off line and I climbed in the IS-28.

The day was heating up and the buckles and even the harness straps were almost too hot to touch. It was coller aloft but no thermal activity had been triggered yet. I took a tow to 3,000 feet
to work on my angles and circuit heights. While there wasn't lift, there was almost zero sink and so the flight consisted mostly of reviewing and commenting on the angles to the strip without reference to the altimeter, judging when to join the circuit and then doing the circuit without the altimeter. My notes indicate that the instructor thought I was flying well, speed control was good, though I joined the circuit a little early (the fault I am trying to deal with), didn't get more flap out when we hit lift in early base (about the most reliable source of lift at most glider fields) and so was then was a little steep on final, using more brake than the half-brake I want to be using. This landing, while a little steeper than ideal, was better than previous high finals I've been guilty of (where I've even needed to sideslip).

After this flight I spent hours running wings and retrieving gliders (it was so hot I couldn't pick up metal towbars with bare hands) while the day turned into a boomer, with Cu's everywhere (see the photo above - one of many I took in wonder at a sky usually blue and clear of clouds) and pilots talking of the whole sky going up and having difficulty staying within the 4,500 foot airspace close to the strip.

It was too hot to be outdoors, let alone running about in the sun. The sun had a big dark halo and at one pount I looked up and saw a strange zig-zag horizontal rainbow in the sky (I found out later this was a Circumhorizon Arc, an effect created by sun shining through high ice crystals in high cirrus clouds) - it was a strange day indeed.

The upshot was, even though it was a dream day to be in the sky, I was so dehydrated and exhausted, feeling sick and light-headed, that when it came time for my next flight at about 2pm, I declined. I'm pretty sure I made the right, safe decision.

At the Cootamundra Camp

2010-02-28T19:33:00.000-08:00

I managed a short visit to my club’s Christmas Camp at Cootamundra (western NSW) between Christmas and New Year. My mother lives in Cootamundra, a town of about five and a half thousand people some 375 km from Sydney, and each year I try to visit her, meaning I can get at least a few days flying if the camp dates coincide.

Cootamundra’s a pretty good place to fly and one of the greatest attractions is the lack of airspace restrictions, giving Southern Cross pilots a chance to get higher than the 4,500 feet limit close to Camden.

I have suffered from a bit of a Cootamundra curse the last couple of years, either turning up to find I can’t fly, or having the club cancel the first week of the camp due to a shortage of instructors, or tow pilots, so I approached the upcoming camp with some trepidation. I hadn’t been flying at Camden for a long time, so suddenly appearing for 2 days of a 2 week camp was always going to be a bit iffy, and I made an effort to get out to the Camden airfield on the weekend before the camp, to help de-rig gliders and pack them in their trailers.

After that it was off to Cootamundra a few days later. I was feeling pretty positive – there was a two-seater (the club’s DG-1000) and an instructor slated to be there. The weather forecast was good too. On the drive, as we got closer to Cootamundra, the sky looked fantastic. Great high cloud streets and warm conditions. I was pumped, but after checking into the motel and jumping into the pool with the girls, I noticed a distinct absence of gliders and tow planes in the air in these perfect conditions.

A quick trip to the field confirmed that bad weather in Sydney had prevented the tow plane from flying out, but it was expected that night. There were a lot of frustrated pilots in Cootamundra looking for things to do (there ain’t much to do in Cootamundra).

Next morning however, the Pawnee was there and the weather forecast was good. Not as good as the day before, but definitely flyable. However, for me to get a flight in the two-seater, I had to wait for all the area checks (short flights with the instructor to confirm skills and provide some orientation for solo pilots who hadn’t flown at Cootamundra before) to be completed. I pitched in helping to get gliders ready and launching and retrieving but by the end of a hot and exhausting day I still hadn’t had a flight. Frustrating for me and the other student there, particularly as the last area check flight went from intended to be 10 minutes to more than an hour and a half – apparently in response to a radio call someone on the ground had told the instructor that the two-seater wasn’t needed. The camp is primarily for experienced fliers rather than students, but still it was galling to see the only two-seater and instructor go off on a cross-country for the rest of the day.

The next day was another hot and blue and my last day at the camp. The other club members had big plans for the day – completing Silver C time, doing a 300 or a 500 and there was a lot of preparation for flying. I attended the briefing and in view of my heavy ground workload the day before, I was given the morning off with the expectation that the other student would get the first two-seater ride, and be back mid-afternoon and I would get the second chance at some cross-country.

Of course, with the Cootamundra curse, it didn’t pan out that way. I toddled back to the field after lunch to see how things were going. The whole fleet was still out, so people were getting some decent flights. I took over radio and documentation duties and waited. And waited.

There was a little excitement as gliders started to come back, particularly when a gear collapse on a single-seater blocked the strip until it could be lifted up and the gear lowered for pushing off, but the main emotion was an increasing realisation that I probably wouldn’t get to fly that day. In no time at all, it was 5.00pm, with that sense of the ending day, most of the aircraft were back, with the exception of the DG-1000 and I resigned myself to another failed Cootamundra year.

Finally, at almost 6.00 pm the DG lands. I am there to help retrieve it when the duty pilot and instructor offer me the chance for a last flight (the hangar flight) for the DG. To accept, I had to run the full length of the Cootamundra strip, get to the clubhouse, grab my logbook, hat and camera and then run back to the aircraft (probably 2km round trip), get strapped in and run through my checks in the dying of the day. I was out of breath and flustered when I got back to the glider and I had to force myself to calm down and be thorough in my checks (I hate being rushed, even by myself!).

Finally, at almost 6.40pm, we got off the ground. It was the evening, even if it had been a hot day and I had no expectation of anything other than a long circuit. We took a tow to 3,500 feet (man that DG, with its wingtip extensions is a handful – bit of a crosswind and swerving all over the place as the ground-roll started) that was in constant sink, but after release (what a pull required for the gear!) I managed to find a lone 3 knot thermal over a rocky west-facing hillside and rode it for a thousand foot climb in steady lift. The crosswind had this thermal leaning over quite a way until towards the topping out point, the source of the thermal was way over my left wing and I was thermalling almost above the airfield threshold several kms away!

After leaving that thermal it was wall to wall sink – not heavy sink, but no lift left at all. The sun was low and the shadows and light made for pretty views of the surrounding countryside and I had plenty of time to circle around before getting down to circuit height. I quite like the stick trigger trim on the DG, it made it simple to trim and retrim while thermalling.

Finally on the ground at 7.20pm (!). It was a shortish flight, but at least I got one!

Hey George, just what is a Horse Child Breakfast?

2010-01-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

The classic soaring movie The Sun Ship Game is finally out on DVD and my copy arrived from Tom Knauff’s Knauff & Grove Soaring Supplies. This is a great movie about gliding – not a documentary, but a feature film by Robert Drew, made in the 1970s, of the comps in the runup to 1969 Nationals in Marfa Texas, including footage of that competition. The film focuses on two quite different competitors, George Moffat and Gleb Derujinsky and has some lovely footage of flying, as well as briefings etc at the comps. Some highlights for me include:

Gleb smoking in the cockpit of his glider during a race (and checking he has his cigarettes with him before launch)
George Moffat lengthening the wingspan of his glider by sawing the wingtips off with a handheld saw!
Several landouts and crashes where pieces of gliders (particularly canopies) fly everywhere – attitudes to safety were chillingly different back then
Plenty of footage of beautiful old gliders, including Libelles, fast becoming my favourite type

The title of this post refers to a typically late-sixties impenetrable and vaguely creepy poem by Richard Brautigan called Horse Child Breakfast, which George Moffat (English lecturer) reads to a class at the beginning of the film. The poem, if you want to check it out, along with others by Brautigan, can be found here: http://shalandar.com/richard-brautigan/pill-versus-springhill-mine-disaster.html - if you work out what a Horse Child Breakfast is, let me know.

Anyway, I’m glad I have a copy to replace the bad version I had downloaded from the net and I look forward to watching it (though I doubt whether my wife will be able to stay awake during it – she fell asleep in the first 10 minutes when I played it before).

Another weekend out west

2010-01-07T17:17:00.000-08:00

I’m really cramming some flying into my time in WA and once I again I hired a car and drove out to Beverley early on Saturday morning to arrive in time for the briefing. The plan this weekend was to concentrate on judging height and angles in the circuit. First flight was in the ASK-21 (BSS) and was to 2,000 feet with the altimeter obscured. During the tow we practiced hang-up procedures (what to do if the glider’s tow release doesn’t work), plus the signals from the tow pilot to the glider pilot to check that airbrakes aren’t open, and the wave-off sign. During the tow the instructor asked me to judge our height a number of times and each time told me I was very close, which was heartening.

I’ve always been a bit nervous during instrument-obscured flights and I tend to fly a bit messier than normal and this was the case in this flight, though I was happy with my judgement of height and angles in the circuit.

The next flight (which was by then late afternoon – there’s a lot of waiting around and helping with launches etc in gliding) included boxing the tow “very well done Brian” says my instructor, and then a gentle flight in the beautiful late afternoon light. There was little lift left, though I found and hooked onto a small weak thermal over the town for a gain of a measly 200 feet at 1-2 knots. Finally, I joined downwind and of course this was the only place where there was ample lift, so I had to extend the downwind leg even for this hangar flight. I was happy with my approach and landing.

The next day (the Sunday) was busy, with 5 flights - more circuits with the altimeter obscured and a simulated rope break and ending with a hangar flight in the Pooch. All in all I was happy with my progress and only sorry that my time in WA was coming to an end.

More western flying and some surprises

2010-01-04T20:47:00.000-08:00

At this stage of my training I try to reflect on what I’ve learnt after every flight, as well as planning my flights to address some area of my training, or a bad habit. This weekend’s flights gave me plenty to learn from!

After an atrocious Saturday (they reported hail on the airfield before lunch, thankfully before any gliders had been pushed out) Sunday’s weather looked good for flying (maybe not for soaring) so I hired a car and drove out to Beverley that morning. The plan was, after getting the rust off in the ASK-21 the previous week, to do stalls and spins in the club’s Puchacz (since the ASK-21 won’t really stall or spin “properly”, without a spin kit fitted), a type I hadn’t flown before.

Just like someone with an ailment I stupidly googled what it was like to spin and found it had a reputation for killing pilots in spins (not sure if undeserved or not…). So I was a bit nervous before flying the “Pooch”. The spin and stall went off well – the stall was pretty predictable, bit of a buffet and the left wing dropped a little, and the spin was sudden but was under control in less than a turn (though we lost a fair bit of height). Piece of cake.

