Ah, Spring!

I'm trying to fly as much as I can and have been doing okay. Work and life sometimes get in the way but I'm up to 98 flights total with 26 of them in the 1-26 single seat glider. I'm feeling ready to move up to the 1-34 now and am looking forward to making the jump.

In the meantime, I'm flying on weekends and on Wednesday nights when we do training, if I can. It's great to see a lot of students out there (me included!) as it keeps the club strong and we're always enthusiastic about what would be a very small achievement for the veterans in the club.

It's also a great way to make friends. Yesterday two of us took a sunset cruise over the Chemung valley at the end of training. I hadn't taken any passengers up this year so it was kind of nice to have someone else ride along!

The air was smooth with no lift but it didn't matter. The views were great and Brian took some great pictures. You can see them all here. Below are a couple of my favorites.

3,000 feet and all is well!

Hmmm....let's see....speed 55, check. Trim, set. Spoilers, checked. Enter downwind heading north over the farmhouse, pick your landing spot, control your speed, set down where you mean to, always be ready to adjust for conditions. Check!

Thanks to Brian for taking some cool pictures. Much easier to have a photographer along for the ride!

Back in the swing of things

Winter has broken and we've started flying again at Harris Hill!

I took my safety check ride about two weeks ago and have been up a few times with mixed success. I've managed to find and stay up a bit in some thermals but I realize that this season is about really practicing the art of soaring.

I need to get better - much better, at finding, centering, and circling in lift. I've already found out what one of my problems has been. I'm not banking steeply enough when circling.

The other day, I was circling in a thermal ranging between 2 and 4 knot lift when two of our club's experts arrived in the same thermal below me. As I struggled to find and stay in the core of the lift, within two turns they had outclimbed me and popped out the top of the thermal.

I was unable to successfully climb in the same thermal and eventually headed off to find more lift. I landed not too long after that.

When I saw them later, they told me that I was circling too widely. I needed to bank over and stay in the core. I think I've been too timid to try that. I know you descend quicker if you bank over because you add a little airspeed to keep from stalling and I know that increases your descent rate. But when you think about it, the tradeoff is you stay in the bigger lift longer in a tighter circle.

So, I've been concentrating on finding lift, circling tightly (30-45 degrees which is tight but not SUPER tight) and flying my circles in a coordinated and stable fashion while adjusting to stay in the lift.

It works. Yesterday I posted a personal best of 2 hours and 6 minutes aloft. Not only that, but I made a max altitude of 6200 feet, which was also a personal best. This was in the 'low' performance Schweizer 2-33 trainer.

Now, you kind of had to be a total bonehead not to stay aloft yesterday. It was a GOOD soaring day, but I did force myself to get out of the lift when I was at the top and go search for another thermal, including looking where other sailplanes were NOT. Fortunately, I found a number of good thermals all across the local flying area. In fact, the only reason I came down was because I really needed to go to the bathroom!

Good thing, too. When I landed, my back hurt and my knees were killing me. It was really time to come back, even though I hated to. I got off tow at 3700 feet and never got below that altitude until I descended for landing! Good flying.