Glider Pilots- I found the attached article in the latest Soaring Magazine, and wanted to make sure you had all caught it. You do read your Soaring Magazine don’t you? You are a member of the Soaring Society of America aren’t you? If not, you should be. Yes, I know, it’s not the best magazine in the world, but it is a lot better than it use to be, and some of the articles are right on the mark. Please read the article. It explains the difference between a low energy touch down, and a slow speed approach. The numbers are for an ASW-21, not one of our gliders, so don’t dwell on them, but you’ll get the idea.
From the Back Seat
Phil’s view from the Instructor’s seat.
GoPro Cameras are COOL
My wonderful wife gave me a GoPro camera for my birthday a couple of years ago. For those of you who haven’t seen one, this is a very small digital camera that is easy to use. It has a fixed focal length fish-eye lens and can record pictures or movies. It comes with a watertight … Read more
Tripple Whiskey Double Foxtrot
Triple Whiskey Double Foxtrot We’ve all read the stories of epic wave flights. Climbs to twenty, twenty five thousand feet or even higher. Oxygen. Cold. Wave windows. Frosted over canopies. Lenticular clouds. Rotors. Cracking gel coat and diamond badges. When there is a strong wind blowing against a ridge, the air is forced up to several times the height of the ridge. If the air is cool and stable, it falls back down to the surface, compresses, and bounces back up even higher. The cycle repeats itself downwind of the ridge, and each crest gets higher and higher. People travel hundreds of miles to glider destinations that boast high wave flights, but you can find wave at PGC.
Positive control Check
Friends- If you haven’t heard, Quebec Delta was grounded a little while ago when one of our members had flown it and found that it was badly out of trim. The adjustment was so far out that the glider ballooned up unexpectedly on takeoff, and required full forward trim and forward stick pressure for the entire flight. When Jack disassembled the glider to investigate, he found that the pushrod that controls the elevator trim had been badly bent. Fortunately Jack was able to straighten the pushrod and reassemble the glider. If the pushrod had been bent any more, we would have had to order a new one from Germany, and the glider would probably have been grounded for months.