Powered flight vs. soaring

I learned to fly powered aircraft in the 1980's.  I'm closing in on 400 flights in my soaring logbook vs. the 130 hours or so of powered flight (all single engine piston) I have.  When people ask me about learning to fly, I find myself recommending that they first learn to fly gliders, then powered aircraft if they want to continue on.  They inevitably ask me whether glider pilots are 'better' than power pilots.

That's a question that I think doesn't really have an answer.

Recently, an article on AOPA's site got me thinking about powered vs. motorless flight.  Taking paying passengers for flights at our club has exposed me to many different type of people, some of whom are pilots.  I've flown air transport pilots, helicopter pilots, private pilots, people with a lot of Flight Simulator time, and of course, other glider pilots.  I usually offer to let them fly after we're at a safe altitude and they'll often take me up on it.  

The glider pilots, even if they haven't flown for years, are always immediately at home.  It must be like riding a bike.  The power pilots vary in skill, though.  No matter how much you warn them, the first turn results in a yaw and slip and it often doesn't get a whole lot better from there.  At first I smugly thought that it was simply that glider pilots are 'better' (i.e. more skilled) than our powered brethren, but after seeing the same pattern repeated a number of times, I don't think that's the case at all.

I've heard the theory that glider pilots are somehow better because we actually use the rudder to counteract adverse yaw, we practice endless steep turns climbing in thermals, we're more in touch with the sky, the clouds, the wind, etc.  All of those things are true, but only because unless you pay attention to them, you're going to have some very short rides, which is no fun.  If you spend much time in a glider, you quickly get tuned into the variables of success for soaring flight.

So, I think it's not a matter of skill, it's a matter or necessity.  If you want to say a glider pilot flies better than a power pilot, I suggest you qualify it by adding 'when the engine quits'.  Even so, it may not be true.  I've read articles about pilots that cite the fact that the pilot has a glider certification as being a success factor in dead stick landing the aircraft.  I'm not entirely sure about that, though.

A powered aircraft with an engine out and a windmilling propeller probably has a glide ratio of 6:1 rather than the 22:1 of the low performance Schweizer 2-33.  I've never flown a glider that has a 6:1 ratio unless you want to count the times I've been in a full forward slip with the spoilers open and I'm not sure that's even 6:1, so I don't think soaring experience is particularly helpful there.  If it happened to me, I'd probably pick out a field too far away because I overestimated the glide performance of the aircraft.

After much thought I've come to the conclusion that it's an apples to oranges comparison.  It's like sailing and power boating.  Being a good sailboat captain doesn't make you a good power boat captain because the circumstances and decisions that have to be made are sufficiently different that only the basics transfer.  It's the same for aviation.  Being a good power pilot doesn't make you a good soaring pilot and vice versa.  They're different. 

For example, most people think that flying a glider is simpler than flying power because there's no engine.  I've had plenty of passengers ask me if I've ever flown a 'real' airplane, by which they mean one with an engine.  It's a natural question because piston aircraft have a LOT of stuff crammed on the panel and it looks more complicated than soaring.  However, much of that stuff is for navigation, communication, and monitoring the engine.  As long as nothing is wrong with the engine, the pilot can concentrate on flying.  Go up?  Add power, pull back stick.  Go up in a glider?  Seek out sources of lift, center it, concentrate during the climb, decide where to find more before leaving the thermal.

Is that simpler or more complicated than flying a powered aircraft?  Neither.  It's a very different set of decisions and actions.  It may be easy to climb and stay aloft in a powered aircraft, but a glider pilot doesn't have to adjust mixture, fly a course, hold an altitude, etc.  It's different.

That's why I've changed my mind about the power pilots vs. glider pilot question.  Power pilots may fly sloppy when I let them have the controls in my glider, but I've got hundreds of flights and hours of practice flying that very machine in a manner that is completely foreign to them.  They don't counteract adverse yaw because the machines they fly don't exhibit it to nearly the same degree as gliders do.  If they did, then power pilots would be better at it.  They'd also be better at steep turns in a thermal if they weren't required to add power to hold altitude and they practiced it on every single flight.

That doesn't make me better than them.  It's just different.

Updating the webcam

The current webcam looking at the flight line.

In July, our webcam went offline.  Usually, this is a relatively minor annoyance caused by a need to reset the computer.  The system we had is admittedly a hack of sorts, cobbled together using a donated Mini-ITX computer, Windows XP and a Logitech 9000 webcam.  I was actually surprised by how hardy the system was.  At first, the computer ran both the webcam and our weather station (more details here) but after several years, it became unstable and I switched the weather station over to a spare Sheeva Plug embedded Linux computer and a weather program called Meteoplug.  It's worked very reliably since then.