After the spin, we were still at 2,000 feet so had a bit of a stooge around to get more acquainted with the ship. I thermalled for a little in an intermittent bit of lift (more cloud suck than anything else according to the instructor) then tracked south, west of the airfield. There was a stiffish westerly blowing and right at my altitude was a wedge-tail eagle, sitting facing into the wind just hovering there. I passed him just in front, maybe 15 metres away, twice. What a glorious sight and feeling to be sharing the air with this big bird. He was so close I could see the wind ruffling his feathers and I could clearly see his big eye looking at me as we passed by.

My second flight was much more eventful and much more of a learning experience. The first lesson I learnt was look at the altimeter more closely and double-check that against the view out the canopy. I’d planned a tow to 2,000 feet (2,700 indicated) to just basically stooge around and get used to the Pooch. I had been scanning the altimeter after takeoff as part of some drills related to options in case of rope breaks at Beverley (calling out when passing 200 feet AGL to remind myself that from that height on I could consider turning back to a runway rather than looking for straight ahead landing opportunities) when I looked at the altimeter and suddenly thought “Oh, I’m passing 2,800 feet” and bunged off. I felt pretty stupid when after getting settled I noticed how low we were and realised I’d bunged off at 1,800 (1,100 feet indicated) instead of 1,000 feet higher as intended.

This necessitated some quick thinking. I turned back towards the circuit entry point (which wasn’t far away) and then decided to join the (right hand) circuit, as there was no lift about and the longer I faffed about the fewer options I’d have. However, as I approached the start of downwind and made my downwind call, I noticed another club glider, an ASK-21, joining downwind in front of me and slightly lower. I didn’t hear his call and it turned out that his radio batteries were flat and he didn’t hear my downwind call either.

This presented me with a bit of a quandary. After consulting with the instructor in the back seat about options (turn in early, land long, land on crosswind runway), I elected to do a “normal” circuit and land long and over the other glider (I was higher and could do this). The next few minutes provided me with all the evidence I needed that gliding requires constant thinking and assessment. Decision-making. Everything that the other pilot did and everything my aircraft did and everything that the air around us did, opened up or closed windows for different courses of action. My height and the position of the glider in front closed out a landing on the crosswind runway (RWY 26), so my options were then to continue with a normal circuit and see what developed later.

I was fairly well behind and above the ASK-21, so I definitely had more options than him, but I couldn’t be sure what he would do (he was a recent solo pilot on his first few flights, so I didn’t want to put him under too much pressure). In the end I watched him like a hawk and when he had turned final, I turned final well above him and to the side and landed long, watching him out my window as he touched down. He had been unaware of my presence until I appeared above him on final.

When I climbed out of the cockpit, I was feeling a bit shaken. I’d never had a heavier workload in a circuit before and I seen the potential for a disaster – a wrong move by me or the other pilot could have seen a crash. Similarly, a failure by me to recognise the problem, or to not actually change my procedure (such as continuing with a normal approach) could have been disastrous. I was reading one of Tom Knauff’s newsletters and he talked about Plan Continuation Bias, which is where a pilot fails to recognise or act on the need to change a procedure (due to changed conditions) and continues on with their “normal” plan.

Immediately afterwards I discussed what had happened with my instructor and his main comment was that I could have acted more decisively earlier, by turning to base and final earlier (well before the other glider reached his base leg) and landed longer. This would have had the advantage of showing the other glider my position.

I could have done this, but I was high on downwind and under normal circumstances I would have extended my downwind leg. To turn in earlier than I did would probably have meant full airbrakes or a much longer landing (Beverley’s strip is long though, so it may just have been an inconvenience).

In any case, I certainly learned a few things from this flight, including the need to maintain attention and to constantly reassess the situation and to act, rather than continue on with the normal plan. I also learned a little bit about the pressure that an abnormal situation can place on the pilot and the need for a cool, analytical head.

I also had a late flight in the Pooch and managed to take some photos – the light was beautiful and there were small shower clouds around, which made it even prettier. The trees alongside the main runway at Beverley lead to shadowing of the runway in the late afternoon, which can make it difficult to judge height for roundout, as you go from bright sky into darker conditions on late final. Tricky, but I made it okay.

One additional nice thing about the Beverley club is their tradition of having group dinners cooked by one or two members. Many club members stay overnight at Beverley as its 1.5 to 2 hours drive from Perth and there’s a heap of privately-owned caravans around the clubhouse, as well as some beds in the clubhouse itself and the club developed a tradition where a couple of members buy meat and vegetables and then cook a huge roast dinner, which other club members can partake of for a nominal fee (about $10). The kitchen was busy for several hours on the Saturday of the last weekend I was there and a beautiful roast lamb dinner with apple crumble and custard was provided for more than 20 people. Very neat and I noticed in the club’s magazine that I managed to sneak into the photo!

Back in the air – but in the West

2009-08-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

Well, a long, long time since I’ve been in the air. 2008/2009 has been a frustrating year for me in terms of my flying progress, but a satisfying year in family and professional life. Flying definitely had to take a back seat to the rest of my life, including the birth of my second daughter Ruby and a whole lot of overseas and interstate travel for work. In the end I just couldn’t fit gliding in. I knew I was getting rusty and not achieving the things I wanted to, but I figured I just had to put it aside for the time being. Well, the time being stretched out further and further. Finally, an extended project transfer to Perth Western Australia provided the opportunity to do some flying on free weekends.

Before travelling to Perth I posted a message on the aus.soaring message boards (see here - http://www.mail-archive.com/aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net/) and got quite a few responses letting me know about the clubs close to Perth. There’s three, all within about 1.5 to 2.5 hours drive – Beverley Soaring Society, Narrogin and Cunderdin. Each apparently has a slightly different character, different fleet and different facilities. The great advantage to flying in WA compared with Camden seems to be airspace restrictions – which are less restrictive over in the west.

I decided on the Beverley club because it was closest to where I was living, has a nice two-seater fleet, flies Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, have a clubhouse providing for free overnight stays for visiting pilots and most people who responded to my post mentioned how friendly the club is. So on Saturday I hired a car and drove out west to Beverley (pretty country) after packing some clothes and a sleeping bag.

I got to the club about noon to find they were pretty busy doing annual checks for club members and training for about 4 others students, including three young guys who had recently soloed on a two-weekend ab-initio course.

However, I was made welcome and arranged to have my logbooks checked over and an instructor matched to me. Beverley has a sealed runway (16/34) which is mostly gravel and an unsealed 08/26 runway which has partially been reclaimed by the local farmer and so is partially unusable. Clubhouse facilities are very good, their “pie-cart”, called the Eagle’s Nest, is a sort of truncated caravan towed by a Hiace van. A row of trees along runway 16/34 create a bit of rollover in westerly winds, but overall facilities are pretty good.

The weather wasn’t all that kind however. It was a bit cool and cloudy with passing showers and no breeze to speak of and flying was interrupted a couple of times during the afternoon by rain. Not soaring weather but pretty good for what I wanted to do – which was to practice some circuits and get used to flying again.

Their main training two-seater is an ASK-21, Bravo Sierra Sierra (BSS) – almost my initials. Southern Cross has a new ASK which I haven’t flown, so I was keen to try it out for future reference.

Like fishing, patience is a virtue in gliding. I watched others have check flights (lots of abbreviated circuits as instructors gave club members challenges to deal with, like sudden sink simulated by popping the dive brakes open on downwind) and short flights by students, including solos in the two-seaters and singles. Finally, at 4.45pm (last flight of the day!) it was my turn to strap into BSS.

One unpleasant discovery was that, in common with the K-13 I’d flown, the dive brake control was difficult to use for my non-extending left arm. The problem wasn’t deploying the brakes, but locking them away – my arm wouldn’t straighten enough to positively lock them. With some experimenting we found that with the seat pan back fitted I could get myself far enough forward for my dud arm to properly lock the brakes.

Felt strange to be back in the cockpit and I was nervous. I still remembered all my checks though. Amusing incident when the wing runner showed me the tow-rope, having missed the knot that had formed just behind the ring!

Takeoff was a bit messy and it took me a while to settle back into the low tow, but things settled quickly. I released at 3,000 (indicated 3,720 – Beverley is 720 feet ASL) and the instructor talked me through the local landmarks. We tried a few coordinated turns to get used to the new machine and then I tried a stall (the ASK-21 won’t really stall – it mushes along but loses lots of height).

It was incredibly beautiful up there and really brought back why I love flying gliders. The air was still and smooth. No lift, but no sink either. Grey clouds contrasted with rich greens in a darkening landscape and in the west the setting sun threw golden light across fluffy lighter coloured clouds. Gorgeous and peaceful.

Soon it was time to join the circuit to land. This is an area I really want to focus on. I have found I tend to crowd the circuit and I find it hard to judge the angles on downwind, turning onto base too early, too high. So I ask my instructor to watch me and talk me through the angles. This helps heaps, but I have to say I was not at all proud of my first landing for 14 months. Speed control a bit of a struggle (but not too bad – 55 knots target speed, sitting around 60-65), off-line a bit and needing some adjustment to get back to centreline and then my flare was too late and not positive enough, with the result that I “flew” the plane onto the ground, rather than having the glider stop flying and settle onto its wheel. 22 minutes but I was back in the air! Pleasant dinner at the Beverley pub with some of the other members and instructors – friendly bunch.

Next day (Sunday) was much quieter and while it dawned clear and promising looking, low clouds built up and closed off any hope for thermals. A bit more of a wind on this day, which would make takeoffs and landings more interesting, but not much more than 5 knots or so. The club puts on quite a professional morning briefing before operations, covering what’s expected from the day. Only two students at the start of the day, myself and a young woman recently solo for the second time after 3 years – a precise, professional flier with a military background. Later, an older gent who had been a club member many years ago arrived, but the plane/instructor/student ratio was great today – I could fly as much as my wallet could bear.

Circuits was the plan and I was happy with my progress. I got in 4 short flights and each was better than the one before. My takeoff and tow sorted themselves out, my circuit positioning and speed control and landings got much better, though I still think I need more work judging my angles and height without reference to altimeter or landmarks. On my last flight, the clouds were starting to break up a bit and large blue holes were forming. I elected to take a slightly higher tow, to 2,000 feet, which was above the main cloudbase, hoping there might be some lift about (on previous flights there’d been some tantalising blips on the variometer). There wasn’t any lift I could find, but at one point, as I looked down at the ground, I saw an eagle circling below me. He was in lift and coming up. Not a peep out of my variometer despite me being pretty much in the same column of air as him, but the difference between our weights was decisive. He gracefully angled off and was gone. I went back to earth.

