Winter doldrums

The bad news is I haven't flown for about 2 months.  The good news is that maybe I'll fly in the new year.

Harris Hill hosts a traditional New Year's day flying session to welcome the year and let us keep current (3 landings/takeoffs in 90 days).  I'm hoping the weather won't be nasty so I can sneak in a couple of flights.

I missed the Snowbird, the longest running contest in the country.  Every Thanksgiving, the club hosts the Snowbird, a fun-fly/contest day followed by a banquet.  I'm always out of town with family for the holiday, so I miss it each year.

The weather has been, true to form, generally miserable here in the Souther Tier of New York with leaden gray overcast days and cold nights.  We had a good 8" of snow the other day and even a short warming trend to 50 today didn't get the ground to show through.

I've kept active in the club as I was elected to the board of directors this fall and have taken on the task of evaluating the facilities and trying to help prioritize what we want to do and when.  I spent Saturday trudging through ankle and knee deep snow drifts up at Harris Hill and looking at the facilities.  The private gliders owned by our club members looked like they were hibernating inside their trailers, waiting for warmer weather to return.

The winter around here comes quickly, followed by Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But after that, it's a long slow climb to April before you can fly regularly again.

I guess I'll try to catch up on my backlog of Soaring magazines.

End of the season is in sight

We discontinue operations for the winter at the end of October. Between weather and travel, I haven't made many flights but I did manage to check out of work early on my birthday and go for some 1-26 flights. Dr. Jack's Soaring Weather site said it was a reasonably good day and I thought I'd take a shot.

The first two flights were okay, but nothing spectacular. Not a direct descent, maybe in the 20 minute range. I figured I'd get 4 flights in and call it a day.

The third flight started out like the others but I found a nice band of lift, giving me a steady 2 knot climb. I found it by observing a cloud street (a long, usually narrow band of clouds) and cruised under it. Before long, I was above my release altitude and climbing. It was really cool to climb while flying in a straight line.

I flew along the line until I felt like I needed to turn back to the airport, then flew the line back to the north side of the airport. By that time, the cloud street was drifting off to the east and I needed to stay closer to the airport, so I turned and headed upwind. I've read that if you are looking for thermals or streets, turn upwind and sometimes you can find them in the blue.

Not this time, so I headed back to the airport. By this time, I was down to 2800 feet (about 1100 feet above the runway), so I decided to cruise the ridge near the airport to see if I could slow my descent. The wind was light from the North and I was losing maybe 50 feet each pass along the ridge.

About the fourth time across the same point on the ridge, I felt a firm push upward and I immediately turned into it. The variometer read 4 knots, a nice and solid climb! I turned circles and did my best to maintain minimum sink airspeed. Before long, I was climbing through 3000 feet, then 3500, then 4000! I kept circling until the altimeter read 5200 feet and watched below as one of the ASK-21's joined me in the thermal.

Gradually I noticed that it was getting a little more difficult to see the horizon and realized that if I kept circling I was going to head right into the base of the cloud I was under! By this time the climb was slowing anyhow, so I headed back upwind towards another cloud street while enjoying a personal best for solo altitude gained.

No dice as I got under the cloud street. I was descending now and needed to turn back to stay close to the airport, so I headed back over the ridge again. The wind had picked up slightly and I cruised the ridge for another 15 minutes, maintaining my altitude until it died a bit.

Seeing 2600 on the altimeter, I decided to head back in to land and not be greedy. When I touched down, it turned out that I had been airborne for 59 minutes! Another personal solo best for me.

I had a smile on my face all the way home, thinking what a great birthday gift I'd just gotten.

Blah

Sigh.  Travel for work and bad weather have kept me grounded.  This can happen during the Fall, but I know there's still good soaring weather out there.

Our club has made nominations to the board of directors and asked me to run for one of the spots.  Sounds good!  I need to contribute a little more than just my once a month shift helping with our commercial glider rides.  If I get elected, that's great.  If not, that's okay too.  Either way works for me.

However it goes, it should be a busy Winter as we are hosting the sport class nationals next Summer and will be working to get everything ship-shape and run a smooth contest.  I'll certainly be interested in helping out however they need it.

Autumn is coming

Autumn is coming here in upstate New York and the leaves around Harris Hill are just beginning to show signs of yellowing.  I noticed from the air today that you could more clearly see some trees beginning to change.

