An early March warm spell brought on some pre-season flying and put me back in the saddle again. That was followed by my acceptance as the new Junior organization advisor for Harris Hill, some sporadic issues with the web site, the weather station, and a full upgrade of the Hill to add WiFi via a repeater to give everyone access to the internet from pretty much anywhere on the field.
Follow up with some great flights in the ASK-21 with passengers, some fun alone time in the trusty 1-26 and we arrive at my current project - getting checked out in the club's Discus glider.
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| Andy Brayer and the object of my desire - the Discus |
All I can say is...this is one beautiful machine. It's the kind of plane that soaring pilots dream of flying one day and I'm closing in on making that day happen for me. Beautiful sleek lines, high performance, and ease of flight are hallmarks of the Discus and you can tell this is an incredibly efficient machine just by sitting in the cockpit.
Yesterday evening I strapped on the parachute and sat in the cockpit for about an hour while Andy Brayer, one of our Discus aces, familiarized me with the control locations, functions, and we ran through how the systems work, did a little scenario flying, and with the fuselage up on a cradle, I practiced cycling the landing gear up and down.
Ahem. About that landing gear. I'm really worried I won't remember to put it down. And, there are two ways you end up landing without gear in a glider. First, you flat out forget to put it down. That means you didn't follow the checklist properly.
The OTHER way is the way I can totally see it happening. Basically, you forget to put the gear UP after you takeoff, then as you get ready for landing, you put the gear "down" except you are actually putting the gear UP by accident. It sounds real easy to do and I'm really worried I'll be the one to do it!
Regardless, I'm very excited to get checked out in the Discus because I'm itching to fly cross country and right now, the season is on and the days are ticking away. I've got to act soon to get going on it and right now is the time.
Driving that is a passenger ride I had the other day. My passenger was a lapsed flight instructor in gliders and after we got to about 1,000 feet I offered to let him fly. It was obvious he knew what he was doing right away and after we released, he lowered the nose and sped up to get to a nearby cloud, cross country style. He knew what to do and wasn't afraid to lose altitude to do it. We eventually hooked up into a thermal and spent the rest of the ride above release altitude romping all over the Elmira area and just generally having a blast.
That ride made me want to get into the Discuss that much worse! I think I've got it lined up for Saturday to get a flight checkout and then finally fly the aircraft. Beyond that, Harris Hill has a cross country 'camp' they are hosting for a three day period prior to our region 3 soaring contest. The camp will be led by our ace cross country pilots and will include lead-follow flights, ground school tips and hopefully good weather!
The only fly in the ointment is that I don't have a glider to fly during the camp and the Discus is spoken for already. Sigh. The travails of not owning your own aircraft! I'm giving some consideration to asking the club to use the 1-34 for that period of time. Although it doesn't have the legs the fiberglass aircraft do, I can still use it to fly more local cross country flights. I think I'll talk to one of our instructors about whether that is a good idea or not.
In the meantime, I'm nearly there to making one of my fiberglass dreams come true!
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