A cool poster

2009-08-11T06:47:00.001-07:00

Saw this nice poster over at Cumulus Soaring (http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/posters.htm), with 50 Milestones in Sailplane Design. According to Cumulus Soaring, “the posters were created by Martin Simons using artwork from his 3 wonderfully interesting "Sailplanes" books”. I ordered one of the posters (a fairly simple process, but I suppose I won’t see the poster until I get home from WA where I’m presently working) but I’d never heard of the books. A bit of searching on the net I found he lives in South Australia and has written a bunch of aviation books. Must try to find some…

Papa Whisky written off

2009-08-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

I got a shock when a fellow soaring pilot emailed me to tell me that the aircraft that I’d learnt to fly in, Taupo Gliding Club’s PW6, Papa Whisky, had been written off in a crash at Matamata in April 2009. It was the first glider I’d been in, I’d flown about 9 hours in this aircraft and soloed in it, so it held a special place in my gliding memory. It felt strange to think that it was no more.

Coincidentally, the copy of Gliding NZ that had recently arrived at the time I got the email about Papa Whisky had an item about a crash at Matamata and a net search turned up more. Apparently, Papa Whisky was at an Air Cadets camp at Matamata Gliding Club and during a simulated rope break exercise at 300 feet, with a largish instructor in the back seat and a 14 year old boy in the front seat, the glider stalled and spun in. According to the crash report, the student initiated a climbing turn to the right without sufficient airspeed (when I first heard about the crash I had thought the cause may have been due to insufficient ballast in the front seat, given the weight differential between the instructor, whom I know, and the lightweight student) which led to a stall and spin. Accident report here: http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=59652.

Thankfully no-one was killed. The instructor suffered two broken legs, while the air cadet got serious head injuries, but has since recovered and is keen to continue flying. Sobering stuff though and enough to make me go over my rope break knowledge and options more thoroughly.

The forgotten flights

2009-08-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

Looking through my logbook and planning to update this blog (it’s been 14 months since I’ve flown – combination of working overseas and interstate, plus the birth of my lovely little daughter number two, Ruby) I realised I had had three flights with Southern Cross at Camden in April 2008, which I hadn’t recorded here and found I had little recollection of! It was a mid-week (Wednesday) visit, so it should be memorable, but I can’t recall much of it at all. According to my logbook, I took three flights in the club’s IS28 (maybe I’m repressing the memory like a victim of violence) to 2,000 feet, 1,500 and 1,500 to essentially practice circuits. My instructor’s comments are “watch swing on takeoff” (I recall now it was a windy day at Camden and the trees along the side of runway Glider 06 caused a rollover effect with turbulence on takeoff and approach) “don’t drop nose on release. Fly circuit by angle – speed control OK, flare and hold off glider, aerotow good.”

I suppose these flights were part of my plan to go solo in Australia and to get used to things at Camden. I had found I’d relied too much on the altimeter when I was learning to fly in Taupo, so I wanted to make sure I could judge my approach by the angles. This is important because in future, if I go away from the immediate environs of the field for example, I won’t be able to rely on my altimeter when making a land-out at an unfamiliar place.

Someone’s living my dream!

2008-04-13T05:02:00.001-07:00

I was stooging about on the net the other week and came to the Southern Soaring website – link - http://www.soaring.co.nz/ and was surprised to recognise the mug of the man enjoying a wave flight at 17,000 feet on their latest news page!

Before I’d started my glider training at Taupo Gliding Club in New Zealand, I had sought some opinions on solo in a week courses at various places, including an online forum for the Condor gliding simulator. A member of that forum, Vic, had done his training at Taupo and was going to be there the same week I eventually decided to do the course.

We shared the on-field digs, had dinner together a few times in Taupo and generally shared the training for a few days. Nice guy – he told me he wanted to fly at Omarama to experience wave flying and flying in the alps.

Omarama is like Mecca for sailplane pilots (for any glider pilots reading please excuse this primer). It’s a small town in New Zealand’s south island and a combination of mountains and prevailing westerlies result in amazing gliding conditions, including wave flying. Some private operations provide gliding tours and training (a bit like African safaris) and many gliding enthusiasts plan to make a pilgrimage to Omarama at least once in their lives. The world gliding Grand Prix races have been held there in 2006 and 2007.

Well, Vic clearly achieved his goal. Last time I’d seen him at Taupo he had progressed to flying solo in one of the club’s single seater PW5s, and now, here was a photo of him, at 17,000 feet, oxygen canulla in place, in wave over Omarama.

Well done that man!

I emailed him to get the good oil and he told me a little more about it.

He told me he flew in a near-new Duo Discus with the CFI of Southern Soaring Chris Rudge. He was (after briefings on use of oxygen, and the parachute) towed to 3,000 feet, then from ridge to ridge up to 8,000 feet, then as he describes it "punched up wind into rotor 100 knots indicated, very turbulent in sink, then into updraught of the rotor".

Having experienced a bit of rotor at Taupo a few weeks ago, I could visualise a bit of this (though working out how to transit the rotor is still confusing to me). He described being bounced about and then a smoothing out and they were into wave.

Oxygen went on at 10,000 feet, withy full-flow by 15,000 and he topped out at 17,500 feet! Vic says it was "cool but comfortable, outside temp. minus 5C".

Of course one of the tricky things about altitude flying is apparently you can be flying close to Vne (velocity not to exceed) but with a modest indicated airspeed. As well, in wave, you can be more or less standing still relative to the ground - and this happened to Vic - 55 knots indicated and at a virtual standstill on the GPS.

He seemed chuffed about his 3-hour flight (of which he flew all but some getting through the rotor). A lucky man...

Radio endorsement and a hazy flight

2008-04-05T03:57:00.000-07:00

Off to Southern Cross at Camden today (Saturday 5 April 08) to attend a half-day Radio Procedures course put on by the club (a Flight Radiotelephone Operator authorisation is a pre-requisite for solo at the club and is a Gliding Federation requirement) and I hope to get in the final three of my pre-paid flights. The course started at 9.00 am, so I was on the road before 8.00 am for the 45-minute or so drive down the motorway.

The instructor, Woody, had efficiently posted out the course notes more than a week beforehand, so I'd done a bit of reading and searched on the net for relevant material. When I'd looked for Visual Terminal Charts (VTCs) for Camden, I'd come across a useful and attractive little download from the CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority), called the Sydney Basin Visual Pilot Guide for Fixed Wing Aircraft - see here www.casa.gov.au/pilots/download/sydney/sydney.pdf

It has lots of useful information on procedures, colour photographs etc. Nice.

This was the first time I'd been at the actual clubhouse, which is located in the bustle of buildings at the aerodrome (usually I have arrived around midday and headed straight to the strip). I relaxed for a while drinking coffee, chatting to the other students and some of the club stalwarts who were getting set up for the day and flicking through flying magazines.

It was very hazy outside, blue skies and no wind to speak of. This became important later.

It was a good course, covering airspace classification, the various charts and other info we use (WACs, VTCs, VNCs, ERCs, ERSA) and the procedures at Camden and other nearby aerodromes, particularly CTAF and CTAF-R aerodromes; radio procedures and typical calls, distress calls, and weather reports and forecasts.

Midway through the course, we were informed that the aerodrome had been closed because of poor visibility from smoke. Bugger. It looked like I was going to miss out on flying today.

However, towards the end of the course, I saw a couple of planes taking off and after getting my precious Radio Operator Endorsement sticker in my logbook, I zipped down to the field to see if it would be worth staying.

As I got there, the club had been informed the field was to be reopened in about 20 minutes. I'd already got my name down on the flying list first thing in the morning, so I was pretty sure I could get at least one flight that day. The field being closed for several hours had caused a hell of a traffic jam. Every working glider in the club fleet was out on the field waiting for the off and several privately-owned ships; and there was a full roster of AEFs (Air Experience Flights - the punters who help fund the club). Two of the club's Pawnees were waiting to go. There was going to be a wait.

As the field started to get active, I made myself busy waving off and wing-running and pretty soon the sky was full of gliders. Most released over Narellan way where there seemed to be some lift, despite the seeming lack of any wind to trigger things, but one cross-country flier, another Brian, took his tow well south, aiming to go to Picton and back.

Finally the IS-28 came back from a flight with a Japanese pilot who had turned up on the day to join the club; and it was my turn. By this time, it was almost 2.00 pm and the smoke had cleared away (though it still looked hazy). Pretty blue, but some cloud building to the west.

Clive was my instructor and we ran over my experience and logbook and talked about what I wanted to cover in this flight (local landmarks and familiarisation and approaches/landings). Then I got settled in the tractor-like machine and got in the air. A slightly messy takeoff (seemed to happen too soon), I dropped a wing, recovered, got onto the main wheel okay, got off the deck and held the glider nice and low, and then when the tug got off, I slotted into low tow.

On my third tow in Australia, low tow held no horrors for me. It had clicked and I could relax (got to learn to do that before takeoff!). I was planning to release at 3,000, but got to talking to Clive and keeping a sharp lookout (lots of other aircraft up there) and I'd reached 3,500 before i woke up and bunged off (pulled the plug, as they seem to say in the club).

It was still very hazy and smoky up top - no real distant views and even looking at local landmarks was tricky. The other Brian later said he had been unable to see the field from 20 kms south!

After getting the gear up, the flaps off her and trimmed for 55 knots, we stooged around a bit identifying landmarks and airspace boundaries, by which time we'd lost a thousand feet or so, so I found some steady lift, centred it eventually, and then climbed back up to 3,800 feet.

A few exercises - stalls (interesting this, with my normal stall approach - lift the nose steadily, hold stick back and back until the stall - the IS-28 would stall at about 35 knots. However, when I tried a gentle stall, only a bit of nose up and a slower washing off of speed, what looked a gentle angle of attack, the thing stalled at 40 knots!), stalls with incipient spins off banked turns, and some steep turns with constant airspeed, it was back to the field to join the circuit.

I did the radio call (first one since the endorsement), then did my downwind checks. I found I was starting to crowd the circuit a bit, had to extend a bit before turning base, had to use full brakes and sideslip a bit, but then went to half-brakes, managed my speed well, rounded out okay, but landed a bit early, with a small bounce.

Clive's comments - next flights, practice circuits. He marked up my logbook "flying well, practice circuits and landing."

Still busy when I got back, so no chance of another flight. Had to go to a family dinner, so pulled the pin about 4.45pm. Saw a young guy who been on the radio course with me go solo in the K13 - got a nice memory of my solo and knew how he felt.

On the ridge at Taupo and a tricky landing

2008-03-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

Finally back in the air. Today (Sunday 16 March 2008) I managed to find time out of some work in New Zealand to visit the Taupo Gliding Club. The forecast, which I'd been watching eagerly from Australia, was indicating westerlies and better than 24 degrees C. Westerlies at Taupo mean the ridge at Mount Tauhara, the 4,000 foot hill south of the club field, works, so I was looking forward to a good day.

However, by the time I arrived in NZ, the forecast was for south-easterlies gusty, and strengthening. I took my chances and arrived around midday to find it breezy, but not too bad. Gusting 10-15 knots or so.