When the computer finally gave up the ghost, I decided that there was no need for a full Windows installation simply to run a webcam.  Between the security issues, the updates, and the cost, I saw no reason to get another full blown computer simply to take a picture and upload it to the web server.

The webcam computer.  No moving parts, small, under 5 watts.  Perfect.

I chose instead to use a $45 embedded Linux computer called a Raspberry Pi.  The Pi is perfect for this application because it is inexpensive, has no moving parts, uses a regular SD card for storage, and draws less than 5 watts of power.  It even has an hdmi output and runs a desktop GUI.  Amazing.

The Pi is a hobbyist's experimental computer and runs Debian Linux.  I started by trying a program called Motion and it worked perfectly.  I'd been very worried I'd have to muck with numerous settings just to find the webcam, but I plugged it in and it started working right away.  However, I did have to monkey with the settings to switch it to take a single photo every 2 minutes.  The program is actually much more powerful than that -it can detect motion, upload a timelapse, notify you, etc.  The array of options is actually a bit dizzying.

I then entered a loop where I tried to use the auto-upload feature of Motion to send a photo to our server, but ran into problems troubleshooting that, and further, with permissions on the files even to get it to do something as simple as starting up when the system reboots (in case of power failure).

In the end, an epic misinterpretation of the wput command is what burned up most of my time and troubleshooting the problem at the glider field just wasn't working.  I had to get a webcam (thanks Wade!) and take the setup home so I could spend some quality time with it.

I finally ended up using a simpler program called fswebcam.  There are plenty of tutorials for how to set this up for the Pi.  Here's the two that helped me most:  http://blog.davidsingleton.org/raspberry-pi-webcam-a-gentle-intro-to-crontab/ and http://www.r3uk.com/index.php/38-tech-tips/software/100-webcam-capture-using-fswebcam.  I owe both of those bloggers a lot.  There are a number of other tutorials out there, so your mileage may vary.

I've used Linux enough to know my way around it a bit, but it is such a struggle to get it to do the simple stuff sometimes.  I spent the majority of my time on this project A) trying to get the wput command to work properly; B) trying to get CRON to startup Motion automatically on reboot.  Because I never solved the startup issue with Motion (although I knew what the problem was), I switched to fswebcam.  (Hint: if you want to use Motion for your install, make sure you are aware that it installs as ROOT rather than user and install accordingly!  Otherwise, you run into all kinds of problems reading the config file, writing the images, and just starting up the service.  You have been warned.)

No matter, it is FINALLY up and running now and feeding a beautiful picture to the server, just like it did before the original computer broke down.  Phew!

  

Flying Mifflin with the Juniors

Junior Joe McGill over Mifflin County airport

I had two new soaring experiences this week.  First, I chaperoned our Junior members to Mifflin County Airport and second, I flew a glider at a new soaring location.  

It was all part of a trip our Juniors take every couple of years when the coffers are full enough to support a trip away.  We always talk about how much the Senior members give to the Junior program but in truth, the Junior members give a lot, too.  Sometimes it is nice to just get away from the Hill and have an event dedicated solely to the Juniors that can be all about them.

This is a challenging event to plan.  We have to have everything come together on the same weekend - airplanes, instructors, tow plane -and weather.  The past several years, the weather has not cooperated and we've had to cancel.  There is no rain date for this trip, either.  It's just too hard to ask everyone to reorganize their life and slip the trip by a week.

As we went into the week prior, the weather forecast was not looking good.  We were going to have to cancel for the 4th year!  We decided to wait until the day before to make the call.  Even then, the weather was not promising.  We'd get wet for sure at some point and would probably not be able to fly the world famous Mifflin ridge.

The Juniors were still game for it, though.  They'd been through past cancellations and were chomping at the bit to go *somewhere* that would be just for them.  We decided to plan for the worst weather but hope for the best.  Our contingent of gliders rolled into Mifflin on Friday with partly sunny skies overhead and predictions of thunderstorms.

We assembled (not trivial, considering we had both a 2-33 and 1-26 with us) and started flying.  After about 2 hours, the buildups to the southwest began heading towards us and we tied everything down and went inside.  The rain lasted less than an hour and cleared out to sunny skies again.  We resumed flying and had great weather for the rest of the day!  We had multiple instructional flights in the 2-33 and ASK-21, solo flying in the 1-26, fantastic ridge flights in the Duo Discus and I also brought the single seat Discus for some fun.

A group of happy and exhausted Juniors went to bed with another uncertain forecast the next day.

Low clouds and fog greeted us Saturday and it took a while, but finally cleared around lunchtime and turned into one of the nicest soaring days you can imagine.  Light winds with thermals and a slight bit of ridge lift.  The day steadily improved and even after 6pm we were still finding lift and thermals.

