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.

Not enough hours in a day.

I often feel I need to retire just to finally have time for everything I want to do. But being a 30-something with expensive hobbies and desire to expand my aircraft collection, retirement is something that I will not be able to afford for quite some time. And since there are truly not enough hours in a day to do everything, sometimes something has to give. Through the spring, this something was my blog writing, so I have got a lot of catching up to do.

My gliding club’s aerobatic program was opened for the season in early May and so far I have flown quite a few flights, most of them in my own glider. I was curious to see how much of the skills would come back after a long winder break and relieved when I caught up right where I left last fall in a few short weeks.

My stomach had a bit more catching up to do, building G-tolerance yet again. I had one day when I did three acro flights in the morning and tried to soar on flight #3, but could not even complete a single circle before my stomach interrupted and indicated that straight and level was in order or glider clean up would be in our immediate future.

On my last acro flight the previous week, I flew the acro sequence for the first time in a glider. My instructor drew a simple program for me to try and talked me through the linking of elements. The sequence was competition spin, followed by a loop, followed by a hammerhead, followed by a roll. Flying a sequence was quite a bit different from working on single element at a time as I needed to constantly stay ahead of the glider, ensuring that the energy was not wasted and my exit speeds were matched with my entry speeds. It was also a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again.

Happy Times Again

Last year was a mixed one for me. I have acquired a new glider and had a few happy moments flying it, but the amount of those moments was reduced greatly by my dad's illness and his passing and the stress impact that it had on my own health. With all that, i was REALLY looking forward to 2010.

The year started well with the New Year flight. Things got worse in February when my Mom found out she had cancer as well, which caused me to spend most of my spring away from home, arranging her surgery and staying with her till she recovered well enough to function independently. With all that plus work, i did not make it to club till April.

On a gloomy overcast day, I came to club just before 9am and was pleasantly surprised to be the second one there, first person being our chief tow pilot. That meant i had priority on any of the gliders and luckily the glider that i wanted, the only one that was capable of what i had in mind, was sitting front and center, so the two of us got it out in the sun so that i can do my daily inspection.

Things were going my way that far, but to fully implement my plan, i also needed a special instructor, one of the acro instructors. Normally, every club member needs to do a so-called "spring check out" in the beginning of the season before flying solo as well as spin check out that needs to be done once a year. I wanted to take it a step further and do an advanced spin flight to ensure that my learnt responses were still intact before getting in my own aerobatic glider later this spring. Luckily, an instructor was available as well and it did not take us long to get to the flight line and set up the glider in a position for takeoff.

My take off was not my best, i could not seem to keep the glider in position and used a lot of control inputs. I was thinking that i must have got very rusty to be flying so horrible when we flew out of the turbulence into a smooth air and i finally realized that it was not my flying, it was the turbulent layers of air lower to the ground. I made a mental note to add some speed to approach to compensate and went on with the tow.

We briefed about what i wanted to do on a way up, so as we released from tow, i started with a simple stall, then got to one turn spins to ensure i got the recovery inputs right. When we were on to some fun stuff, like multi-turn accelerated spins. I had not have that much fun in a long time and was really enjoying it. Alas, the minimum safe altitude came up too fast, so after a few steep turns we had to join downwind for a landing. Puchacz (the glider that we were flying) is an extremely responsive glider, with tons of elevator and rudder controls and huge spoilers and it is an absolute joy to fly. So much joy in fact that i decided to take my solo fly in it instead of single seater.

I got my turn again couple of hours later. Flying the take off i concentrated on just riding the bumps in the air and not over controlling. Tow to 4,000 took a bit and i had time to look around and notice the haze that seemed to be hanging over Hamilton - it certainly was not a stellar visibility day. It did not mater at all though, the feeling of being up in the air again was beyond words. I planned on doing more spinning, but having done a couple, i wanted to stretch time aloft, so i set the speed for minimum sink and for a few blissful minutes flew around the field while looking at the world below me and living in the moment.

I am looking forward to more of these moments... And in case you wondering, the flowers and blooms are from around my glider trailer.

By the end of January, there were quite a few club members suffering from withdrawal to mount a flying operation in the cold. We were helped by the rains that washed out most of the snow and subsequent deep freeze that made the runways rock solid.

It was -20C in the thermometer in the morning, but it was bright and sunny all day and temperatures climbed steadily, so it was not unbearably cold. I got to the flightline just in time to capture the Citabria landing from tow. We used one runway to land and the other to takeoff and utilized human power to put the glider in position for next launch.

Winter flight all carry two people to maximize the enjoyment and minimize the frostbite potential. I flew the take off and then relinquished controls to my partner and occupied myself by taking pictures and looking around. There was a bit of zero sink area and all flights that day caught a bit of that resulting in average time aloft just under 25 mins.