It was nice to see all the familiar faces and aircraft. It was a real blue day with nary a cloud (expect for some high lennies suggesting wave far out to the east), but Gordon, coming in from some air experience flights said there was some lift around.

I didn't have long to wait before my flight, though we needed to do some mechanical work on the PW6. One of Gordon's passengers had pulled the wrong red knob - the front canopy emergency release, rather than the red normal canopy release (thankfully on the ground when he was getting out, rather than in the air, which would have been expensive and messy), so we took a few minutes to refit the canopy.

It felt good to climb in and do my NZ checks (which I still remembered). Tom was my instructor and he said we would go to the south-east face of the ridge.

Getting off was a bit tricky - it was quite turbulent near the ground, but I got things under control and it smoothed out a bit above 1,000 feet, though it was still a bit of a roller-coaster ride, with big bits of lift and bumps.

I bunged us off at 3,700 feet when we'd reached the SE face of the ridge. This height puts you just under the top of the ridge. We released in strong sink, but I got in close, really feeling the wind pushing me onto the ridge, and then we were in quite strong lift. A good 6 knots up and it was like an elevator ride - woosh, up we went and almost immediately I could see the people standing around the trig point on the mountain and on the track leading to it (there's a walking track up the mountain and being a Sunday, there were probably a dozen hikers on the mountain). We were above them so quickly in steady strong lift, that lasted well out beyond the western end of the ridge.

In three turns we were at 4,500 feet, so we turned upwind and did a couple of stalls (preceded by the HASELL checks). The stalls were no problems at all, losing only a couple of hundred feet in all, then we pointed back to the ridge to get back the height.

There's something special about being on a ridge - you're close to the topography, which is always exhilarating, there's the strong constant lift that's exciting, and you can see and wave to people on the ridge below (or often on the same level) and imagine how you look to them.

After gaining our height back, we pointed out again for some practice in sideslipping and maximum rate descents. I'd not done sideslipping before so deliberately. I was conscious of the theory and the technique, and had done a little almost intuitive sideslipping on approaches with a crosswind component, but I'd been eager to learn them properly. We did several, rudder over, then ailerons to the reverse direction. The airspeed indicator is entirely unreliable in a sideslip, as the air is travelling across the sensor, so you have to be alert.

We also did a maximum rate descent, combining full airbrakes with a sideslip. Man, you can shed some height quickly that way - useful to get out of unwanted lift.

Back to the ridge for another couple of passes to regain height. I took a couple of photos - the lake was looking beautiful and I managed to get a shot over my shoulder of the end of the ridge.

Then back out to try a couple of wingovers (Tom did these) - nice! Nose down to get about 75 knots, then up and drop a wing at the top. One each direction - brilliant!

After this, things got interesting. We heard on the radio Lima Sierra, the privately-owned vintage Ka-6, getting a tow, requesting to be dropped off at 4,000 on the same part of the ridge as we were. There was a radio call from the towplane soon afterwards, that he was downwind to land, so we started to look out for the Ka-6, which we were expecting to see around our height and close by.

However, no sight (and it's a brightly-coloured aircraft - there's a photo of it in an earlier blog entry) and Tom called up the Ka-6 and Centennial Traffic to find out his position. Centennial Traffic reported that no other aircraft was up, and that the Ka-6 had aborted takeoff at 200 feet and was almost back in the hangar! Apparently, it was starting to get very gusty and windy at the field and the light Ka-6 had got seriously out of shape very soon after takeoff. The pilot had bunged off at 200 feet, done a fast turn and put it back on the ground.

Very soon after this Centennial Traffic called up to say they were suspending operations due to strong crosswinds that had quickly built up. Time to go back!

I headed us back to the field, around the eastern side of the mountain. In front could be seen thermals over ploughed fields, lifting plumes of dust, which were beiing strongly blown sideways at about 100 feet. There was strong lift out there, but also strong winds.

I positioned us downwind for 06, but we had lots of height and patches of strong lift meant we needed a different plan. I pushed out further downwind from the field to lose height, but there was even stronger lift out here.

Tom, looking at the windsock standing straight out on the field, and considering the cramped 06 approach, decided on a mid-field approach to 22 to get down quickly and safely, as it was clear the wind was only getting stronger and our approach, wherever it was, would be in rotor from Mount Tahuara (as we were directly downwind of it and needed to move upwind to the field).

Tom took control and we headed perpendicular to the field, passing through some strong turbulence off Tauhara. I took a short video (link below), and even holding with both hands it was impossible to hold it steady. Check out the video to see how bumpy it was. I could feel Tom working the brakes and rudder pedals like mad.

We got close and low, before Tom turned us onto runway 22, about halfway down it's length. With what looked like gusting 25-30 knot crosswinds, he had lots of speed in hand and we were approaching at a good 75 knots. Tom kept us in a long float and we touched down and stopped just short of the clubhouse. An exhilarating landing and I learned a lot in that few minutes.

A 39-minute flight (brings me to 9 hours 40 minutes total from 49 flights) and an exciting day.

The wind built to the extent that lots of strength was required to put away the gliders, and the towplane even tried to fly onto the fueling tractor! It actually rolled forward into the wind - very strange, but the folk looking after the pre-packing away fueling were able to hold it until it was chocked.

First ride in the K13

2008-02-24T02:42:00.000-08:00

Finally, at the end of my holidays, I got a day with promising weather (a Friday) that let me plan to get out to Camden to fly. I had found the transition from flying in NZ to flying locally a bit of a hit to my confidence. Looking back, I wasn't all that happy with my first flight at Camden with Southern Cross. I found the low tow position difficult to get right, the IS-28 felt like a tractor (with the joystick seemingly under my chin) and my landing was rubbish.

So I was a little nervous driving out to Camden on Friday, but the weather started looking better as I got further south and by the time I got out there (about a 45-minute drive) I was excited about flying again.

There was a surprising amount of club members out at the field. I'd seen on the club's Google group that the whole Camden field had been closed because of waterlogging after all the bad weather, so I imagine there were plenty of people who hadn't been able to fly for a long while.

However, I didn't have too long to wait. Duty instructor was the pleasant John J and today the two-seater for students was the K13. I'd always thought of the K13 affectionately, but never as a "proper" sailplane - more an old-school relic, so this would be interesting. It's covered with fabric for God's sake! Other club members assured me it flew sweetly. The club's K13 is a pretty machine - bright red with white wings and a bubble canopy.

When it was my turn to fly I did the ABCD check, then John looked over my logbooks and we discussed what I wanted to learn/revise:

getting the low tow position right and getting more of a "feel" for it

getting used to the area and the angles at this field

working on my landings, particularly speed control

I climbed in and got comfortable. The brake lever on the K13 is a long way forward and I found it a bit of a stretch for my dodgy left arm (which won't straighten after a bad elbow break). I had to have my left shoulder strap looser than normal so I could lean forward a little to reach it). The trim control is on the right side up near the canopy rail and moving trim doesn't move the stick - the K13 has trim tabs on the elevators. Fixed gear and no flaps. Rudder pedal position is adjusted by moving a set of sort of ratchet teeth. This time, I made sure I had full rudder movement.

Gettng off the ground I ended up floating the K13 a lot higher than I wanted to before the towplane got off the ground - you give some back pressure to get the aircraft off the front skid and onto the main wheel and then more back pressure to get unstuck, stay close to the ground until the towplane gets off and then stay low as the tug climbs above you, to your final tow position beneath the slipstream.

John J advised me to line up the towplane's mirror and tailplane to get in the correct low tow position and this reference point helped a lot. Once I got there, I relaxed and my tow went much better. After release I trimmed for 55 knots (got a nice comment from John for that - he said I'd trimmed correctly, slowing to the desired speed, than trimming, while other students often try to use trim to get them to the desired speed) and then went looking for some lift. When I'd arrived at the field, there were some promising coulds about and another clubbie, Brian, had said that the Blipmaps suggested things would get moving about 1.00 pm. However, by my takeoff around 2.00 pm, it was a blue hole, with a sort of mist and some very whispy clouds. No-one was staying up for long.

John had me locate the field (which wasn't where I was expecting it) and then showed me a few landmarks and likely thermal locations. We'd got some lift from a cloud during the tow, but after release, the cloud had disappeared! At one point, as we were flying towards a curve in the river where sometimes thermals are triggered, a small cloud appeared out of nowhere right in front of me, so there was definitely something there. However, thermals were hard to find and short-lived (or I was drifting off them, or turning the wrong way). In the PW6, thermals would give one wing a definite nudge, indicating clearly which way to turn, but maybe the K13 was heavier, or more flexible or something, because while I kept waiting for some thump to show me which way to turn when the vario showed lift, I never got one!

I did manage to stay in one thermal long enough to claw back a couple of hundred feet, but there was as much sink as lift around and lift was hard to find. What was cool was being joined by another sailplane also scratching around for lift. We shared the same thermal (or tried to) for a little while, and while I'd brought my camera hoping to get some shots from the air, I was too busy keeping a lookout and trying to stay up to get it out. Next time.

There was lots to see and having at least 2 other gliders in the immediate area meant I was kept busy looking for aircraft. Very cool to see them above, below, behind or in front. Saw a few birds too, including some Ibis below and a hawk or kerstrel zooming along. I also got a bit of a fright from a kid's red balloon blasting past the canopy at a great rate of knots!

After searching for more lift, we found overselves in a lot of sink and it was time to get in the circuit. I was much happier about my circuit and landing this time than last. Downwind checks whent well, John had to remind me when my speed dropped a little on downwind and my radio call missed "Camden Traffic", but other than that, I got in the right position, judged my turn to base well and I was happy with my landing.

I got the brakes out on base, watched my aiming point and managed my brakes and nose to maintain 55 knots. My roundout was a bit strange, probably because the K13 seems to have a bit of a nose-down attitude from the front seat. I rounded out at what i thought was the right height and waited for the landing, which happened a little more firmly that I'd expected (not too firm). John said I'd flow it onto the ground. I may have ballooned a little at roundout and then put the nose down a bit.

No time sadly for another flight that day - had to get home to pick up my daughter from child care - but it was a nice flight, though only 26 minutes.

I didn't get to stall or spin the K13, i hope to do that next time. Tasks to work on for my next flight:

speed control in the circuit

landings

Finally back in the air!

2008-01-12T03:36:00.000-08:00

Well, today (Saturday 12 January 2008) it finally came together. A warmish Saturday and we drive down to Camden for the first time. While looking for the Camden Airport sign, I see a glider above us. My heart beats a little faster.

We find the club, I sign up and then we settle in to wait for my flight. Most of the club's aircraft are still out at Cootamundra at the summer camp, but there are two two-seaters doing duty for flights and TIFs - a K13 and an IS-28.