It won't be long before we put the soaring season to bed here.  By the end of October it will be too cold to get out there and fly.  This season has been fantastic for me.  I've joined the ranks of FAA certified glider pilots, which was my goal for the summer.

Trouble is, I accomplished that before the summer was over, leaving me with a desire to do even more.  Right now, I'm letting the anxiety of stepping up to our club's 1-34 get to me.  I need to calm down and recognize that when I'm ready, I'll be ready.  No need to rush things.

It's tough, though.  For one thing, it seems like every other pilot in our club has a kazillion years of experience and they head out on cross country flights that last for hours in sleek, incredibly high performance ships that I'll likely never fly.  Our junior members spend all summer long working operations and flying and I see them pass me up and move on when once we were at the same stage.

Sometimes it seems like everyone else has gobs of time to fly while I have to work every day.  You can go out to Harris Hill on any decent soaring day and find empty glider trailers waiting for the return of their occupants.  They descend out of the sky in the late afternoon with tales of the challenge of flying hundreds of miles into neighboring states.

The vast majority of these folks are usually quite friendly and willing to exchange some small talk with you but it is really intimidating to deal with people who can tell you about events that happened on the field when you weren't even born yet.  I keep thinking to myself that I'll simply never have that level of experience.

But I know there are others like me who are still working on their solo or rating.  They, like me, have families and responsibilities that take precedence or compete with, flying.  They are my peers and we are the newbies.  All of the pilots on the field were once newbies, I remind myself.  They've just forgotten the experience.

So I tell myself to slow down, concentrate on flying safe, flying well.  Make good decisions -the kind that don't jeopardize my safety and allow me to learn about the sport.  It doesn't really matter if I'm flying this type of aircraft or that type of aircraft.  What matters is that I'm flying.  I'm flying and learning and gaining experience and I'm new and I need to remember that.

Because when you get complacent, that's when something goes wrong and I haven't been in any real challenging weather since I got my rating because I'm trying to be cautious and fly within my abilities.  But one day I'll find myself on the negative end of a massive downdraft on final or a broken tow rope right after takeoff and I'll need to summon up both that experience I've been tucking away and also those decision making skills to do the right and safe thing.  THAT's what I need to be concentrating on.

Perfecting my spot landings

A few days ago I took the 1-26 out for a couple of more flights. I've got about 10 flights in it now and am really starting to like it. It is very responsive and keeps you on top of coordinating the ailerons and rudder.

On one day, I circled at about 45 degrees in light lift for 10 minutes or so neither gaining or losing but just holding my own. If you've never done this before, 45 degrees feels like you are practically laying over on your side but in fact you can bank over quite a bit farther, although you have to fly faster to keep from stalling.

The purpose of circling tightly is to stay inside small columns of lift. If they are larger, you don't have to bank quite so steeply. My circles were good practice for trying to circle at a steady airspeed while keeping all of the controls coordinated.

I'm feeling more confident in the 1-26 as well. I've been concentrating on putting the glider down at a spot of my choosing, at the right airspeed, and then stopping it before a preset point. This is a useful skill at all times, but particularly if you have to land off airport. You want to be able to pick a spot and put it down without rolling too far.

I've experimented with opening the spoilers full as I round out for the flare. As one of the more experienced pilots predicted, it works quite well. The glider slows down and sets down, but not too firmly.

I've been traveling on business quite a bit lately and am hoping to get more time in the 1-26 in the next few days.

Flying a new glider

Yesterday I did something I'd never done before, I transitioned to a new glider type.  I've been flying the Schweizer 2-33, a high wing training glider with two seats and struts that keep the wings attached when you do stupid things, like students sometimes do.

At Harris Hill, after you solo, but often before you get your license, students begin flying the Schweizer 1-26 glider.  They have very similar performance, I'm told, but the 1-26 is a single seat aircraft with the wings at about shoulder height, right through the middle of the fuselage.

Our model is the 1-26E, which means that it is constructed of all aluminum except for the horizontal stabilizer and the ailerons.  It looks a little less clumsy than the 2-33, which feels like an old friend, and you sit down with your legs pretty much straight out in front of you.  Not exactly semi-reclined like the more modern ships, but it's a step in the right direction.

I prepared for the transition by reading Bob Wander's "Transition to Single Seat Gliders - Made Easy!" book and took the transition checklist he provides with me out to the field.  It was not a good soaring day, meaning there weren't many thermals, but the smooth and stable atmosphere reduced the number of variables I needed to deal with to fly the 1-26 for the first time.  Very little wind and almost no turbulence.