Altogether, we flew 40 flights Saturday and about 20 on Friday.  Unfortunately, the rains came Sunday and we called it early, having to disassemble and trailer the gliders in the rain before heading home.  Everyone was a trooper and we arrive back at Harris Hill Sunday evening, wet, tired, and happy.

What I Learned

1.  The Juniors just loved it.  It really didn't matter what happened.  More than anyone else at Harris Hill, they experience soaring as a group.  They are able to learn as a unit and they push each other along to keep improving.  They had fun when the sun was shining, they had fun when it was raining.  And they particularly enjoyed being the center of attention on the gliderport.

2.  When flying in a strange location, be sure the GPS is working.  I flew two flights in the Discus.  The first was short, just out to the ridge and back when I couldn't find any lift.  The second was better, a bit under an hour.  But I learned the most from the first flight.  Tim Welles told us the 'ridge was working at about about 50 knots' and I found out that was true.  I was able to poke along down the ridge for 2-3 miles but realized that I might not be able to poke my way back, so I turned around.

Mistake number 1, I turned downwind and fell off the lift.  I fell off enough that I was uncomfortable putting the glider back over the peak because I didn't want to get trapped on the other side by turning into the wind.  That's fine, but I probably wouldn't have fallen out of the lift if I'd turned into the wind.

Mistake number 2, in unfamiliar terrain, practice spotting the airport before you fly away from it.  When I turned around, I couldn't find the airport in the patchwork of farm field and roads.  Fortunately, I had the GPS on and I flew the course line to return, but I didn't actually spot the airport until I was below 1,000 AGL.  It sort of hid among the corn fields and I was seriously assessing if I was going to have to land close by and then explain to everyone how I was too stupid to see it from the air.

On the second flight, I picked some geographic landmarks and some buildings on the ground to help me find the airport and didn't have any trouble after that.  But there was that momentary 'oh crap' moment when I thought I'd made a real bonehead mistake.

3.  The people at Mifflin couldn't be nicer.  It is so great for our Juniors to meet others in the soaring community and find that they are such gracious hosts.  Mifflin Soaring Association really put themselves out for us and let us take over their clubhouse for the weekend and camp on their land.  Fred Winter of MSA contacted me to offer the use of the clubhouse right out of the blue and Brian Glick was our tow pilot and host extraordinaire.  It looks like a lot of fun to hang out at the airport and see what everyone is doing all the time.  A special shout out to Gary Wilson, who tracked us down and gave us the key to his T-hangar so we could have a dry place to dissassemble our gliders.  Boy did that come in handy!  Gary got a case of beer for his generosity.

4.  Harris Hill is like landing on an aircraft carrier compared to Mifflin.  We were all joking about using only 1/3 of the runway for landing and still having a lengthy roll out to get to the launch point.  I'd been told that if I can land at the Hill, I can land anywhere and I'm glad I have experience on the shorter HH runway.  It made landing an absolute cinch.

What a great trip.  Everyone enjoyed it and we managed to get out to dinner and ice cream in State College as well as have some of the best fresh-picked sweet corn I've ever had, thanks to Brian's brother.

Can't wait to do it again.  After I rest up, that is.

Local cross country - what a blast!

A quick post on my latest cross country flight on July 5th. 

I didn't arrive real early at Harris Hill because it was pretty blue early in the day.  The forecast was for good soaring, but I just wasn't leaving town in the blue.  If it stayed blue, my plan was to fly locally.

That's essentially what I did, although I ended up putting 75 miles on the logger and flew for just over 3 hours.  I assembled the Discus and took off around 1pm.  The other cross country guys were about 45 minutes ahead of me but I wasn't going to fly with them anyway, so I took my time and set up a local task - Corning, Cowanesque, Millerton and back.  This is a pretty short task but further than I've flown before.  Depending on the conditions, you are about 1 thermal away from Harris Hill.  Today, conditions were good enough to glide back in most cases.

The closest to trouble I got was the first leg to Corning.  I got there with no problem at lots of excess altitude to return but the leg to Cowanesque was pretty blue - few clouds.  I decided to head north and try out some of the clouds over the high ground thinking that I could either hang around Corning until conditions were better or gain enough altitude to set off for Cowanesque.

Turns out the clouds to the north weren't awesome, either.  I slowly hooked back to the Northeast and when I started to get low, turned for Harris Hill.  This is where the glide computer does such a great job for you.  I was able to decide how long to hang around and when to turn back.  I got back to the field and worked the ridge with a 2-33 hoping for a thermal.  After awhile, I found one and before long, I was back to 7,400 feet.  I decided to head straight to Cowanesque rather than return to Corning first.  With that much altitude, I could pretty much glide there and back.

The clouds were pretty good out there now, and I turned around at Cowanesque at about 6,000 feet and plugged Millerton into the computer.  I proceeded cautiously, stopped for altitude when it seemed good, and arrived there at around 6,000 feet again.  I wasn't going for speed and I flew a moderate 70kts most of the time, except for areas of deep sink when I sped up.  