There's a few people here getting joyflights (these are being given in the K13) and students and it's not until almost 3pm before I get my flight.

First time in a glider since 25 November - more than a month and I'm feeling rusty. The weather's pretty good though - a blue day, a gentle breeze but some black stuff brewing in the south.

My instructor takes me out to the IS-28 - India Uniform Juliet and runs me through the different checks done at Southern Cross, compared with NZ.

They do a pre-flight ABCD check (Airframe, Ballast, Controls, DI), then their cockpit check is CHAOTIC instead of the CBSIFTCBE I'm used to. I take a little while familiarising myself with the aircraft, which is quite different to the PW-6 I've flown in NZ.

The IS-28 is aluminium, has retractable undercarriage and flaps and the cockpit is set out differently, more like a Soviet spacecraft, lots of metal bits. The rudder pedals are a long way away and the stick is tall. Instead of holding it in a relaxed hand down near my lap, it sits up tall.
Before launch it's flaps zero, trim set nose-down.

After launch I get to see another difference between the way they do things here and in NZ. Australia does a low tow, beneath the slipstream of the tow plane and it takes me a while to get comfortable down there.

After release, I trim for 50 knots and make some turns to get comfortable with the glider. It feels weird. The rudder pedals are a long way away, even with the seat well forward and the pedals wound back and I'm not sure I'm getting full rudder. The stick also feels clunky and almost feels like the instructor is fighting my movements (though he's not).

After a while I relax a bit and can carry out a few coordinated turns. It's very dirty and hazy outside with some dark stuff building up in the south, so the view's not up to much. My instructor tells me when it's clear the Sydney skyline and Blue Mountains can be seen, but not today. He shows me some local landmarks, including Camden.

It's a busy piece of airspace. In addition to runway Glider 06, there's also Camden's 06 for GA (lots of Cessnas, Scouts and Tiger Moths blatting about), so a good lookout is essential here. I see plenty of power planes as well as the club's K13 (below us) and an Astir from Sydney Gliding Club above.

While it's a blue day, there are some good thermals around, but I find them tricky to centre. Eventually I latch onto a good one - 5 to 10 knots, a real bump in the seat of the pants - and ride it from 2,000 feet to 2,500. It was nice to have the feeling of riding the thermal again, watching the ground and the sky, seeing an Ibis riding the same thermal, but beneath us.

We then try a few stalls and an incipient spin. The IS-28 is gentle in the stall, but a bit wicked in the spin.

We only had a half-turn in the spin, starting from a steep turn, but I remembered my bit and managed not to mess anything up.

Except for the landing... We arrived at the circuit a little high, so turned upwind to lose some height, then turned, flew downwind and made my call "Glider India Uniform Juliet joining downwind for Glider zero-six" without any hiccups. During downwind checks, I discovered I'd never retracted the landing gear after release!

Flaps are set in downwind, gradually, aiming for full flaps by final. This was the acid test, judging when to turn in and then making a decent landing. My turn in was okay (maybe a little high) and with a bit of a crosswind I felt I struggled to get lined up right. My speed control was a little wonky and I had much the same problem here as I did in NZ - my speed creeping up in the approach, to about 60-65 knots (about 10 knots too fast). Accordingly I had a couple of bounces on landing. 35 minutes aloft.

A bit of a disappointing end to the flight, I still have some work to do to get back to where I was 6 weeks ago. No chance of another flight that day - a queue for the aircraft and the sky lookign threatening.

Oh well, I have paid for 5 flights, I have 4 left and if the weather cooperates, I'll get back there as soon as I can.

I'm in a state of suspended aviation

2008-01-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

It's strange to have a gliding blog, yet not do be doing any gliding. A whole host of circumstances have stopped me from flying since I got back from Taupo and I'm tearing my hair out, worrying that I'm losing the skills I learned there.

After I got back from NZ and my solo in a week course, the weather in Sydney was woeful, with regular rain and storms. Our new kitchen was being installed, so I was kept fairly busy, but I still spent the three weeks of the rest of my holiday unable to get to Camden to fly. The plan was to drive down to Southern Cross Gliding Club and join up to continue my flying. No such luck.

Then between Christmas and New Year we travelled out west to Cootamundra to visit my mother, who had moved there from Wagga Wagga the week before. After a 4-hour drive we stopped at the information centre at Cootamundra train station, only to hear the unmistakeable sound of a towplane.

I looked up and there was a glider being towed over the town by a Pawnee! I quickly made some enquiries about the location of the gliding club (as my web searching before we left didn't reveal much chance of getting to fly while in Coota). I remembered then that the Southern Cross Club ("my" club) was having its summer flying camp at Cootamundra, and instead of being miles away as i had thought they were right here in town.

From the motel we stayed in, we could watch gliders (lots of them) on downwind and see them thermalling over the town. After visiting my Mum, I jumped in the car and went searching for the gliding club, finally finding them at the ghost-town-like Cootamundra airport.

It was the Camden guys and they had about 10 gliders there and one of the club's Pawnee tugs - but only one two-seater DG1000, which was fully booked for cross-country flights (and the weather was perfect for cross-country). I chatted for a while and the guys thought there might be a chance I could sign up and have a flight. This was an exciting prospect, because unlike Camden, where there's a 4,500 foot airspace, here it was described as "as high as you can hold your breath".

No chance of a flight today, but I brought Bibi and Ava out that evening to look at the parked up gliders and we also watched the ultralights buzzing around in the dusk, getting in wind-free flights.

The next day we drove out to see the chances for a flight. Bibi and Ava came with me and after watching gliders all the previous afternoon from the cool of the swimming pool, Bibi was a little interested in them (good wife, that). No chance of a flight that day either - the two-seater was in demand and we could see gliders overhead getting height before striking out cross-country.

More disappointment. The following day we were scheduled to drive out to Temora (about 50 kms west) to look at the town and see the aviation museum there. When we got out there we saw more gliders being prepped and got ready for flying and then I got a phone call from a club member to say I could probably get to fly (as long as the DG didn't land out) that afternoon. Only problem was we were heading home to Sydney around noon! Aargh.

So, here we are back in Sydney. I resolve to try to take Friday off and go down to Camden (the guys at Cootamundra had assured me there was a tug and an IS28 two-seater down there and my fine wife was prepaed to come down with me), but when I rang the duty pilot, he told me that of their two tugs still in Camden, one was out for an overhaul and the other was busted! So no flying that day, but try Sunday...

So today, as I post this on Sunday, the ewather is a bit iffy, but there's no answer on any of the gliding club's phone numbers, so I guess, no flying today....

Will I ever get a flight???

Day 7 – Solo!

2007-12-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

A new instructor on duty today – Colin McGrath. I tell him my story and explain where I think I’m getting stuck and why. It’s a beautiful day today, blue, clear and hot, but it’s also a Sunday and I worry a little that it will be a busy day for public air experience flights and I might not be able to garner enough flight time to get myself over the line. It’s the last day of my week and I have to leave the next day to head home to Australia. My main instructor to date, Gordon, tells me on Saturday that if I don’t solo today, he will come out early on Monday to give me a couple of flights. It’s a great offer, but I have already accepted that I don’t have to solo in a week. If my time on the course finishes and I haven’t soloed, then I’ll simply continue my training in Australia and elsewhere, having learnt so much at Taupo. I don’t want to pressure myself, because I figure that’s when mistakes might happen – aiming for an arbitrary target and being tempted to try to solo before I’m really ready. I’m not going to fall into that trap.

There’s a slight easterly crosswind today that builds through the day to about 5-10 knots – enough to have to really take into account in working out approach speed. After pulling out the tow plane and gliders, and giving them a thorough DI, we start flying about 11.00 am.

Soon enough, club members (including some private owners) arrive to fly or tinker with their aircraft and members of the public arrive for air experience flights. The old K13, Golf Sierra, is pulled out of the hangar and prepped, so we have three two-seaters flying, as well as two of the club’s single-seat PW5s. A private owner pulls out his gloriously restored K6 as well. After a couple of circuits with Colin, I’m then kept busy fuelling the tow plane, helping with air experience flights (mainly advising front seat passengers not to put their cameras between the control column and their lap, taking their thongs and making sure canopy and brakes are locked before waving them off), as well as recording flights, retrieving gliders when they land long, towing them back to takeoff location behind cars and lots of other chores.

Not much flying time for me it seems and at one point after lunch, the tow plane’s rear tire blows after a landing. At that point I resign myself to the day’s flying being over, but a spare wheel is quickly fitted and we are back in business.

It’s a blue day, meaning no clouds to mark thermals and there’s not much consistent activity. A couple of clouds try to form over paddocks to the west, but they never really develop – too dry I guess. There are some thermals further west to be had from tows over 4,000 feet, but there’s as much sink around as lift. At one point in an air experience flight, Tom A found himself in sink of around 10 knots and thought he’d have to land out! However, he managed to find some lift and got back in business. He also took up a youngish guy who seemed keen for an aerobatics flight (he’d been given a gift voucher), but after his first loop discovered it didn’t suit him at all and wanted to come straight down!

There weren’t too many long flights being taken, there just wasn’t enough lift around. I had an interesting experience when waving off a flight, that taught me a lesson. I’d been careful and thorough in my waving off, making sure I had a good look around to spot approaching aircraft before giving the towplane the signals to take in slack and to go all-out. We were operating off runway two-two, which has a right-hand circuit. Gliders would do their downwind leg on the west side of the field. On this occasion, I had a good look around, gave the signal to take up slack, then all-out, ran the wing, and then noticed the privately-owned K6 on the end of a downwind leg on the east side of the field – doing a left-hand circuit instead of a right-hand one. There was no conflict with the glider taking off, but a couple of minutes later and he might have been on final. I make a mental note to always look more closely at all possible approaches.

Finally, late in the afternoon, when things had quietened down a bit, it’s my turn to fly again. This time, things come together nicely, though I had a nervous start when the crosswind cause a bit of weathercocking on landing. I’d been holding some rudder on final, but on the ground wasn’t quick enough to reverse it on the ground and we veered around a bit – no dramas, but a bit of a confidence shaker at first. The main complication is there’s a bit of sink on the downwind leg and I find myself having to turn to base earlier than normal. I talk Colin through my actions and tell him that because of the slight crosswind/headwind at 10 knots or so, I intend to land at 60 knots instead of the 55 knots normal for this aircraft in the still conditions.

I had been hammering into myself the need to watch the aim point on final and this starts to work as it should. I’m not getting fixated on the boundary fence and I’m more consistent. I find I can see the aimpoint moving, and keep it in the right spot with brakes and stick, while also maintaining a reasonably steady approach speed.

Colin suggests taking some higher tows to be less rushed in the circuit, which helps, though I still find I need to turn in a bit earlier than on previous days.

