Advice to other clubs

It's always a good idea to have at least one club member who understands internal combustion engines.

Weekend report April 25 - 26

Andy follows his Assembly Day writeup with this report for Sunday:

We had a good day for training. Dennis flew the Blanik, (and was first!) then later in the day a little sun started to hit the ground, and the air went right up to 6000 feet with Tim and Dakai going up with it. Karl and I took the third flight, and we averaged at least 5 knots to cloudbase for another
hour in the air.

I can report that the new Blanik flies well, and the only anomaly is that the brake sticks (on) so we'll be looking into that ASAP. In the meantime we'll avoid using it.

In other news the green golf cart is dead. Karl had planned to bring the white cart home for maintenance and we had it all loaded before the green machine died - so we switched them out and Karl will work on the green one first. Note that the left rear tire of the white cart doesn't hold air very well. It's on the list to be fixed.

My first flight of 2015

My season opener didn't occur until I got to Perry, South Carolina, for the Region 5 North contest that I am fond of attending in April.  Unfortunately, due to a rained out practice period, I didn't even get a chance to fly until the flag dropped for the opening race!  Even "better", it was a windy blue day and I ended up flying all by myself after a late start.  Predictably, it ended early.

Here's the whole flight in SeeYou:

Here's the overhead of the end of the flight, North is up:

I thought I might have been flying  between streets of better air, hence the 90 degree jog.  It didn't work, but it was a good thing to try.

Wind was 280 at 10 - 15 knots on the ground, about 23 knots at soaring height.

Cross country flying is all about decision making and "gear changes" or transitions in your thought process.  The 270 left turn at lower right marks the gear change from "I'm racing" to "survival" and "I might need a place to park" mode.   The last two circles are more about field selection than they are trying to climb.  The point that I quit circling and over fly my eventual landing site marks the transition from "I'm trying to soar" to "I'm landing, right now". Making these transitions in a decisive manner at appropriate times is one key to safe cross country soaring.

By the way, be sure to fly a normal size/shape pattern despite the fact that your intended field might be pretty small!  SeeYou says that field is 860 feet long and I'd guess that the trees on the approach end are about 50 feet high.

Here's the landing site:

Thanks to Marshall McClung for retrieving me and sharing soaring stories over Mexican food and margaritas.

-T8

Assembly Day

Andy Lumley writes:

We had a good turnout, (I hope I remember everyone). Willy, Matt, Dennis, Tim, Sonny, Lane, Greg, Mark, Andy L., Bill Swartz, Henry, Steve and Dakai arrived early and we got the tow plane, a golf cart, the 2-33 and 1-23 assembled. The Blanik is ready to go but we didn't fly it today.

Here's a picture of the assembly crew standing in front of the only aircraft they did not assemble today.

Despite a very dead battery in the towplane we managed to get it started and did 7 or 8 flights to get Bill, Greg, Mark and Lane checked out. Others waited patiently, but by 3pm we were all pretty cold so we called it a day.

Tomorrow we'll continue with checkrides and when it gets a little warmer (and the water gets turned on) we'll get everything washed and polished.

Bill Swartz re-covered his Citabria fuselage and painted the entire plane this winter. Luckily he gave us a nice fly-by before heading back to Maine.

PAGC Opening Ceremony

The weather was beautiful as we raised the flags at the 1^st FAI Pan American Gliding Championships yesterday.

Before

During

After

And then the first contest day was rained out.

The Seniors

Happy Spring!

Bill O'Donnell has alerted us to this video, showing some of the fun we had at the Seniors Contest a week ago.

There is a one-in-six chance that Rick is in the back seat of the Duo Discus in the photo above.

Free flight tests

One of the indications that our sport is in decline is the panicky removal of financial barriers for aspiring glider pilots.

It's a good news/bad news story.  The good news is that there are some opportunites for free flight tests out there.  The bad news is that these initiatives are necessary.

The first one is from Burt Compton from the Soaring Safety Foundation.  If you were around a dozen years ago, you will remember that we invited Burt to Post Mills to conduct one of SSF's Safety Seminars. That was fun; we should do it again.

Burt is well-known for his promotion of the sport of soaring.  He lives in Texas and is personally responsible for putting Marfa back on the map as a major US soaring site, after it had fallen into decline.  He runs a commercial operation, Marfa Gliders on the municipal airport north of town (not the Army Air Force base in the movie).

Anyway, Burt is offering free flight tests for any glider rating.  All you have to do is show up in Marfa.  He'll even put you up for free. Details here. Marfa is a truly wonderful place, for reasons ranging from aesthetic to supernatural, with gliding in the middle somewhere.

The other opportunity is a little closer to home.

Last year, the state of Vermont, at the request of CAP and other interested parties, sponsored a week long training clinic for Flight Instructor applicants.  It was a howling success.  It produced a handful of new CFIs, and the best part is that they want to do it again.

The details are still being worked out, but in a nutshell, if you are a Private or Commercial pilot who has passed all the required Knowledge Tests and show up for the late summer clinic (somewhere in Vermont, probably Springfield), you will receive all the ground and flight instruction you need and a flight test, all at no cost to you. You will then be a CFI, subject to all the privileges and abuse you have envied in others all these years.

You don't have the Knowledge Tests under your belt, you say? We've got that covered, too. There will be a PMSC-sponsored ground school to help get you through those tests.  Paul has sent out the announcement on the club email list.  Basically it says to contact Paul or Rick if you're interested.

Movie recommendations

It's winter, right? It's the season when we spend a lot of time indoors. Time to break out the DVD movies and watch the good ones again.

The best gliding movie ever made was The Sun Ship Game.  How many of these facts about the movie did you know:

• It was made by a serious film maker.
• It is not about the World Championships in Marfa.
• It features the only known footage of a 2-32 in a gliding competition.
• It starts out in Vermont.
• It proves that people were once allowed on the roof of the building at Sugarbush.
• Lebanon airport appears in a scene.
• Smoking was cool in 1969.

It was such a good movie that parts of it are excerpted in the second best soaring movie ever made, A Fine Week of Soaring.  This one gets a thumbs up from the weird guy doing gliding movie reviews on YouTube. It takes place at Mifflin County Airport, in Pennsylvania, which some of us have visited.

Every self-respecting glider pilot should own both of these classic films. They are available for purchase here and here (other places as well). Under extraordinary circumstances, you might be allowed to borrow Rick's copies.

Goodbye

Happy New Year

Cover Boy

Wind map 3

Here is another wind map website.

Now there are three of these (links in the right column of the blog). Which one is your favorite?