A bit of Soaring

After several weekends of rain, I had officially opened my soaring season couple of weeks ago with a really interesting flight. It was a blue day, which means there was lift, but there were no clouds that usually mark the lift.

I had two acro flights that morning, then took my time to put the wingtips on my split personality glider, thus turning it into a capable cross country machine.

Last year, on a blue day, I would have just happily flew in circles around the club, however, I found that flying in circles was becoming a bit boring and I wanted to set some kind of a goal. Being first soaring flight of the season and a blue day, trying to fly somewhere and back was out of question, so I decided to fly what I called a “local cross-country”.

Looking at the map, I picked the landmarks that were within 10-15 miles away from the club at the North, East, South and West. I decided to fly between these landmarks turning back to the club each time I reached the minimum safe gliding distance.

Tow pilot dropped me in the lift and I worked that lift diligently gaining about a 1,000 ft. I then flew around the club for a bit trying to establish the strength of thermals and where the lift started and stopped in terms of height. Having a somewhat rough idea where the lift was, I set up towards my first landmark.

I flew through a whole lot of sink but as I approached my landmark I also found a ton of lift and realized the we have installed the overly sensitive altimeter in the glider that made finding the thermals on a blue day somewhat challenging. Eventually, I resolved not to look at the altimeter but instead pulling up and cranking into a turn as soon as I felt a surge of rising air. That worked a lot better.

I made it to my initial point North of the club and started making my way to the point East of the club. Flying between those two points, I had not encountered lift once, but there was a lot of sink so that when I reached my eastern turnpoint, I had about 100 ft of altitude left before reaching my “turn back” altitude. Miraculously, I found some lift and started climbing up again. Turning towards my western turnpoint, I tried to reach it twice, but got caught in too much sink and forced to turn back to club both times, so instead, I went back north.

By the time I completed that simple circle, I started to feel tired. The sun was bright and relentless and there were no clouds to hide under, so I was feeling too hot and earlier acro flights that i flew that day made me more tired to start with. There was still lots of lift left, but I decided to call it a day.

I was at 4’000 ft above ground and I decided to glide all the way back to club to see how much height I would lose. This was a way of testing my minimum safe gliding distance. I was over the club 1,200 ft of altitude later, so my 3,000 ft minimum altitude was quite conservative and I liked it this way.

Now I need to practice some short field landings in the cross country configuration and then I could try the real cross country.