After an overview by my instructor, Sean Murphy, I sat in the cockpit for the first time and familiarized myself with the location and function of the controls.  I'd read the aircraft handbook already, and everything looked pretty straightforward.  The main things to watch out for, I was told, were the sensitivity in pitch and inability of the glider to penetrate into the wind.

Since wind wasn't much of a factor, I concentrated on not causing Pilot Induced Oscillations (PIO's).  PIO's happen when the pilot makes the situation worse through a control correction.  It can often amplify itself as the pilot chases the aircraft's position by making control inputs that, because they are late, only make the situation worse.  A small pitch up is overcorrected into a nose down, is overcorrected into a nose up and so on.  Obviously, on takeoff, this can cause a crash.

Fortunately, the 1-26 is designed to be a 'step 2' glider and I was watching out for this issue.  We hooked up, I gave my thumbs up, and off we went for my first flight.

Turns out they are right about the pitch sensitivity.  I didn't have any trouble controlling it and I braced my arm on my leg to provide stability.  The light weight of the 1-26 without the size of the 2-33 put me in the air almost immediately and the towplane pulled me up to altitude very quickly.

After release, I ran through a couple of the test points that Bob suggests you do with any new glider.  I stalled it straight ahead and found that the nose drops more sharply than the 2-33 and that the 1-26 accelerates much quicker when you point the nose down.  I tried a couple of steep turns and found that the ailerons are much more sensitive than the 2-33 and also the rudder.  That was good, I think, because it made it much easier to coordinate the turns.  

The 1-26, due to its light weight and short wing feel like driving a sports car after flying the 2-33!  I had to concentrate on making very small movements to keep from over-controlling it.  Supposedly, this light control effort is more prevalent on higher performance gliders and I definitely liked it.

One thing that took a flight or two to adjust to was the feeling that I was nose-down when, in fact, I wasn't.  I noticed that my speed kept slowing up to 40 mph because I was pulling the nose up to where I 'thought' it should be.  When I focused on making the aircraft fly at 48 mph, the nose would be quite a bit lower than I was used to.  By the end of the night, I felt like I had gotten used to this position.

Landing was a snap, but I need to work on pinpointing it.  Although I flew the 1-26 four times, it was only on the last flight that I felt I had the proper airspeed control all the way around the pattern.  Even so, I would arrive at my aim point at the right altitude but then float quite a ways down the runway.  One of the pilots told me that if I'm flying 55 upon round out and the dive brakes aren't all the way open, go ahead and open them all the way.

I was worried that would dump all the lift and slam the glider onto the ground but he said, no, that might happen only if you are flying much slower.  He's right and I'm looking forward to sharpening up my spot landing skills in the 1-26.

So that's it, another milestone in my glider life.  The second type of glider I've ever flown and the first that was a single seater.  I'd been told that the 1-26 was fun to fly and it sure was!  I'm hoping to find some thermals next time out and test my steep turn skills.

Transition path

Flying is a continuous learning experience.  While you can get pretty good at it after awhile, you simply never will know everything.

For us newbies, our learning curve is both steep and long.  Most of my non-pilot friends and relatives are happy that I've gotten my rating and ask me if I'm relieved that it's over.  Actually, I'm on pins and needles.  I have a pretty good idea  of what I don't know and it definitely worries me.

The only way to fix that is to fly, of course.  And make good decisions about when the conditions are not right for you to fly or when you don't have the skills to accomplish what you need to.

One way that new pilots gain experience is to fly new aircraft types.  You fly progressively more sophisticated or higher performance aircraft in order to widen your skills.  Each aircraft will teach you something new about flight as they all handle a little different, fly at different speeds, or perform differently.

Right now, I'm on the bottom rung.  The Schweizer 2-33 that I have learned to fly is a basic trainer and that means that it is as docile and idiot-proof as it is possible to build a trainer.  This is a good thing, but it does bring a number of compromises with it.  Namely, it doesn't cover much distance when the wind is blowing.  You better stay near the field or a suitable farmer's field when the wind is blowing very hard.

Higher performance gliders can fly quite a bit faster than the 2-33, which will go

 22 feet forward for every foot of altitude it loses.  While that may sound good, when you add in some wind, that is easily cut in half or more.  If you are 2,000 feet above ground and the wind is blowing, you'll be very lucky to cover more than 3 or 4 miles before you come back down.