Finally, Colin says “you didn’t even scare me on that landing” and I know I’ve made some progress.

When Colin then says, “do one more like that and I’ll let you do one by yourself”, I find I’m not dreading the solo flight any more. I do a consistent landing and then Colin climbs out, secures the rear harness and canopy and sends me away by myself. All week I’d felt entirely unready to go solo and even that morning the thought of a solo had frightened me. But now, as I sat behind the tow plane, with no-one behind me, I felt a calm certainty that I could do this.

An amazing feeling came over me as the cable tightened and I began to be pulled along behind the towplane on that flight – the only option open to me now was to fly the plane and land it, myself. I couldn’t bail out, or decide not to go, I had to take control and do the things I’d been trained to do, with nobody to rescue me. However, I knew I could do it!

That flight is still incredibly fresh for me. The glider felt much lighter and moved around more on the tow – it was more lively and more affected by the crosswind. The tuggy wished me luck on the radio and told me when he was beginning his turn. I found the tow fine and I even had time to let out great shouts and whoops of joy and excitement. I was flying this thing by myself – I was doing what I’d come here to do!

I pulled the bung at 2600 feet, called “glider release” and made my immediate climbing turn to the right. Relieved of weight in the rear, I found I had to trim nose back to maintain 55 knots. There was quite a bit of sink on downwind and I tried to hold near 60 knots to try to lose as little height as possible, while doing my downwind checks. I was definitely going to have to turn in early. I judged my turn to base and then almost immediately to final, pulling a little brake out on base and then going to half brake on final. A perfect approach and a nice, short landing. I did it! I pop the canopy, but before I can climb out, Colin is running over with the tow rope. “Have another one” he says and before I know what’s happening, I’ve done my cockpit checks and I’m off again.

This time there’s even more sink on downwind (I release at 2,600 feet again) and I have to turn to base seemingly just past the boundary fence. This is a noticeably shallower approach because I’m lower, and I find I have to put away most of the brake to make my aiming point, going to half brake quite late in the landing. On landing, Gordon is there and tells me he didn’t like that landing too much – shallow. But I’d recognised it and done things about it – however, not having much brake out certainly limits you options.

For a third time I’m hooked up and away, and this time I tell the tuggy I want to go to 2,900 to give myself more time on downwind and take into account the effects of sink. However, after I bung off and start to make a turn towards downwind leg, I find I’m in strong lift off Fletcher’s Mill. “What the hell” I think, and start thermalling. Very soon I’m at 3,000 feet, so I turn to downwind and make a few turns to lose height. Only trouble is, where previously there’d been plenty of sink, now all I find is more lift and halfway down the downwind leg (after a couple of lazy 360s), I’m still at the same height! I actually have to use some brakes downwind to manage my height! I have more room this time turning to base leg and this is a textbook approach. Good angle, half brakes out all the way down and bang on the mark!

At this I’ve had enough for the day. I pop the canopy and climb out elated. Colin and Gordon congratulate me and I fell like I could do anything. It’s an astounding sensation, having flown a plane three times b y myself and here I am standing safe on the deck with a glider in one piece. I’ve done it.

I elect to walk the wing the 800 metres or so back to the hangars and this calms me down a bit. Trudging along I reflect on what I’ve managed and I know I can now become a glider pilot.

Back at the clubhouse, after the usual chores of putting away aircraft and locking hangars, I buy the traditional round of drinks for the bar. Being a Sunday there’s a lot of folk there, but I don’t begrudge a single drink. To my surprise, I’m presented with my A Certificate and badge, which, by completing three safe solo flights, I had qualified for! What a day – I’d known that club rules said that after first solo, the next 6 solo flights had to be preceded by a check flight, so I had expected a fairly long slog from first solo to making my A certificate – but here I’d been able to crack two achievements in the same day!

Day 6 – Seventeen circuits! And great frustration

2007-12-10T17:17:00.000-08:00

I really monopolise the aircraft today. A perfect day for circuit bashing. Cloudy, but very stable air with little wind. After a promising start – two good circuits with pretty good landings onto zero-six, things start to go pear-shaped. I’m messing something up in the final approach and one of my landings is pretty heavy. It doesn’t help that there are a few bumps at the end of runway 06 that can punt you back into the air, or give you a shrewd thumps if you hit them early in the landing run. In any case, I was landing short then long. I couldn’t seem to get any consistency. I took a break for a couple of hours to see if I could work out what the hell I was doing wrong. This was a low point for me. Up until today, I thought I had coped with everything that was thrown at me. I had been challenged and frustrated by the aerotow, but I had been able to master it piece by piece. But this problem seemed insurmountable. The more I tried to get it, the worse my landings seemed to be (or rather, when I thought I was controlling things and working it out, I wasn’t).

I could judge my entry into the circuit, manage my speed and height through the downwind leg and identify when to turn to base leg, depending on wind and height, but at this point I was seemingly getting overwhelmed and confused. What I subsequently found I was doing was not watching the aiming point properly to judge my speed and descent. What I was doing was focusing on the boundary fence – not wanting to land on it, my eyes were drawn to that boundary fence and so I was all over the place with brakes, stick and hence speed.

To their credit, my instructors didn’t give up on me, though I nearly gave up on myself. Halfway through the day I took a break and sat on the grass trying to make sense of what was going on and feeling incredibly frustrated with myself. After the break, things didn’t get much better – the problem was consistency in the final approach and landing. Some landings would be good, others would be bad and the instructor would need to prompt me with brakes or speed.

My roundout was actually pretty good but getting there was the real problem.

That night, I slept badly and each time I thought of the next day’s flying I felt a knot almost of dread in my stomach. I questioned whether this was as far as I would get in gliding.

Day 5 – Exercises

2007-12-10T17:16:00.001-08:00

Today I fly a circuit with instruments obscured, so needing to judge airspeed and altitude by eye and ear. For the last two days I have been trying to get familiar with the landmarks around the circuit and the look of the ground from different heights, as well as listening to the sound of the wind at around 55 knots (the speed I am flying most circuits in the conditions). My instructor “bungs me off” (his instruments of course not obscured in the rear cockpit – I’d joked with him that I’d had a good look at the instruments in the front on the ground before they were covered up, and I’d memorised them!) and I start my circuit. Afterwards, he told me that my height assessment had been good, but my airspeed was way off – thankfully on the fast side rather than the stalling-potential slow side. I came in for the landing at a blistering 85 knots, instead of the intended 55! It felt okay to me and of course the main thing is we got on the ground safely.

I also reasonably successfully boxed the tow today, getting more control over the glider in the tow. Not much flying today because of the needs of other students (including a guy who soloed with a lovely landing), so we finished with a nice social fly about in the afternoon thermals. We took a high tow, to 4,500 feet, placing us over Mount Tauhara where we hoped the mild westerly may have got the ridge working. It hadn’t to any great degree, but this was another of those flights that reminds me why I’m doing this course. It is a beautiful afternoon, about 5.00 pm, clear as a bell, with Taupo spread out beneath. We work west of the Mount Tauhara ridge and find big lift, which I work to above 5,000 feet. I spot a bright pink skydiving plane (looks like a Fletcher) losing height near Taupo airport and then the instructor spots the skydivers just off our nose. Despite his directions, I can’t see them. There’s a funny thing about spotting things in the air – one observer can see something (an aircraft or a bird for instance) as clear as day, while a second person sees nothing. Many times I’ve looked at a glider in the air, looked away for a second, and then, even when I know where it should be, not been able to pick it up again. The eye’s blind spots, and the brain’s ability to fill in the gaps the eye can’t see, are remarkable when demonstrated this way – I never saw those skydivers.

Gordon suggests, instead of circling more in this thermal, we head north east, along a well-defined cloudstreet – a little quasi cross-country style flying. As we beetle along at 50-55 knots, we have almost constant 2 knots of lift, so we end up, after several minutes of flying past the club and over to the nearby river and timber mill, several hundred feet higher than we started! We land long on runway 22 – a so-called hangar flight. After getting on the ground Gordon closes the brakes and we roll and roll towards the clubhouse and hangars. Gliders really are slippery things, with the brakes in (ie closed) they really don’t want to stop.

End of the day, only three flights and 38 minutes.

Day 4 – more circuits and some progress

2007-12-10T17:15:00.000-08:00

Usual routine for day 4. Some classroom revision to go over what I had covered the day before and to identify objectives for today (more circuits, more tows, a spiral dive) and we get out and prep aircraft. The towplane gets fuelled, but when Tom tries to start it, he finds that the previous temporary tug pilot had left the master switch on, with the result that the battery is dead. Takes a while to get it started, and this puts us a bit behind.

I do my first real Daily Inspection (DI) of the aircraft I’ll be flying today (Papa Whiskey) and manage the find two minor faults – a crack on the rear canopy vent rail and a smallish cut on the tailwheel tire, near the rim. Neither are judged enough to ground the glider, but it felt good to find something on such a thorough and methodical DI.

I am flying with Gordon again today. My first two circuits are not real special. My tow still needs work and I get out of position in the first 50 feet. He never has to take over, but I’m working harder than I should be. Anticipating a fair bit and getting back into position, but it’s messy and worrying to me. I’m waiting for aerotow to “click” and it isn’t. On my first landing my approach is okay (it’s still a bit of a mystery as to what is happening and when, especially judging the descent), but for some reason I balloon. Gordon thinks I applied some backward pressure on the stick after the roundout, but I don’t remember doing it. Tom (who as tuggy, had watched the landing from the ground) later said that it had looked excellent until, at the last moment, I had closed the brakes! I don’t remember doing this, but there’s no doubt I did!

In the second tow I’m a lot better, but we bung off very early – at about 700 feet agl, (the tow plane has a problem that needs to be fixed) so we have an abbreviated circuit which is a bit messy – Gordon’s comment “not good”. I’m still not judging descent properly and managing brakes.

After lunch, when the tow plane is sorted out, I have a longer flight with Gordon.

On this attempt I am supposed to box the tow (getting deliberately out of position to the left and right and then moving up and down – showing control of position). I make a royal mess of this. I can get out to the side, but when I try to drop down while out to the right, I can’t hold it out there, and I end up back in line with the tow-plane! A second attempt is no better. More work needed

We thermal for a while, getting up to cloudbase, which is something special – seeing the whispy clouds getting closer and some graying around the cockpit – very cool. I’m happy with my thermalling and so is Gordon. There is a single seater out and we watch as he comes to join our thermals. We cross in front of his nose on our way out to do some stalls but he doesn’t see us. We give him some more room then perform the HASEL check, before trying some stalls. These go well and we follow it with a stall and spin, booting rudder over as the aircraft stalls, but my recovery is almost too quick and the spin (though I let it develop into a full spin, soon becomes a spiral dive. I try another stall off a steep turn, but again I catch it almost too early, but my recoveries are good.