Turning Millerton, I knew I had Harris Hill easily made, so I headed out to the east of Elmira and thought I might work my way up towards Watkins Glen.  Northeast of Elmira, I could only get to 5,500 feet and the clouds were beginning to dry up.  I decided not to go too much further up and returned to Harris Hill.

This was a nice flight for me.  I flew further away than I ever have and it's true that I chickened out and returned to the Hill instead of pressing on, but I did put some good mileage on the glider and for my skill and experience level, I definitely made progress and learned a lot on this flight.  I fly because I get enjoyment out of it and this flight was a blast! 

Is it possible to have a 'tin ear' for thermals?

If so, I may have one.  Or maybe not.  It's hard to say.

This weekend I was the commercial pilot on duty and shared a thermal with our club's Duo Discus on a couple of occasions.  The first time, he started lower than I did and passed me up in the thermal.  Now, granted, the pilot was one of our guys who does a lot of racing so his skill level is higher than mine and he has more stick time than I do for sure so maybe it's not a fair comparison.

And, I was with a passenger.  Having cleaned up vomit in the cockpit before, let's just say I'm careful about circling with passengers!  But this passenger didn't mind and I kept checking to make sure he was okay.  So maybe it doesn't count so much.

I guess what bothered me most was that I had hold of the thermal and was on about the third circle without successfully centering it all the way around.  The Duo joined us, circled a couple of times, then seemed to move about 1/4 of a mile away and started a similar circle where the lift was stronger.  I sighed and moved over there.  Sure enough, the lift was better over there.

How did he know?  Luck?  I doubt it.

The second time the Duo appeared about 200 feet below me in a thermal and quickly made it up to my altitude but then was unable to outclimb me.  We circled and rose at approximately the same rate.  I suppose the lift could have been stronger below me and weaker where I was.  Or, I just got more competitive and attuned as the Duo got closer.

Or, I just adopted the Duo's circling pattern and managed to match his rate of climb.

I also made a discovery as we were circling at the same altitude.  It may APPEAR that the guy on the other side of the circle is climbing but what may be happening is that you are flattening out or descending.  I realized this as I exited what I thought was the weaker side of the thermal and watched the Duo enter the same air.  He appeared to catch an updraft and moved from even with the horizon to slightly above it.

How could that be?!  I had JUST BEEN THERE and there and the lift was weak over there.  How could he be climbing?  After a moment, I entered the same spot he was in, expecting to get lift the same as he did but didn't really get much.  I glanced over to the Duo and realized we were even in altitude again.  Since I didn't climb, he must have descended.

Eventually, he exited the thermal at my altitude after another minute or two.  The contest was a draw, except that I started higher then he did and he ended up at my altitude but couldn't climb above me.

Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me and perhaps it is just a part of my learning process.  I'm an okay pilot, I can certainly stay in the air and don't come down any more frequently than anyone else, but I want to be better than that.  I understand the process of finding the lift and centering it.  I've concentrated on trying to center it quickly, within 1-2 turns.  I can usually do that and when I've had trouble, other pilots tell me that they've had similar trouble, so I know I'm at least average at thermal hunting and centering.

What I'm lacking, perhaps, is the search element of thermaling.  I try to lock on to the best lift in a thermal.  I'm not afraid to move my circle around to try to find it.  I vary my bank angle to find the best lift.  All good, but I would NOT have decided to move my circle a full quarter mile away to see if there was stronger lift over there.  I would think that would be a waste of time.  The conditions were blue and there was nothing to indicate even the size of the lift area, like the size of the cloud above.  Still, he moved over there and that was better.

Did he observe in other thermals that the lift was better northeast of the main thermal?  Was it simply luck?  It's hard to say and that makes it harder to learn.

Perhaps a ride with a cross country instructor would help.  Or maybe just some more practice.

Sharing the Air

I played the Father's Day card and headed out to Harris Hill this weekend for some more Discus flying.  The forecast was…meh, but I'm still new to the machine and needed practice in all aspects, including takeoffs and landings.

As it turned out, the flying was swell, although a bit limited.  I managed to assemble the Discus without too much fuss (luck?  getting better?  who knows?) and waited for the day to begin to perk up a bit.  It was, as forecast, a blue day -again.  I'm starting to get used to it instead of being afraid!

I took off around 2pm and promptly returned in about 15 minutes.  There were thermals alright, but they were not widespread and I went looking for them in the wrong place.  On my way down in the pattern, I spotted a single cumulus cloud that was dissipating rapidly with a glider underneath it. Drat!  I'd meant to go check that are out but I needed a relight first.

