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RayDunzl

RayDunzl

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Blumlein 88

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I'll keep "Stick and Rudder" in mind, thank you, maybe somebody has it at the club.

Meanwhile there are plenty of texts on un-powered flight, too.

My search yielded this new one for the bookmark pile:

https://www.gliding.world/index.php/gliding-the-basics/4-18-the-landing
That one is a good contrast to the book I suggest. All good info on the one you link, but reads like a checklist you have to memorize.

The other book guides you into concepts on how to think of flying wings. You bit by bit learn what the wing is, how it wants to fly and how to control it, etc etc, and when you are done it is easy to naturally think in any given condition what will be happening. You are not thinking of any checklist or particular items you are just thinking naturally with less effort about what you want to do and knowing how a wing flies the answer is rather obvious.

You would need to pair it with books like the one you indexed, but this other one has some qualities that are simply missing in the more common approaches.
 

Vasr

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Blanik L-23 two seat trainer:

Airspeed in knots, variometer (rise or fall in knots, max indication is 10), another variometer, rise fall in meters per second, compass, yellow tow line release handle, and altimeter, reading 90 feet above sea level.

View attachment 110123
Thanks for the reports. Brings back memories.

That cockpit looks luxurious compared to the Schweitzer 2-33s I started in a very long time ago. ;)

No tow plane where I was. Just a winch at the other end of the runway. Took you barely to 1000' before you had to release. Either you found a thermal almost immediately or landed back down following the pattern. Drove me to powered flights.

Wish motor gliders had become cheaper and more common. Even a 80hp Rotax engine would have been enough.
 

Bugal1998

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I'll second stick and rudder. Pair it with a good foundational understanding of aerodynamics (not the myths and over simplifications that abound in club houses and hangers), add the text of your choice dedicated to stalls and spins and you'll be well on your way.

The FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook is a worthwhile read... Then search the FAA database of advisory circulars and read anything pertaining to glider operations or any operations gliders have in common with powered fixed wing aircraft.

All of those resources, many of which are available at no cost via the FAA, will enhance the benefit you'll get from glider specific texts and your time in the air. There's no such thing as too much knowledge in aviation.
 

BDWoody

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I'll second stick and rudder.

I'll give it a third...

It's one to buy. I'd say it helped me think like a pilot that's part of the airplane.
 
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RayDunzl

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Ok, an update.

Some of the club members went to the Sequatchie Ridge in Tennessee for about 10 days to experience ridge soaring.

Fly along the edges of this valley at high speed when the wind is rising over the ridge:

1617767200058.png


The weather has been as good as it gets here around Tampa the last few days.

Cloud base around seven thousand feet, my flight last was over two hours. We got tired, didn't run out of lift. Point yourself toward a likely looking cloud and get caught in the updraft that was making it and ride up to the fringe of the mist with the variometer pegged - it only goes to 10 knots up - 1,000 feet per minute.

With a little more practice and thinking about it, I might have a handle on the takeoffs, now.

Seventeen flights now, some short - takeoff and landing practice - some as long as my butt can stand...

The Pawnee towplane reconstruction is nearly finished. The wings were reattached Monday. So all the big parts have been recovered, repainted, restored, renewed, and reassemboled. There's still quite a bit of little things - cable connections, wiring, adjustments, and check and recheck to be done, And the engine needs to be "looked at". Maybe 3-4 more weeks before it flies again. Consider the work involved similar to the restoration of a 1963 car to near-new condition throughout...

I'll get a picture of it tomorrow. It really looks nice, the mechanics are doing a good job on it.

Went to the Seniors Contest at Seminole Lake (twice). Watching 5 tow planes launch about 60 gliders as quickly as possible was quite a sight. Average about one a minute. Tow to 2000 feet, release, the glider gets into the bottom of one of the thermals the earlier pilots have found, ride it to 4500 feet, and soar off toward the first task-point. There were maybe 5 turnpoints for them to meet before return after two hours and 150 miles or so distance.


 
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Blumlein 88

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That looks really neat. Seeing all those gliders in a spiral using the same thermal is quite the image.

Is the variable tone heard in most of the first video a tone 'readout' of the variometer?
 

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Well well well. I join a Hi-Fi Forum and one the members goes ape & proves they are absolutely mad. Just mad, mad as a hatter. Dude does the concept 'gravity' mean anything to you?
 

Blumlein 88

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Well well well. I join a Hi-Fi Forum and one the members goes ape & proves they are absolutely mad. Just mad, mad as a hatter. Dude does the concept 'gravity' mean anything to you?
What an audiophile thinks when you bring up gravity.
 
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RayDunzl

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RayDunzl

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I find the audio a bit annoying, having done without it so far in the air. Instructor doesn't use it.

Me: "Is there a battery in the plane?"
Jan: "No, We don't need it."
Me "Ok."

It seems to just mimic the needle's deflection, which you can easily see while listening to variations in the airstream. The rhythm of the needle rising and falling as you fly into and out of the core of the lift seems easier to decode than the same thing presented audibly.

Think if your car had an audible speedometer centered around 35mph.

On the Simulator, I started with the audible vario, then turned it off, and haven't used it since.

Maybe I'll come back to it someday.

---

Tomorrow I get a couple of hours as passenger/co-pilot in the Cessna. Instructor said he needs to log a few hours for some reason (probably some currency rating) and invited me to go.

Hmm. Not too excited about depending on an engine, and it will be noisy, but I haven't been in a private plane since about 1968 when I was toying with the Civil Air Patrol. Lasted about a month till I got a ride.

I didn't become a Boy Scout either. Only attended one meeting.

I did play in the school band for years.
 