My transition path for the next year or so covers some familiar and not

so familiar aircraft.  Up next for me is the Schweizer 1-26, my first single seat glider, but supposedly one that flies very much like the 2-33.  That's good because even though the 2-33 is on the lower end of the performance spectrum I've come to appreciate its ruggedness, predictable handling qualities, and simplicity. 

The 1-26, they tell me, is a blast to fly.  It operates pretty much at the same speeds the 2-33 does but the controls are very light, like a sports car.  The dive brakes allow spectacular rates of descent without gaining airspeed.  The short wings allow you to rack it around into a 60 degree bank with little effort so you can circle in the tightest thermals.

After I become friends with the 1-26, it will be time to move up to the 1-34, also a Schweizer product.  This is a glider that I don't know much about other than it has higher performance than the 1-26.  According to my instructor it is a great flying glider and it flies great.  This one will be my bridge to higher performance flying and is made of aluminum.  Right now, the 2-33 and 1-26 have fabric fuselage and tail feathers.  The 1-34 is all metal. 

I expect that will be it for this flying season.  By the time I'm circling in the 1-34 it will be getting pretty cold and I'll fly very little, if at all during the winter.  In the Spring, I'll probably fly the 1-34 to get my skills back and then it will be time to move on to the ASK-21, a 2 seat fiberglass airframe and the first modern glass glider I will fly.

I've got a lot of learning ahead of me and I'm looking forward to every minute of it.

My first passenger

Today was the first time I ever I took a passenger for a ride in a glider.  It was my son, Kevin and we couldn't have picked a better day to go.

We arrived at Harris Hill with winds blowing at 10, gusting to 15. My personal crosswind limit is 10 knots (I've flown in more, but only with an instructor) but these were mainly down the centerline of the runway, and no more than 30 degrees off center so I felt good about it.  

After checking with some of the pilots and instructors who were flying, Kevin and I rolled the trusty 2-33 out to the flight line and I briefed him on the controls, seat belts, and so forth.  We did an inspection of the aircraft together and then got in line for a tow.

I was kind of excited because I know the ridge at Harris Hill starts to work when you get 10 knots or so of wind on it from the North, which was the case today.  The other pilots who had been up said the ridge was working off and on during the day.

The tow was a good one and we got a nice push upward as we cleared the ridge on takeoff, which said to me that there might be some good ridge lift.  We continued up to 3,700 feet (sea level), which is just about 2,000 feet above the tops of the ridges around us and is the standard height to get off of tow.  Just before we got to 3,700 we bumped through a nice thermal.  I pulled the release handle and we made an immediate 180 degree turn to see if it was still there.

It was, and we started circling to gain altitude.  In just a few minutes we were up to 4,100 feet - 400 feet higher than we had left the tow plane.  As the thermal died, we headed upwind to see if there were more.  There were and we kept finding lift, but it was all topping out around 4,100.

By then, Kevin was getting quiet and I asked him how he was doing.  It w

as evident that spinning circles was not something we should keep doing.  So, I leveled out and headed upwind of the field, figuring we might find some lift on the way but if not, we could land in awhile.

What a pleasant surprise we got!  Arriving over the western end of the ridge at around 3,000 feet, I had intended to poke around a little bit until we got to 2,500 when I could begin my entry into the pattern for landing.  However, we were descending very slowly, more slowly than in still air and when we got to the far end of the ridge we were greeted with strong 400 foot per minute lift!  I slowed down to maximize my time in it and before I knew

 it, we were at 3,100 feet, a nice 200 foot gain.

Figuring that this was probably ridge lift, I turned back east and followed the ridge and lost very little altitude as I traversed it.  Doubling back to the western end, I was at 2,900 feet when I got that nice boost back up to 3,100.  We repeated the process several times for about 15 minutes or more as we, talked, me pointing out things on the ground, or explaining when we were climbing or descending while he asked me questions about most everything.

For awhile, we were joined by one of the club's 2-33's but it came in lower than we were and only made a couple of passes before turning in to land.  It was one of our solo students and I would have done the same thing if I was lower and not going up.  Better to land and play it safe than get too low to make an approach.

We could have stayed up as long as the wind was blowing, but after a bit I asked Kevin if he'd had enough.  My ulterior motive is to slowly bring him along and get him hooked on becoming a glider pilot and I don't want to wear him out on the first couple of times out.  Then, he'll never come out with me again.  He sounded a little tired, so I told him we'd head back.  Secretly, inside I wanted to stay out for another hour at least!