I got back in line and took off again.  Both takeoffs were well controlled in both direction and pitch and I think one of the secrets to reducing pilot induced oscillation is to take off with a very slight nose down trim and on takeoff roll, simply pitch down very slightly to lift the tail off of the pavement and wait.  It seems to takeoff on its own without jumping up and down.

I released early, in lift and raised the gear.  That's when I had my first aha! moment.  I'd forgotten to cycle the gear up OR down previously.  How I managed to overlook that is the question every pilot who lands gear up asks his or herself.  It was stupid - so stupid that I never realized I didn't cycle the gear until I put it UP after tow release -the SECOND flight.  I made a mental note to USE MY CHECKLIST post-release and be sure to check it pre-landing.  That was an idiot mistake.

I decided not to beat myself up about it and concentrate on flying.  I'd released in lift and pretty soon was climbing over release altitude with top around 4,300 feet.  I joined several other gliders in the same thermal.  I caught some of the action on my GoPro as we circled and climbed.

There were precisely two thermals in the immediate area that were workable.  One, the 'house' thermal we usually find was cycling rapidly, building up for about 10 minutes, popping off a puff of cumulus, then collapsing.  The other was about a mile east and doing the same thing.  I'd climb to a little over 4,000 feet, then set off east, west, or south to see if other thermals were doing the same thing but each time I had to come back to the two that were working.

In any case, it was good practice and I was having fun climbing, taking off a few miles, turning back, and climbing again.  I was joined by several club members and our commercial pilots giving passenger rides on several occasions.

One thing that nags at me is that I was sometimes out climbed by others.  One glider, an ASW-20 consistently, the others a bit less consistently.  I worry that it's my technique, I'm certainly no ace when it comes to thermaling, but I felt I'd gotten a lot better at it.  In a couple of cases where I was just slight below and flying a slightly different circle, I'd move to where the glider above was circling but I didn't get the same lift.  It seems like 50 or 100 feet difference shouldn't be that significant but when I took the  same path, the vario averaged lower than when I took my own path.  But, still, the other glider would sometimes out climb me either from below or above.

I was flying very slowly and using at least 45 degrees in my turns, often smaller diameter circles than others.  I thought, well, maybe that's the problem, the thermal is better with a wider diameter, so I would fly a larger circle.  Didn't help.  I'm pretty sure this is a pilot skill issue that I'll simply have to solve with more experience.

In any case, I had a good time and landed after an hour and fifteen minutes.  I remembered to follow the checklist FUSTALL (flaps, undercarriage, speed, trim, air brakes, look out, land) and monitored my airspeed closely.  I'm still getting used to how far to open the spoilers and how much they affect my descent angle but I'll rate the second landing as quite a bit better than the first with touchdown at minimum energy with spoilers open about half.  I pulled full spoilers as I touched down and rolled up to the line looking like a pro.

Good times.

Stretching out

This weekend the soaring weather was great and I decided time was wasting for me to get some solo cross country experience.  I arrived at the airport around 11am, assembled the Discus and had a little time to relax before taking off around 1pm.

The weather has been quite dry the past several weekends and while the soaring has been good, it's all been into the blue - no clouds to mark the thermals.  That was the case for my flight this weekend as well but, as they say, you gotta believe!  I launched rather poorly with a wing drop and despite full opposite aileron, got a wingtip bump followed by one cycle of pilot induced oscillation.  I knew it happens easily in the Discus and tried mightily not to overcorrect as the glider jumped into the air a bit higher than it should but even so, I 'kissed' the pavement with the main gear for a total of two takeoffs.  I'll keep after it, but I simply need more experience in the Discus to get used to it.

After that inauspicious start, I released in a thermal and started a nice 3 knot average climb to about 6,000 feet over the city of Elmira.  I topped out and headed west, across Harris Hill and found some sink, then started looking for another thermal to get an idea of the working band of the lift.

There was none to be found, and in the blue, you don't really know where to look.  I turned 90 degrees and flew upwind, out over some of the fields that are still dirt, hoping to find some lift but got little more than a few bobbles.  Anytime I took a circle, it was obvious that I wasn't in organized lift.  By now I was getting down to about 1200 feet above the airport, so I turned back towards the Hill and made sure I was close, searching up and down the front of the ridge for some of those lift bumps I'd felt previously.

Nothing.  Meanwhile, I was watching two of our Juniors circling high above at 6,500 feet and my buddy calling to tell me he was at 7,200 and heading cross country.  Good grief!  I was going to have to land and get a relight!  What's wrong with me?  Then, a bump.  I circled over the front of the ridge at 2,400 feet, some 700 feet above airport elevation.  I was out over the valley with a good 1,400 feet underneath me but if this didn't work, I would enter the pattern and land at the airport, which was very close by.

