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
Showing posts with label Southern Cross Gliding Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Southern Cross Gliding Club. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Electronic pilot's log
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.
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.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Nick’s AEF
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).
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| ASK-21 SXQ landing |
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| Diving |
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| Steep turn |
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Some days are diamonds…
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
All in all, a busy day, not an enjoyable duty pilot experience and I didn’t get to fly myself.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Washed out
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.
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.
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.
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| Sydney Weather 2 October 2010 |
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.
Monday, September 20, 2010
My longest flight so far
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.
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!
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.
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| 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.
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.
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| Over Camden |
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!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Duty Pilot - 17 July 2010
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).
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).
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Daily Inspector and last flight of the day
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.
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.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Glorious Autumn Soaring
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.
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.
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