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.

More western flying and some surprises

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!