I circled in +1 knot to 0 sink.  Each time I completed a circle I checked altitude and position and made a mental note of whether I would land or not.  After several minutes of simply holding altitude, I made it up 100 feet.  I moved my circle a bit and found +1/2 knot to +1 knot lift all the way around.  I was averaging perhaps .5 knots but I was climbing.  In a little while I was up to 2,800 feet and decided to move over the airport runway to see if the lift was better there.  It was, strengthening to 2kts then 3 knots and topping out at 4 knots average as I climbed away.  In a few minutes I was up to 6,500 feet and fat, dumb, and happy again.

I decided I'd head west towards the town of Corning, staying over the high ground and rather than trying to make time, I'd stop and tank up as I went.  I wanted to be able to glide back to the Hill because I didn't have a proper tow vehicle if I landed out and frankly, I wasn't planning on my first cross country to be in the blue.

I easily made Corning and flew out beyond it to the Painted Post airport.  The thermals were quiet over the city, which was odd.  I turned around and took a different route back to the Hill, keeping to the North.  I was down to 4,200 feet about 5 miles out - no problem to get back but I stopped for a strong thermal and headed back up over 6,200 feet.  I could see Watkins Glen racetrack to the North and decided I'd head up that way to see if I could make it.  Staying high, slowing for lift, I arrived at Watkins Glen track at around 5,500 feet.  Actually, I came up a bit short of the track as the thermal activity seemed to be quite a bit less as I neared it so I figured I could expect the same when I returned.  I decided to turn back about 2 miles short of the track and 16 miles out from Harris Hill.

Doing the math in my head, I knew a good conservative number for return was 5 miles per 1,000 feet.  I'd need 3,000 feet to get back, putting me at 2,500 feet, or about 800 feet above the field if I turned around right now.  I'd probably do better than that, but that's the conservative figure to use.  I arrived back over the field after finding a thermal over the Elmira airport in the valley which put me back at Harris Hill around 4,000 feet.  I'd done it!  I'd flown farther away from the field than I'd flown in the past, and although I didn't stray far enough to be out of gliding range, it's not really that important.  I could have easily kept continuing and I would have if I'd had myself set up for a retrieve.  More importantly, I'd done it all in the blue.

There were a couple of times when I hit a lot of sink and thought, if this doesn't abate, I wasn't going to come back.  I did what I was supposed to - I sped up to minimize it, turned across the direction of the wind at altitude, and played the percentages.  I kept a backup plan for where to land if it got worse and made sure I didn't stray into an area that closed off my options.  I was thinking like a cross country pilot.

I returned to the Hill and played around with the Juniors who were trying to get their 5 hour flights (one did!)  and climbed a couple of times, then left the thermal, went to another, and practiced abandoning them when they weakened.  After 2 hours and 45 minutes I landed with much more precision than I'd taken off.  I remembered to put the gear down and kept my approach speed at 50 knots.  I touched down where I intended and rolled to a stop near the trailer with virtually no brake required.

A GREAT flight for  me and a real confidence booster as I concentrate on stretching out my flight legs this summer.  There are sure to be many adventures and challenges ahead but this weekend I really felt like an actual cross country pilot, even though I was essentially local.  I didn't set a task, so I didn't record the distance, but it was probably a 40 mile flight between the points of Harris Hill, Painted Post and Watkins Glen track.  Maybe less.  I'm not sure.  I just know it was fun.

Starting a Movement - The case for simulation based soaring instruction - Part 1

Forty-three percent.  That's the percent of members of my soaring club that don't have a private pilot's license.  In round numbers, it is 39 people.  Some are Juniors -our program is quite large with between 20 and 40 teenage members but even so, 17 of our senior members lack a private pilot's license.  In the 8 years I've been a member, no one (including me, who already had a private pilot's license) has gone from new member to private pilot in a single season.

As you can imagine, with 39 members, the queue for CFI time is lengthy, especially when you throw in the variables of weather, aircraft, and student availability.  It's a small wonder that any of our students senior or junior, ever get their license!  In addition, we've lost several tow pilots through the regular ebb and flow of membership and end up scheduling many of our CFI's as tow pilots (many of them are tow qualified), reducing the scheduled opportunities for training.

I became Junior advisor last year and tracked how many of our 19 student pilot Juniors made it to their solo flight last year.  It was a grand total of 5.  That's about 1/4 of the active Juniors (we are at the 20 Junior level right now) and is good, but it could be better.  This started me seriously thinking about the why it takes so long to become a private pilot in our club and whether there were ways to reduce that.

The Student-Instructor model - a very costly way to learn how to fly

Our instructors tell me it takes about 70 flights for us to solo a pilot (Junior or Senior).  If each flight is around 12 minutes long, that's 840 minutes or around 14 hours of flight time spaced out over 18 months.  If it takes the aforementioned 18 months to get to solo, that averages to a little under 4 flights a month.  It seems like more because we rarely fly over the winter, so the dedicated students make a point to get out and fly as often as they can when the weather is good.  But the average is about 4 flights a month.  At 12 minutes per flight (no lift) that's as little as 48 minutes a month.

