New Personal Best!

I headed out to Harris Hill this weekend looking for some instruction on the ASK-21 and hoping to get signed off to fly it. I waited until around 11am to get out there because it was a bit windy and I wanted to wait for it to calm down a bit.

When I arrived, you could tell it was a good soaring day. All the private aircraft trailers were out and some of them had already taken off. The three ASK-21's that the club owns were occupied. In addition, the 1-34 was queued up for takeoff. I decided to make myself useful and help out a bit while I waited to see if one of the ASK-21's would come available.

After about two hours, I decided it wasn't going to happen, but the weather was so magnificent I wasn't going to let a lack of high performance aircraft keep me on the ground. I preflighted one of the Schweizer 2-33's and decided I would test my skills in the trainer.

Just a minute or two before I got ready to pull it out on the line, the 1-34 returned and I zipped over to claim the next flight. Quite a bit of time passed as we had one maintenance issue after another with BOTH of our Pawnee tow planes and our Super Cub. Amazingly, I was finally airborne after 3:00pm.

I was back just a few minutes later, having found the sink but not the lift. I re-studied the sky and strapped myself back in to the 1-34. This time, I decided to release the tow line as we entered what appeared to be a very good thermal. I was about 300 feet below regular tow release height but in a matter of a minute or so I was climbing through 4,000 feet.

I stuck with the thermal until it petered out around 5,000 feet and headed towards Elmira. All I found was sink, so I turned back to the ridge over Harris Hill and decided to fly back and forth along it until I found a thermal. The winds were still pretty good at around 10 knots out of the Northwest and I was able to reduce my descent and gain some time. After a few minutes, I stumbled into a 2 knot thermal and began to circle. As I did, it began to strengthen and I started up slowly.

I concentrated on maintaining airspeed and circling in a coordinated fashion. I'm still not great at it, but I am paying attention. It turns out I would get a lot of practice today. The 2 knot thermal turned into a 5 knot thermal and pretty soon I was climbing through 6,000 and then 7,000 feet, eventually topping out at 7,200.

I turned and headed out towards Elmira, since there were clouds in that direction and I reckoned that there might be thermals over the city. I found a difficult to fly one over the golf course and got myself back up to around 6,000 feet and then headed over towards the ELM airport. I found a great thermal there and circled some more.

The thermals were variable in height but fairly close together this day. I was able to move from one to another fairly easily but I never found one underneath a cumulus cloud - which is quite often where you find them. But the thermals were cycling so quick that by the time the clouds appeared, the thermal had died.

I flew left hand turns and right hand turns to try and get my skills up to par. Again, I'm no champ at this, but on the other hand I WAS managing to climb and stay high. I'm sure some of our 'Aces' could have climbed twice as high in half the time, but that's the allure of the gliding experience. You have to learn how through experience.

I headed back over the ridge off of Harris Hill and decided to work the lift there. Several hang gliders were quite high over the ridge, a sign that the lift is good enough for gliders. As I entered, I saw Rolf Beyer, one of our club members, enter below me. We flew the ridge together for awhile, but I decided to circle in some weak lift at the east end of the ridge. I worked it and worked it, in the lift sometimes climbing, sometimes not. But I stuck it out and the lift improved (or my technique did) and pretty soon I was in a 5 knot thermal headed up again!

Topping out at 5,000 feet, I headed back over the ridge and found super smooth lift both over the ridge and out over the valley. I was able to fly out, back, and cruise the ridge without losing altitude and regaining anything I lost from flying out of the lift band.

Eventually, I decided it was getting late and time to come down. I put the nose down, accelerated to 80 knots and did a series of ridge runs with pull ups and rudder turns at each end for fun. After several passes, I was low enough to land and brought the plane in.

I knew I'd been up for awhile but when I checked the log sheet, I realized I had a new personal best of 2 hours and 22 minutes! I think I would have stayed up longer if it hadn't been so late, but this was a great flight in and of itself. I'm really enjoying the flexibility of the 1-34 and being able to range a little further out to find those thermals I need to stay aloft. Lovely!

Flying the ASK-21

The 1-34 has been busy over the past week or so when I've been out to fly it, so I've been taking instruction in the ASK-21. This is a 2 seat, fiberglass glider with a respectable 34:1 glide ratio. That is, it will travel 34 feet forward for every 1 foot it glides down, or to put it in easier terms, it will glide 1 mile and lose just 115 feet. 1000 feet of altitude will send you 8.6 miles. At least in still air. I use a more conservative 200 feet per mile estimate, which gives you 5 miles per 1,000 feet you descend.