I had an opportunity to go for another flight shortly thereafter but my flozen toes suggested that instead of flying in the cold glider I get in the back of the warm tow plane and take some pictures of the glider after we release it. We briefed the glider pilots that we would follow then at the safe distance after release and I got some great pictures, although I wish I had my professional camera on me with better zoom lenses.

Happy New Year!

My gliding club has a New Year's tradition of gathering at the clubhouse on Jan 1, 2010, sharing food brought by members, trading flying stories and trying to fly if weather cooperates. January 1, 2010 started with low ceilings and blowing snow and did not look too promising for flying. But miracles do happen and by noon the ceiling lifted enough to allow some circuits. With windchill close to -20C, circuit flying was all we wanted to do anyways.

By the time I got to clubhouse on Jan 1, it was full of people and food. I counted two kinds of chili, three flavors of meatballs, five soups and numerous cookies and cakes. Talking to friends I have not seen for a while, I noticed the glider being towed to the take off position and decided to go to flight line. Thinking about bone chilling cold outside and possibility of standing on a Rwy for a while waiting for my turn, I put on my full downhill ski outfit. 

Walking to the flight line, I heard the sound of the engine, then noticed the towplane heading towards me with the white tail of propwash behind it. Looking at the snow whirl generated by propwash, I was surprised to see a red tip sticking out to the side."Hmm, I think there is a glider in there" I thought to myself just as glider emerged in the clear above the propwash. I heard about the first tow on a fresh snow, but never saw it before until then. It looked really neat, but I was glad I was not the first one up.

My turn to go up came in about half an hour. Ceilings started to drop, so we had a nice albeit short flight, but I had some time to snap pictures of the snow covered runways and facilities. Then it was back to clubhouse for some hot food and more talking - a good start of New Year!

Frosty Morning

Aerobatic training flights early in the morning on Thanksgiving weekend.

Running the Cloud Streets, Inverted

I did not fly much this fall. Between being sick and mourning the loss of my father to cancer, I did not have energy or desire to write or work on pictures either.  But interspersed with the periods of dark and gloom, were a few memorable moments that got stored in my memory and on my camera and were waiting for me to recover and write about them. Thanksgiving had couple of those moments.

Unlike the warm Thanksgiving weekend of 2008, the 2009 was cold to the point of frost. However it did warm up during the morning creating thick fog. Given the fog, the flights did not get started until later leaving the runway available for dogs as well as RC fliers.

October 11 started with the fog but the sun eventually rose higher and burned it out. I was going to fly acro in the FLBY that morning, but by the time we got it ready it was closer to noon and the reports started rolling in reporting good lift conditions. Listening to those reports, I was mulling my choices: to go up in the acro configuration as originally planned or go back to the trailer and put the long tips on and have a longer soaring flight.

 The desire to fly upside down proved irresistible and soon i was rolling down the runway attached to the towplane.  I released at cloud base height of 4,000 AGL and started my acro sequence. 59 has an amazing roll rate compared to any other glider in the club's fleet and I was mostly doing rolls and inverted flight that morning fully enjoying myself. Alas, inverted flying is a sure way to loose altitude in a hurry and soon i was as 2000 ft AGL, the minimum height for aerobatics. Normally, I would then spend the next 500 ft down doing wingovers and steep turns and start preparing for landing, but from my tow, I knew that the thermals were strong, so i decided to see if i could climb up in the acro configuration (acro configuration means short wings relative to glider weight, so it would only climb in the really strong thermals).

It did not take me long to find a strong core that catapulted me back up to the cloud base. As i was thermalling up, i decided to try and do one acro figure couple of times and then climb back up. Thermals were widely spaced and well marked by the clouds, so after climbing, i would fly out on a side in the quieter air, do a lookout then my desired figure and go right back to the same thermal. I did a few hammerheads that way, then half snap rolls, then a few full snap rolls and then I noticed something that was not there before.

The wind afloat was strong and clouds started forming the cloud streets. I needed a break from aerobatics, so I decided to follow a cloud street and see if I could gain height while flying straight and level. I followed that street for a while until I had to turn back to club to make sure I stayed within gliding distance. On a way back, flying under the same street, i rolled inverted and flew under the cloud street upside down. I did not climb in that configuration, but i did not loose much height either, so i repeated that for a while - climb away from club following the cloud street right side up turn around, roll upside down and go back towards the club.



I did this for a while and then took a note of total elapsed time - over 2 hrs! I was glad it was the end of the season as my aerobatic stamina was at its seasonal highest level. Even then, i was starting to feel queasy and hungry as it was way past my usual lunch time. I followed the cloud streets right side up to a bit more to figure out if lift was on one side or the middle and then reluctantly made my way down. I rolled to a stop on a side of the runway thinking that i just had the best flight on my life.