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.