In any case, it is on par with the 1-34 and is my first 'glass' ship. Everyone at Harris Hill adores the ASK-21, and I can see why. It's comfortable, capable, seats two so you can take your friends up, and has very benign stall characteristics. A perfect aircraft for us regular 'non-racing' pilots who don't need to fly bleeding edge aircraft to get max performance from the ship.

Since the 1-34 has been busy, I've almost taken enough flights in the 21 to get checked out in it. I've been flying with Ron Ogden, one of our club instructors, and a real pleasure to fly with. Nothing rattles Ron and he's extremely well versed and, importantly, able to convey the lessons in a way that makes you understand the point he's trying to get across.

Although the 21 is an easy flyer, I've still had a few things to work on. I continue to try to be aware of my weakness to lag inputting control corrections until too late - particularly on takeoff. You really have to be on the ball and get those wings level and nose pointed the right direction and keep them there or things go south quickly. Not that I've had any serious issues with this, but I know it is one of my weak areas.

In the 1-34, I noticed that I was wobbling a bit on takeoff as the wings would rock one way, then the other. I set out to concentrate on arresting this tendency as one of my highest priorities and have been making decent progress at it. Being aware of it is 80% of the solution. Doing something about it NOW is the other 20%.

It's challenging for me. On takeoff roll, the ailerons aren't that effective until you get a little bit of speed, then they're VERY effective. You have to feed in different amounts of control (more) at the beginning of the roll than after gaining some speed (less). In the 1-34, it is pretty light so you do this with as steady a hand as you can but you don't have to move the stick super far until you are now rolling over to the other side and in danger of banging the wing on the ground. Of course, there is a wheel out there to prevent damage but it's bad form not to be in control of the airplane and the wheel is there for those big wind gusts that even full control deflection can't fix. A proficient pilot keeps the wings level on takeoff.

On the 21, the glider is quite a bit heavier and the wings are heavier. You have to feed in quite a bit of control and hold it there a little longer than I'm used to in the 1-26 or 1-34.

Yesterday, I worked on that and managed to keep us more or less in the center on the second takeoff by consciously feeding in more and holding it a little longer. That worked pretty well.

On landing, Ron encouraged me to 'pick a speed brake setting and try to stick with it'. This is a little tricky, but the key to landing the 21. You have to A) look at the field on base leg; B) pick the approximate speed brake setting (1/4? 1/2? 1/8?) that you think will last all the way down base and the turn to final. Of course, you can adjust it as you go but the idea is to adjust it only in very small increments. Managing the energy in the glider to dissipate it just as you flare out and touch down is the point.

On the first flight, I was jockeying the speed brakes all around. Landing was fine, but then Ron challenged me to 'pick it and stick it'. If you can do this successfully, it removes the variable of having to continually adjust your pitch and the spoiler position to achieve the proper airspeed. A stable final approach always assures a good landing.

On the second flight, I managed to pick the right setting and keep it pretty much locked in that position all the way down to the landing. I hunted for the landing gear just a bit on the flare, but made the proper adjustments and we landed in the right attitude and pretty close to the spot I had intended to land on. Awesome!

Now, of course, the way it works with me is that I'll blow it next time out and end up sawing the spoiler handle back and forth trying in vain to get it right. Or I'll overshoot and land long. But at least I know what the right technique is. I'll need more familiarity and landing practice in the 21 to get it worked out, but I'm starting to really like this airplane.

If all goes well, in another flight or two or three, I'll be signed off to fly the 21. My goals for my flying this summer are to: A) step up to the higher performance aircraft, the 1-34 and the ASK-21; B) Become proficient at flying both aircraft in a variety of conditions. I'm making good progress towards part A of that goal and if I can get signed off on the 21, I've got a lot of summer and fall flying ahead of me to get comfortable with the 21.

I'm looking forward to a great summer in these airplanes.

Landing the 1-34

I flew the 1-34 at our training night Wednesday. The sky was overcast but we were able to get a 2000 foot tow. No lift at all, but also no wind. I took the opportunity to practice my landings in the 1-34.

It's not what I would call a tricky airplane to land, but it is a little different from the 1-26 and 2-33. Both times I noticed that just as you flare that the airspeed drops off as you have the spoilers open. I can see why I was told that most damage to this plane comes from people who drop it in on a hard landing.

It's sort of like...I'm on target, airspeed good...I'm on target, airspeed good...flare, whoa! slowing down below 40 knots...touchdown! Balancing that effect in gusty conditions could lead to a belly flop, I'll bet.

In any case, I managed my two landings without much trouble and all went well. I'm still impressed with how far this plane will go when entering the pattern at the proper altitude. You pretty much have to tell it to GET DOWN. Good stuff.