I told Kevin (he's a little bit of a nervous flier right now, but we'll fix that) that things were going to start happening much more quickly and that it was going to get louder from the wind noise as we started down.  I said, "If you want to know if everything is okay, just ask me: Is this normal?"  We turned downwind and picked up a good 15 miles per hour from the ridge wind while I accelerated to a little over 60 mph for the landing.  Normal approach speed is 55 mph but you add about 1/2 of the wind in case it gusts on you.  I added about 7 mph for the approach.

In a flash, we were ready to turn base leg and I did a nice steep turn, rolling out to correct for the wind.  I was quite high for landing, but with the wind I wasn't worried about going long.  It was going short that is the big mistake.  I opened the dive brakes all the way and started a slip.  Then, from the back came the voice, "Is this normal?!"

If you've never flown a slip before, it can be an unnerving experience.  All pilots learn how to do them and far from being unsafe, they are a great tool for losing lots of altitude while maintaining good control.  There are two types of slips, the side slip and the forward slip.  The forward slip (the one we were flyin

g) is the more dramatic because you yaw the nose off to the side and the aircraft actually flies sideways as it comes down.  By putting that big, draggy fuselage into the breeze, you can lose tons of altitude without speeding up.

However, to keep the airplane following the line you want rather than where you've got the nose pointed, you have to dip the wing low and the result is your are both looking down and out the side window at the runway while the plane is pointed sideways.  In addition, the air burbles off the fuselage and bumps into all parts of the airplane making a lot of thumping noise, which can alarm someone who has never heard it before.  I love doing slips, but they can take the uninitiated by surprise.

I informed Kevin that, yes, everything was normal and we were right on track.  We made a slipping turn onto final and I lined us up with the grass runway.  As we cleared the small hill at approach end of the runway, we hit the rotor.  

At my field, Harris Hill, when you land into a North wind, it can swirl up over the ridge and come crashing down right on your final approach leg.  This is one reason for adding the extra airspeed.  It also can cause quite a bit of turbulence.  The pilots who flew earlier in the day said to expect it, so I did.  It turned out not to be much, actually.  Most of it came not from the ridge but the trees to the left.  Just as we got to treetop height, we got bounced around a little bit but again, nothing too bad.  I'd had much more turbulence in some of my student flights, but that voice came from the back again, "Is this normal?!"

I assured him that yes, we were fine, just a few bumps before landing and it smoothed out nicely as we flared.  I held it off until the energy was gone and we set down right at mid-field and rolled out in a straight line - quite an achievement for me!  As we stopped, the left wing dropped to the ground.  Again, an achievement for me!

Thirty four minutes had passed.  I turned to Kevin and said, "Wow!  What a great flight we had!"  He fully agreed and we high-fived, got out of the glider and rolled it back to the flight line.

We talked all night about how much fun we had on that flight.  It was great to take my son as my first passenger and what a day we picked for it!  THIS is why I started flying again.  Just for the sheer joy.

Welcome to Sink Happens, the Soaring Newbie Blog

I'm a brand new glider pilot and I've got lots of questions and very few answers.  I thought I'd try using this space to post my questions and observations on soaring from a newbie's viewpoint.

First, my name is Tom Berry and I live in upstate New York, very close to Elmira.  Soaring pilots in the United States will recognize Elmira as the self-proclaimed capital of soaring.  The National Soaring Museum is located on the gliderport that I fly out of (Harris Hill - 4NY8) and the Harris Hill Soaring Corporation is my club.  They introduced me to the sport of soaring and taught me how to fly.

I passed my FAA checkride almost two weeks ago and I'm a newly minted glider pilot.  According to FAA statistics for 2007, there are approximately 20,000 glider pilots in the U.S. or about 1 in 15,000 citizens.  Even rarer are glider pilots who are also certified as private pilots - about 4,500.  I happen to be one of them.

I'm writing this blog to record my journey as a new glider pilot.  I've found learning to soar much more challenging than learning to fly a powered aircraft.  I wouldn't say one was necessarily easier than the other, just that as a glider pilot, there's less room for sloppy decision making.  Blow the approach in a Cessna 172 and you just go around until you get it right.  Do the same thing in a glider and the outcome ranges from embarrassing to fatal.

Again, it's not that flying powered aircraft isn't challenging.  It's more that flying and staying up in a glider is an act that tests your wits in a different way.  When you do it right (which for me, at present, is almost never), it is a very satisfying feeling.