My approach and landing are pretty good (though still requiring some input/advice from Gordon) and this time, on roundout, a gust of wind causes me to balloon – I don’t do anything stupid and we get down fine if a little long. I need to concentrate more on steering with the rudder on rollout.

On my last three circuits my tows get better – with the last one being near perfect (I was concentrating so hard on my upcoming landing that I forgot to be anxious about my tow!). Landings are getting better but still not good enough. My last one it starts to make some sense and I control my descent and speed much better. Some study tonight, and maybe I’ll iron out the kinks tomorrow.

Day three – Circuits

2007-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

Today I am judged ready for circuits. This is the circuit-bashing I had thought would be the main part of my solo in a week training. However, I have been lucky with the weather and had good thermals almost every flight. Taupo Club has a $15 circuit rate if you bung off in time (ie for a normal circuit). The Club field is 1,550 ASL, so entering the circuit is usually done at 2,500 feet or so. On downwind you call Centennial traffic and announce your intentions (ie Papa Whiskey downwind right hand for zero-six), perform landing checks (straps secure, undercarriage down and locked, flaps set, brakes, a quick cracking open – club members told a story about a pilot who taped up his brakes so rain wouldn’t get in on the ground, then took a flight without a DI, or cockpit checks. Accordingly, he only realised he couldn’t open his brakes when he was on final and really needed them. His was a high performance glider, so he couldn’t easily wash off speed. He sideslipped to slow and ended up ground looping), then check wind direction and speed using the windsocks and turn onto base and final, adjusting brakes as required. Most of my circuits today involved full brakes from base to final, attempting to maintain 55 knots and then half brakes for the landing (full brakes are applied on the ground). This gives you some options in hand – if too high, you can apply more brake to increase your rate of descent, if too low, you can close brakes to reduce rate of descent.

Gliders approach quite steeply, so the first few landings can be disconcerting and everything seems to happen very fast. Today things started to happen slower for me.

At the start of the day I did my first daily inspection (DI) on the aircraft I’d be flying today – Papa Whiskey, the PW-6. I also washed it and the Twin Astir, Mike Echo.

Washing a glider lets you have a really close look at it and you notice the small chips and scratches, the discolorations etc.

After some classroom revision and checking through my A Cert syllabus, we start the circuit bashing. My first two are with Gordon. We started out with a fairly high release to land on 06 – there was little wind, but later a westerly started up so operations were relocated to the far end of the field and off runway 22. My aerotow was much better. I was more relaxed and I was better able to anticipate the tow plane and follow it. Soon after release we found a blue thermal (very blue day today – no clouds to speak of, but it was warm, so there were thermals off ploughed fields and the like) and climbed to about 3350 feet. When the first one ran out I looked for another one in a likely place and found one.

After a couple of stalls, we went into the circuit, with full brakes turning from base to final. Tried to keep to 55, but a slight tailwind had come up, so speed was a little higher at 60 to 65 knots. Landing was okay, but I still don’t clearly understand what I’m doing in the approach – the relationship between height, rate of descent and aiming point. But I suppose this will come with practice.

We followed this with a shorter circuit with a relatively low “bung-off”, then into the circuit, full brakes and half brakes. My control was better, though with a slight balloon at landing – at least I didn’t instinctively slam it down onto the runway.

Next Tom A took me for a few circuits now an alternative tow pilot had turned up (neither the rostered tow pilot not the instructor had turned up). On my first circuit we found some lift after release and did a few turns. He taught me an important thing – applying a little opposite rudder in turns when thermalling, rather than holding on normal rudder towards the turn. This brings the yaw string over to the upper side.

After a little thermalling, we joined the circuit and I had an okay landing – a bit heavy, but I controlled the brakes on the approach to 22.

An immediate second circuit, with me in control and Tom talking when he has to. There is a strongish sidewind by now, so Tom gets me sideslipping. Managing the brake is a bit tricky, and I’m faster at 60 knots than I want to be, but I round-out nicely, a slight bounce on landing and a good rollout. Tom says, another three or so circuits like that and I’ll be ready to solo. However, it will be up to me.

Day two – bittersweet aerotowing and another booming thermal day

2007-12-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

I did some revision last night and then was ready to make some more progress today. My instructor is happy with how things are going and feels I have a good chance of soloing this week, mostly because yesterday we had such a long flight, with lots of thermalling, straight and level flight practice, coordinated turns and stall drills etc.

In the morning he partially fills out my A Certificate Training Syllabus form for what I’d covered so far, and identified what things we need to work on today. They are:

Use of trim

Slow speed handling

Stall with brakes out

Stall in a turn

Spiral dive.

If we can get to them all, we’ll be lucky. We get in the air fairly early and it’s a blue day – warm but with little visible cloud. I first learn how to fuel the tow plane.

We take off (Gordon instructing) in the PW-6 around 11.30 am and the air is smoother. My liftoff is good and my tow is much better today. Gordon never takes control in the tow. He says later he could see me correcting and getting back into position and he never felt he had to take control. I relax a bit and it seems a little easier to follow the tow plane this time.

We get off tow and there’s a little lift about, but it’s patchy with lots of sink and we soon end up planning for a circuit, with Gordon showing me the limits of the Taupo gliding area (Taupo airport is nearby). We turn on, I’m a little fast at 60 knots, and a little out of position, needing a bit of rudder to keep on line, but my round-out is pretty good and we get on the deck without a bounce.

After this, there’s some other people flying in PW and ME including some American tourists who take two flights (one an aerobatic one with lots of stunts) and have a lot of fun, so it isn’t until about 3.30pm before I’m ready for my next flight (I get in plenty of practice waving people off though, including a club member doing some kind of instructor’s training, who takes the Twin Astir ME up for what turns into a long flight (more than 2 hours 10) – we hear him calling up at 6,500 feet, moving to the Christchurch ATC frequency to ask for clearance higher).

In this tow, in much bumpier weather, I’m back to having a pretty ordinary tow. People are telling me that it will just “click”, but I can’t see that happening just yet – only my second day though. Gordon has to take control a couple of times when I get badly out of position and I’m having trouble following the movements of the tow plane and anticipating changes in heading and height.

However, after we release at 5,500, we quickly contact some blue thermal and I get plenty of practice turning and maintaining 45-50 knots while climbing in 2-8 knots. I also experiment with trim and find I can quickly get trimmed for 45 knots (best thermalling speed in this a/c) or for 55 knots for stooging about. We stooge about searching for and finding lift and several times I see ME in the distance or above us. I find I can quickly turn onto a heading, fly pretty straight and maintain constant speed and turn angle pretty well, without having to watch the instruments – in fact the more I look out at the horizon and listen to the wind noise, the easier it is to control. We practice stalls, including high angle stalls, stalls with the brakes out (bang the brakes in quickly, a little nose down, some opposite rudder and everything’s sweet), incipient spins, including deliberate stalls with hard rudder over, and recoveries therefrom and then the more deadly slow speed, low angle stall. For this, I put the plane just above the horizon, let the airspeed bleed off, pull the stick back to simulate “Oh my god, I’m getting low” and then feel what is a pretty mild, mushy stall, which is easily and quickly able to be got under control without much altitude loss. The point of this is to learn the signs of an impending stall and also, to learn that recovery can be quick and relatively painless.

This turns into another epic flight – 50 minutes of wonderful flying, interesting drills and manoeuvres and amazing views. Very bumpy thermals and when we are in them, the plane would be leaping about, the wings being pushed up or down by alternate lift and sink and gusts. There was an amazing sense of the whole sky in turbulent motion and me being tossed around like a leaf, while also riding the bumps in more or less control.

At the end, I had my best landing – this one seemed to have much more time to get set up. I still crowded the base leg a little, but got set up, made the radio call, brakes out, onto final and managed a steady 55 knots all the way to the ground, with a nice roundout. I was happy to hear my instructor say that while there’s an item in the curriculum for bounce recovery on landing, I hadn’t yet bounced!

The guy who had been out in ME came back, to have his landing observed, and after landing, showed how, at height he had tried to have a pee in a bottle, but had not been able to quite manage it and so had wet his pants! All part of gliding I guess…

Day one – I have a logbook and make my first landing!

2007-11-21T23:38:00.000-08:00

Despite the impression that gliders give of slow and stately flight, I can tell you some things happen very quickly (at least for me) – especially in aerotows and when landing (but more on that later). I arrived in Taupo on the Saturday morning before my scheduled Monday start for my Solo in a Week course. After checking into a motel, I hired a car and drove over to the gliding club (15 minutes drive out of town, by the racetracks (motorsports and geegees) because it was such a glorious day for flying – sunny, with big bands of cloud (streets) signifying lots of lift. However, things were very quiet at the club – no tow plane. The club’s Pawnee had developed an engine fault and was being repaired at the airport. No flying this weekend, but it was pretty certain it would be back and working on Monday, when I was scheduled to start my tuition.

So I occupied myself in Taupo on the weekend, getting some work done and then at 9.00 am there I was at the (locked) gate of the club. A neighbour (also a club tug pilot) came and opened it for me and I did some reading and kicking my heels until 10.00 am, when Gordon, one of the instructors, arrived. Before that however, another student pilot arrived – Vic, someone I’d come across through flying the Condor simulator. He had soloed at Taupo after 5 days and was continuing his learning after a break of 3 weeks. We were also joined by Bill, a paramedic who had been a glider instructor, but hadn’t flown since 1993.

Gordon kicked us off with ground school. The program is generally ground school in the morning, followed by flying in the afternoon, after the ground has warmed up and some thermals might have started working. Ground school covered the basics – why a wing has lift, how lift changes with angle of attack, stalls and how to recognise their onset (by buffeting, wind noise and lack of control effectiveness) and the effects of controls and their secondary effects.

We then did a daily inspection (DI) on the aircraft I was to fly that day – a PW-6 dual, rego number ZK-PW. Rather, Vic did the DI and I watched closely. It’s a very thorough and methodical inspection of the aircraft done at the start of each day. I suspect I’m going to get used to a lot of these…

First thing is to check the plane’s logbook and check that it’s airworthy and check for major and minor issues (broken bits etc). On this aircraft the rear seat back has cracked but this is minor and not considered enough to ground it.

Then, open the cockpit and check everything is working (including looking for loose foreign objects in the cockpit), looking for frayed wires etc. Also, checking and/or changing the battery (which powers the avionics). Outside, then there is a thorough go-around of the outside of the aircraft, looking for cracks, missing pins and things like ripples on the wings showing evidence of a heavy landing. The elevator surfaces are the most critical perhaps – having this fall off will kill you.

Pressure tests of moving surfaces like brakes, ailerons, rudder, elevators look for evidence of play in the controls. One person holds the surface rigid while the other tries to operate the control in the cockpit.