It gets worse.  Consider how precious that flight time is -particularly for primary flight students.  They don't fly the takeoff, tow, or landing.  That 12 minutes is reduced to perhaps 6 minutes at first.  Things happen so fast that they don't know what is going on, or aren't primed to watch the right things and the CFI either doesn't have time to explain it or it just doesn't sink in.  Once on the ground, if the weather is good, there is usually a line of students waiting to fly, so post flight discussion is curtailed and preflight instruction for the next student is likewise curtailed.  Throw in some time between flights and it is no surprise that progress is slow.

On the flip side, CFI time is one of the most precious commodities we have.  Ou club has a varying population of CFI's, most recently we're on the low side, but even with on years with a good population of CFI's, if more than one is available at a time, it's unusual.  Not to mention that when students get frustrated by lack of progress and quit, there goes the CFI's investment in yet another 'dry hole' and the necessity to attract new club members who will repeat the cycle.

That means the minutes in the air REALLY count and we seem to spend a lot of them getting students familiar with the rhythm of a flight or relearning things they ought to be familiar with if they only flew regularly enough.

A 12 minute flight with a tow to 2,000 feet costs a senior student about $32.  The main variable is the length of the flight but our Schweizer 2-33's rent for just $7 an hour, so even a lengthy flight doesn't add much cost.  It's the $11 per thousand foot tow and the $8 hookup fee that are the bigger ticket items.  Take that $32 X 70 flights and it costs a student around $2,240 to earn a private pilot glider license.

Shortening the Training Cycle and Improving the Quality of Learning

So what?  That's the way it has always been, some of our experienced pilots would say.  They forget, of course, the frustration the student goes through as he/she tries to learn not only the basics of flight but to fit in with a whole new group of club members -all of whom seem to be more experienced and unsympathetic to the struggle of the new pilot.

Fortunately, in this day and age desktop PC's are so powerful, they can simulate soaring flight and provide that jumpstart that our students need.  Besides the obvious benefit to students, simulation provides the following to a club:

CFI multiplier  

• Simulated flight starts immediately.  There is no need to wait in the tow line, nor is there a need to land for a relight because altitude can be added instantly with a keystroke.  That means the student spends much more time flying.  Consider the normal 12 minute flight cycle for real life flight.  In a 1 hour period, between repositioning the glider, after landing and post/preflight discussion the best you can expect is 3  twelve minute flights per hour. (36 minutes of flight).  A primary student is lucky to fly half of that (18 minutes).  When seated at the simulator station, the student will fly the majority of it.  If more than one simulator is available, one CFI can easily train and oversee two or more students (we've had as many as 4 at a time), multiplying their presence by severalfold and doing so in a shorter period of time.
• You don't have to have a CFI instruct the student.  You just need a motivated and qualified helper (another private pilot) that you instruct how to conduct the lesson.  That frees up CFI's for actual flight duty.
• Having a ground instructor who is not a CFI may prep them for upgrading to a CFI rating.

Time machine.  

• Students spend more time flying the simulator, and are practicing the same maneuvers over and over, speeding up the muscle-memory coordination skills they need.  Consider even the most basic maneuvers such as learning the relationship between pitch and airspeed and coordinating shallow and steep turns at constant airspeed.  Because each hour of instruction includes a much higher percentage of the student flying, they master these skills quicker than if they practice in the real aircraft in 6 minute chunks of time.
• Motivated students can purchase their own simulation gear for less than the cost of 6 or 7 real life flights and practice maneuvers at home.
• Training can be performed at night, during the off season and during howling rainstorms.  There is no reason to cancel a sim session due to tow pilot availability, too many students, or maintenance.  Thus, students can arrange to train when it suits them and reduce the number of times they must shoehorn their busy lives into real life training.
• Reduced number of flights to learn maneuvers.  This translates into not just time but money savings.

Higher quality students. 

• The simulator allows students to practice maneuvers under the watchful eye of the instructor.  Being able to pause the simulation allows a discussion to take place if the student need help understanding.  Simple things like turning 'smoke on' allows the student to go outside and see how smooth or ragged the turn he/she just made was.  Replay capability allows both student and instructor to critique a maneuver or a landing.  All of this sets the stage for a student that knows what is going to happen in real flight, has already practiced the maneuver numerous times and understands the concepts behind them.  This means a higher quality student who is better prepared to learn how a real life maneuver is performed and able learn more from the flight than a student who is not similarly prepared.