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Blumlein 88

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WARNING: both on topic and about audio perception.

I visited the Huntsville Space and Rocket center when maybe 10 years old. I remember one demo was by a Gemini crew member. It was on monitoring various things in the craft. Many were audio tones. Different types of sounds were used for various things monitored like temps, pressures, speeds etc. etc. It sounded like a horrible cacophony at first and it was monitoring 12 different things. They explained it was easier to learn than you think. He talked about research that discovered this method.

Anyway, in a 15 minute learning session he started with one tone, what it changing meant and how it changed. Then he added another tone, and then another. After this many of the kids could listen and when asked report what any of the 12 parameters were doing. It was surprisingly easy. Of course I was 10, in my 60s it might be a different experience.

Similar to playing blind chess. I'd read all my young life about some of the grandmasters playing like 50 games blind simultaneously. When in high school some of tried playing a game blind (both of us). Found it not hard. Found we never had a disagreement about what was where. So we got some other people and tried two games and then four. I think the most I ever played was 12. It was easy to segment each game in my mind, see it and play as well as I could play one game it seemed to me. So not as hard as it sounded nor as impressive after you'd done it.

So I don't know how I'd feel about the audible variometer. Since there are fewer things going on in a glider, maybe I'd also think such a thing superfluous and annoying.

Also for awhile my duties included driving dump trucks. One I had to sometimes use had a hole where previously some light was mounted, but no longer was on the roof of the cab. It pretty much was a variable tone speedometer above about 30 mph. It whistled and changed tone as speed increased. It was quite annoying. About the 3rd time I was assigned that truck I went by the maintenance bay and found the suitable sized rubber grommet to pop in the hole. No more whistle.
 
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RayDunzl

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Well, the ride in the tow plane turned out to be a ride in a power club plane on the other side of the airfield, and turned out to be no ride at all.

1618068611038.png


We did the prefilight checks, pulled it out of the hangar, started it up.

Seemed a little rough to me for a six-cylinder, but what do I know.

Jan kept fiddling with the throttle and mixture.

Stuck valve on one of the cylinders, so it (whichever one it is) has to be pulled and repairs effected.

A mechanic (also a member of the glider club) in the next hanger, restoring an old Beechcraft Baron Twin will do the work when he gets around to it.

He's also rebuilding a Jantar glider (his) in another hangar, it's as stripped down as they get right now, parts everywhere.

So I'm a jinx when it comes to power planes.

Yesterday, my time to go up in the glider, helped refuel the Cessna towplane, no start.

It's been not charging the battery reliably - doesn't make much of a safety hazard as the engine is not dependent on the battery to run.

They'd found little problems, loose crimp, cracked mount, too long belt, etc. while trying to figure it out before.

Finally decided it's an alternator or voltage regulator problem. It's a Ford alternator. So no fly today, and tomorrow is bad weather. Maybe back online for Wednesday if the parts can be tested, repaired, or procured.

It's kinda cramped in the engine bay. Red line points to the alternator location. Engine mounts have to be loosened to get it out, hence, the crane.

1618069273148.png


Two gliders were trailered to Tennessee.

They come apart easily enough, if you have a few extra hands to manhandle the wings. This a Grob Twin Astir two-seater, and it is quite heavy.

More modern solo gliders can be broken and assembled and trailered single-handedly, lightweight carbon fiber and rigging supports and all that.

1618069428930.png



1618069803198.png



1618069484094.png


This one below, there were all kinds of home-made wooden jigs to hold it in the trailer that somebody made 50 years ago.

It was a real puzzle to figure out what goes where and why and in what sequence to do it.

The guy in the middle is holding the last piece of rigging, still trying to figure out where it goes. It went in the front, between the wings, up top, slipped over the partially extended flaps.

1618069651415.png


The rebuild of the other tow plane is coming along very nicely.

All the big work is done, the wings are reattached now, this is an earlier picture, but shows the nice paint scheme.

1618069867833.png


Last Sunday was good flying for me, looks like April is a particularly good weather month. Highest altitude over 6700 feet, over two and a half hours in the air.

Doing much better on the takeoff and tow, don't feel the instructor in the back seat overriding my control inputs now. So, progress is being made.

Still get yelled at, though from time to time.

Anyway, having fun with all that.
 
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RayDunzl

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The Cessna above, N6218E

I knew it was older than the tow plane since it had the straight up tail, instead of the swept tailfin.

It was manufactured in 1958.


Recent flights:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N6218E
 

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Sullenberger (from Miracle on the Hudson) was a glider pilot, indeed, a CFIG. I attributed much of his flying and landing that jet as a glider to his sailplane experience. There was not much said.
 
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RayDunzl

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Sullenberger (from Miracle on the Hudson) was a glider pilot, indeed, a CFIG.

Didn't know, but not surprised.

I've seen many pilots passing through adding various glider ratings to their powered qualifications.

"The glide ratio of a clean A320 is 17:1 which means it can travel 17 units of distance forwards for every 1 unit of distance downward at best glide speed."

That's not bad. Not quite in the range of "dropping like a rock".

Modern rectangular parachute - 3:1
Space Shuttle - 4.5:1
Paraglider - 9.3 to 11.3:1
Hang Glider - up tp 16:1
Lockheed U2 - about 23:1
My Super Blanik trainer - 28:1
Modern sporty gliders - 35 to 50:1
One of a kind Concordia glider - 75:1
 

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Nice, congrats, super cool stuff and always a dream to try, jealous!! My most exotic flight was in a Bell 47D-1 helicopter (M.A.S.H.) and a few questionable seaplanes getting into good fishing.
 
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RayDunzl

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