We also learn about how to leave the aircraft after flying it:

Brakes open and held in place by a strap or loop of rope

Windward wing down and strapped and pegged to the ground

Cockpit closed and locked.

Finally, it’s time for me to fly. I take my first two flights with Tom A. They are short because the thermals are not yet working – there’s lift about, but it’s scrappy. It’s hot now on the airfield and the metal parts of the straps are hot to touch (and it quickly gets hot under that canopy). We do cockpit checks (CBSIFTCBE mnemonic), the wingwalker shows us the rope so we can see no knots, hooks it on and then the tow plane takes up the slack and we are off. Tom talks me through the takeoff roll (keep wings level, as speed builds lift the nose so the PW-6, which has two front wheels, goes onto the rear wheel, then rotate and keep low until the tug takes off). Tom takes over for the tow and, as part of the tow pilot’s training, boxes the tow (low, then low and to left, low and to right, then normal to left and right, then high). In this process I learn the right position for the tow plane and feel the glider go through the slipstream, which is lower down than I thought.

I release (my non-bendy left arm is no problem and I can release fine) and we are free. This flight seems to go by so quickly in a bit of a daze. We search for lift without much success. There’s some around, but it’s hard to centre. We see 2 to 4 knots/sec on the vario, but when we turn onto it, it quickly turns to sink at 4 to 8 knots/sec. We search over some ploughed paddocks (usually good sources), we head over to Mount Tahaura and find nothing but sink there and soon it’s time to get in the circuit.

Tom shows me the landmarks in the circuit to runway 06 – the turn point onto base leg, and then we turn onto final, brakes out and then everything is happening very quickly. Glider’s have quite a steep approach – we are flying at 55-60 kts, with quite a nose-down attitude, we adjust gthe brakes and the next thing we are rounding out, on the deck quite smoothly (no bounce) and I fly it to a stop (much easier keeping the wings level on the runout than I expected it would be). We are on the ground. Flying time – 12 minutes.

Phew. After this I learn about what they call “waving off”. Checking the tow rope for knots, showing it to the pilot in command, hooking on (arm up, palm open for the pilot to open the release mechanism, then once the ring is in place, closing the palm to signal “close the release”. This club has a couple of special checks for the waver-offer after a couple of incidents – these are double-checks that the canopy is closed and locked, and for brakes closed and locked.

Then a look around to see if it’s clear for takeoff (no planes on approach), pick up the wing and signal to the tug pilot to take up slack (yellow lollypop paddle in hand, held down at arm’s length and moved across the body). Once slack is up, then the paddle held up over the head and moved across from side to side, briskly. On seeing this, the tuggy, opens her up, you run along with the wing and they are off.

Another flight with Tom – this time a circuit. Only 7 minutes in the air. Here is my first takeoff and tow attempt. It’s not too bad. Talked through by Tom I get the nosewheel off and get off the deck in good shape, but my aerotow is a mess. So hard to keep this thing in position behind the tow plane. I’m all over the place, over-correcting, too low, then too high, way off left and right. Baffling. I’m too tense Tom says, rigid and that is translating into a lack of control. Tom says he can feel the tension through the stick.

We release at 3,000, then quickly into the circuit and I take the stick for most of the downwind, the turn to base, the turn to final and the landing (with Tom holding on for the landing it feels like). We are a bit low on downwind, so tighten the circuit, landing onto 06.

Later in the afternoon, I have a flight experience that goes way beyond what I was hoping for on this whole week. I had expected that the week would be circuit bashing. Short flights, up, into the circuit and landing, but on this flight (which lasts 1 hour 2 min s), I experience almost everything that is fantastic about gliding. Gordon is my instructor. I do a messy takeoff, unsticking, then overcorrecting and bouncing once, but my tow, which starts messy, gets a bit better when I relax and stop trying to overcontrol. Gordon takes control two or three times, gets us in position, then I try to keep us there. The trick is to use small movements (pressure) on the stick and rudder, to anticipate what the tow plane is doing and try to relax. Towards the end of the tow, I’m doing better and things seem to slow down. I have to will myself to relax in the cockpit and each time I do, things hang together a little better.

After release (at 5,100 feet qnh), we practice turns, straight and level flight (choosing a landmark and keeping it on the nose, at a steady 55 knots) and after telling myself to relax (and looking out at the horizon and listening to the wind noise), I’m enjying this and it’s going well. We find a good thermal under a big cloud to the north east of the club field around Rotokawa and I get used to sitting at 45-50 knots, in a 30 degree bank, as we climb to 6,300 feet. This is glorious flying. Above us, as we are approaching the thermal is another club aircraft – the Twin Astir ME (Mike Echo). It’s about 1,000 feet higher and we join it in the thermal, circling in the same direction, trying to keep it in sight. It’s an amazing feeling seeing another glider in the sky nearby. The Astir gets above 6,500 feet (the limit here before you need to call up Christchurch ATC for clearance) and they depart to the north.

Gordon and I keep thermalling until lift starts to run out and then we too head north, following a street of cloud with lift under most of it. I remind myself to relax several times and start to feel much more in-tune with the aircraft. It’s difficult to explain just how amazing this feels. The glider is bumping around a bit, and you can feel the air moving under you and around you, the stick is moving in your hand, transmitting the air movement around you, you are working the rudder pedals genelty to keep flying straight. There’s an incredible view – Lake Taupo, green hills, thermal power stations, a river, farmland, haze in the distance showing yet more thermal activity, there’s clouds around us and I am flying this light, graceful machine. It feels not like you are suspended in the air and that you might fall if something goes wrong, it just feels like you are part of the air and the sky and the clouds.

After plenty of practice with coordinated turns, flying straight and level (practising “accurate” flying Gordon says), Gordon thinks its time to try some stalls. After demonstrating the HASEL drill, He takes over the first one. Nose up, the speed comes down, the stick goes back, a small buffet (almost unnocticeable), then the nose comes over and we are flying again. I try the next few. This time, the buffeting is more noticeable, as the airflow departs the wing and starts banging on the fuselage, but recovery feels fine. Stick a bit forward, rudder to correct any yaw, and then pull out of the resulting dive.

We try a spin and stall together. First, Gordon demonstrates the recovery. Opposite rudder, stick central and a bit forward, then the pull out of the resulting dive.

I try a few stalls with rudder on to initiate the incipient spin, recovering before the spin develops. Finally, Gordon brings on a full spin to let me feel what it’s like. He kicks the rudder over quite hard and we are pointing at the ground (it feels steeper than it is) and spiralling down. A bit disconcerting at first, but after the first second when my eyes catch up with my body and I can work out what’s going on, it’s not scary – more intriguing. A few g’s pulled on pulling out, but it’s the same drill – opposite rudder, stick central and forward, then pull out. In between all these manoeuvres we find more lift and thermal back to get our height – swapping between left-hand and right-hand turns. Interestingly, the first time I try right hand it feels unnatural, but I make myself relax, I lean down into it and the uneasy feeling immediately goes away.

Gordon tries me on some negative gee to see if I can cope (I don’t spew), then we pull a loop. Great fun – this is my second. Nose down, speed up to 100 knots, then genetly pull back, stick into the belly at the top, and we are over. An astounding feeling.

Then it’s back to the airfield (which we have had in sight most of the time – it’s handy that it’s next to the very obvious Taupo racetrack). A bit of thinking about what runway to use (the wind has been a bit changeable) and we decide on 06 again. This time, Gordon spends a bit of time (we have lots of height) showing me the limits of the airfield (the gliding field is close to Taupo airport) and then we get set up on downwind.

The intention this time is to come in on full brakes, fairly steeply, then go to half brakes and aim for a landing on the “numbers”. Things don’t go as fast this time. I know Gordon will take over if things go wrong (and I’m pretty sure he’ll fly the landing with me feeling the movements), but he calls the movements (okay, roundout now). I pull up slightly too much for a moment on roundout and I feel Gordon’s pressure back on the stick to catch me from climbing and then we are on the ground, a bit of rudder to steer and stick to keep the wheels level and we come to a halt.

Phew. I feel elated and Gordon leans forward and thumps me on the shoulder to say “and that was your first landing too.” He says he only had his hand around the stick and that I controlled the glider through the landing (though I know I felt him stop me from pulling the stick back too far on roundout). After just a day and three flights, I can really feel some progress. I think I can “get” aerotowing eventually, I feel fairly confident about turns, speed and level flight, I have thermalled and I reckon I can work out the landing soonish.

A bit about me

2007-11-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

Well, as the date for my week's soaring approaches, here's some info about me.

I'm 46 and live in Sydney Australia with my wife and little daughter. I've always been fascinated by flight. When I was a kid I wanted to join the air force and my Uncle in Canberra paid for a couple of TIFs (training instructional flights) for me in a Piper Cherokee.

Joining the air force never worked out, but I never lost my interest in flying. Travelling for work in New Zealand, I found myself standing on the apron at Tauranga airport on the north island, watching the General Aviation (GA) aircraft doing circuits and spins, while I waited for my flights home. A few times I noticed gliders being launched from a grass strip at the end of the runway there and once I watched one over Mount Maunganui, searching unsuccessfully for lift.

Finally, in Taupo NZ for a conference, on my way with other delegates to Taupo racetrack for a road safety demonstration, we were driven past Taupo Gliding Club - a glider parked on the grass caught my eye. At the road safety display, I found myself watching the glider being towed into the airfrom the back of the rcaetrack spectator area, instead of watching the car demonstration and on the way back I wrote down the phone number for the gliding club as the coach went past.

A couple of days later, during a break in the conference, myself and a colleague drove back to the club in his car and we each had an experience flight.

I was hooked. My flight was a tow to 3,500 feet, with instructor Tom in the back seat of the club's PW-6, then a flight over to a nearby ridge (can't remember the name of the mountain!) where I had a few passes in ridge lift, climbing to 4,200 feet. Then a search for lift (it was a bit cold and stable in August - nothing to be found), then a loop and some stooging about, then landing.

I took the stick for about 10 minutes flying, including making 3 passes along the ridge. It felt fantastic, though for the first few minutes that I thought Tom was handling the rudder pedals, I was supposed to be, so the nose moved around a lot before I realised I was supposed to be operating the rudder!

Back on the ground, I spoke to three guys who were completing the club's Solo in a Week program. That was it - I travel to NZ a lot, so here was a great opportunity. I planned my leave after consulting with the club to identify the best tme of the year and booked in for the Solo in a Week.

Starting 19 November, I'll be in Taupo learning to fly a sailplane!

Welcome

2007-10-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

G'day,

In this blog I'm going to detail my experiences learning to fly a glider. I hope you'll find it interesting and if you are also learning to soar, useful. If you are an experienced flyer, I hope you'll share your experiences too.

Cheers, smithcorp