My longest flight so far



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!

Glorious Autumn Soaring

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.