October 30

     The weather for this weekend looked great, but I decided to split my time between Climbing rock in Kentucky and flying the glider in Ohio so I only got 1 day this weekend. It was a real good day and John had a 6 tandem flights scheduled so a bunch of local pilots came out to get aero-tows too. Best flight was 3 hours or more and at one point there were 4 gliders working the same lift (another awesome sight for a beginner like me and also excellent motivation to keep the training sessions frequent). Some day I hope to add myself to the gaggle of gliders on a soaring day.

     My training flights were good. After looking at last weeks video and taking the advice of my instructor and a couple of other pilots my goal was to focus on only making small corrections in order to avoid the oscillations I was getting last time from making large corrections repeatedly. I also wanted to work on my approach and landing. I still tend to approach at near trim speed so if the conditions aren't just right I loose the ability to continue making corrections and sometimes land off balance or let myself get turned into or downwind slightly. I want to be able to pull in a little bit and "fly the glider into ground effect" as my instructor put it. Besides giving me more control, this will let me round off the approach down low and gradually loose speed in order to better time an aggressive flair for a slow and gentle landing.

     I had 4 flights in the morning and 2 in the evening. I felt significantly more comfortable on my first few flights and even had one real good landing. My first flight in the evening felt great but apparently the tow line wrapped around the axle of the scooter and resulted in a bad tangle which cut the evening training time short. I think I did make progress with my gentle corrections and straight flight, but I still didn't get consistent landings. I have a bad habit that is sometimes interfering with an otherwise decent landing. In snowboarding, all of the your control over speed comes from your feet and the angle at which you hold the snowboard with respect to the snow. An aggressive stop requires a large angle and means that you have to lean up hill quite a bit to achieve the high angle. So when I round out my glide a little low with my feet within reach of the ground I have the instinct to put my feet out in front of me and slow myself down by sliding over the grass (like a water skier). Besides being a little bit dangerous (I might end up twisting or jamming my ankle on the uneven ground or tufts of grass) it accomplishes the exact opposite of what I need to do in order to execute an aggressive flair and reduce my ground speed for a slow landing, i.e. move my center of mas away from the control bar and increasing the angle of attack of the glider. The one time I actively tried to avoid doing this water skier stop I forgot to put my hands up high on the control bad and wasn't able to make a good flair. So I set the glider down on the wheels and slid across the ground on my belly.

     I'm getting close to moving on to prone flying (that is, IF I can get my landing habits right) so John had me try on a few prone harnesses in the simulator in the hanger just to get a size estimate. I'm also about ready to take the Hang 1 written test. Progress is being made!

Here's is the video from day 4:

I think I've made progress controlling the glider and feel a little more confident on landings. Although I still have work to do!