Saturday, October 11, 2014

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.