More complete training  

• Most people are concerned about the fidelity of a simulator, but there is an advantage to the fact that it is only an approximation of real flight.  For example, it is easy to demonstrate to a student what happens when they are too far downwind to get back to the field.  How about a low altitude skidding turn that develops into a spin?  Thermal and ridge soaring techniques can be explored, aerotow no-no's, all can be explored without danger to life or aircraft.  Crosswind training, weather conditions that exceed pilot capabilities, estimating glide performance with headwinds/tailwinds/crosswinds, the effects of turbulence on flight instruments and maneuvers, all of these conditions can be introduced at will, not just when they exist in real life.

Starting a Movement

Of course, this is a completely different way to train and it is difficult for us to let go of our concepts of how things 'should' be done.  This leads people to focus on what they perceive as the deficiencies of simulation.  This is natural but the evidence suggests that existing simulation is good enough to keep from introducing bad habits to students who learn through simulation.

Of course, 'real' pilots who have not taken the time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of simulation based training are often the most vocal.  The list of reasons that simulators are useless run from their inability to simulate subtle and detailed weather phenomena to video or flight fidelity.  This is hogwash but it stands in firm and often united opposition to introducing pilots to flight training via simulation.

So how do you start a movement?  If the arguments about cost, time, and CFI availability won't get you anywhere, do what I did - get off the dime and ask new students if they are interested in simulation.  You do not have to be a CFI - I'm not.  Make sure you announce to the club leadership that you are doing this and that you'd love to have advice from a CFI but that you'll proceed without them if you don't get any volunteers.  What that will do is strike fear into the hearts of those who ARE CFI's because they are certain that you will be training these students 'wrong'.

They might be right.  I don't really know because they agreed to help me out and I showed them a complete CFI manual I'd put together that spelled out the lessons and order that I intended to use.  We conducted a few sessions to see how it went and I found that they are willing to try this technique.

More on that in part 2 of this post.

 

Good Grief! There's just so much going on!

I haven't posted lately because there's just so much going on I haven't had time to!

Since becoming the Junior leader at our soaring club, I've been awfully busy with that and other soaring things.

I've been building a photorealistic scenery for Harris Hill.  It's been a real slog to figure it all out but I'm making progress.  I stupidly decided that it was such a hassle to make a scenery that I'd investigate new tools and techniques.  THAT has been a real rabbit hole!  But I'm making progress.  One of these days I'll post something on that.

Probably the most significant thing I've done is to try and help my club solve the problem of lots of students and few instructors.  We're like any other club and the enthusiasm waxes and wanes from time to time.  We've gotten behind a bit on nudging people to become instructors and we've also had a number of tow pilots quit.  That's a problem because most of our instructors know how to fly the towplane.  That means they are flying when they could be instructing.

We have 39 people in the club who don't have a license.  We have 11 instructors.  Do the math.

As the Junior advisor, I know that the 19 teens we have in the club have a hard time getting instruction, so I finally got to propose that we use Condor, a soaring flight simulator to instruct students.  Our leadership was receptive, but properly skeptical so we agreed to hold a single test session to see whether it could work or not.

We are very fortunate to have access to the National Soaring Museum (NSM) on Harris Hill.  The NSM has a suite of 5 simulators that run Condor, so we had 2 of our Senior members and 2 of our Junior members attend a simulation instruction session.

The results were good, I think.  We had four students fly for 90 minutes under an instructor's guidance. I helped out as well, as I think I might be bound for CFI-ville at some point.  That's 4 X 90 or 360 minutes of flight time!  In just 90 minutes.  With a single instructor.  At 12 minutes per flight, that is 30 flights.  At $40 per flight, that was $1,200 dollars of flight time, for free.

We practiced the basics - pitch trim and airspeed in level flight, and shallow turns and then steep turns.  The sim allows you to stop, illustrate a point, go outside, turn on smoke, explain how to trace a nice clean spiral, pause to talk about it, and then resume the flight.  You can replay the flight and view it from any perspective.

How good is it?  Good enough to make progress, I'd say.  The glider we use is an ASK-13, and it flies a lot like our Schweizer 2-33.  The flight physics are pretty good and the adverse yaw and rudder coordination is like the real thing.  You can fly most any maneuver and you don't need to wait for a tow plane.  Hit the 'Q' key to gain 1,000 feet of altitude in an instant.

Can you actually learn to fly a glider in it?  I think so.  I wouldn't try it, of course.  But I think that if you can fly the simulator, you can easily transition to a glider.  Plus, you can try out all of those things you've always wanted to know - how far will it glide?  Does this thing spin?  How much altitude can I slip off and still make the runway?  You can practice rope breaks, find out why cross controlled stalls are a bad thing, and so on.

I'm hoping we'll adopt this training technique more heavily this year and maybe even do a weekly flight simulation training session with it for our students.  Over the winter, I think we can do even more.

If it knocks even 5 flights off of the average solo requirement, it will be totally worth it.