November 20

There was strong weather on Saturday, but Sunday looked good for towing (at least until the rain was supposed to show up).

After sharing my earlier videos with some other pilots online they had a bunch of criticisms for me. Some of the concerns they had included flying without wheels on the glider, how slowly I seemed to be flying, how I didn't seem to ever have a flight plan, how I was progressing too quickly, and how I didn't have the fundamentals down and was being reckless. I was kinda blown away. Personally, I've felt comfortable, in control, and I've been having a huge amount of fun.

In any case, if an experienced pilot gives me feedback I'm going to carefully consider it. So I went to the training field with a number of these things in mind to work on. First was experiencing a wider range of speed in the glider. If I have been flying too slowly I want to be able to recognize that for myself. So I want to become familiar with all the different speeds. Flying faster is straight forward, but I'll have to discuss stalling with my instructor before I try slowing down intentionally. As for planning flights, I was just going to try to have a good idea of where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to land before I got on tow each time.

In the end I ran into the situation where I should have deviated from my planned flight for safety. Each of my flights was going to be some variation of the following: At the end of my tow, when I had the most altitude, I would practice a maneuver (a 360 degree turn, 180's, or something similar), and then fly back to the end of the field I started on to set up for a landing. On one tow, just like the tow before, I practiced doing a 360 turn with some speed and then flew down field to setup and land. But I had significantly less height than I did on the tow before and ended up making a very low to the ground turn to final. Nearly touching a wing to the ground mid turn. I have lots to learn about judging the altitude lost during a strait glide and the altitude lost during a turn and how to anticipate whether or not I have the altitude required for the flight I had planned.

We kept towing when it started drizzling lightly and only stopped when it started raining properly. In total I got 10 tows and feel I made a little more progress but uncovered a few more things to work on. To summarize, I certainly did fly faster, and spent quite a bit of time pulling in from trim, and also made a better effort to plan out my flights. The next thing I will have to work on are my turns. I am still not coordinating my turns quite right and end up stopping and having to re-initiate the turn before I'm heading the direction I intended. I think this is from over correcting after I initiate the turn instead of just centering myself on the control bar but it could also be from pushing out too much during the turn and causing the lowered wing to stall. I did manage a couple of good constant speed 360's though so I just have to work on being consistent.

Although the flights were nothing but sled rides from the top of tow to the landing, I did get a chance to work on some little things and hope to get many more training days like this before the real winter gets here.

November 12

    The weather forecast clearly showed winds that would be too strong to tow in, but they were nearly perfect (strength and direction) for the local ridge soaring site. So the plan was to spend the day at the ridge, and look for an opportunity for a few of us students to do our first foot launch/ridge soaring flight. Greg and Noel, both recent H2's, were here for their first ridge flights too.

    We met at Wesmar (the training field) and packed up the gliders to take to the ridge. On the way to the ridge, I took the Hang 2 written test. I passed! I primarily missed questions about airspace and sectional maps, but also a question about how quickly high performance gliders turn when compared to beginner/intermediate gliders. I will submit my paperwork to USHPA this week to officially become a Novice Hang Glider pilot.

     Once we got to the ridge the conditions really did look perfect. They were a little bit stronger than I had ever flow during scooter tow training, but that's expected. The strong wind is desirable at the ridge site since it is required in order to have a decent band of ridge lift. The air moves across the farmland in the valley below and is forced up and over the ridge, creating a band of air at the face of the ridge and often extending hundreds of feet above it that a glider can use to gain altitude.

     We spent some time at the bottom of the hill identifying all the potential landing zones and assessing conditions. It's mostly farmland below the hill so we had recently harvested corn fields and newly planted winter wheat fields all around.

The view from the LZ. The Launch is the bald patch below the cell phone tower.

     We setup immediately since the direction of the wind was perfect for the site and the strength of the wind was still close to ideal. There were 2 other experienced pilots there besides the instructor that were planning on flying too. We watched them launch and began suiting up for our launches.

     At around 12:30, the first student to launch, Greg, had a slightly shaky start but we watched him climb about 50 feet in his first few turns, it looked great! 10 minutes or so later when the second student was getting setup on launch we realized that Greg was in a little bit of trouble, the other 2 experienced pilots were 250 feet above the hill (they had been in the air 25 minutes or more by that time), and were radioing down that the conditions were getting stronger. Greg was about at the same height as launch but had drifted to the right, down the ridge, and had gotten into a saddle area where a venturi effect can be found. In the saddle, the wind moving up the hill speeds up, and Greg was no longer able to make any forward progress away from the ridge. We watched him struggle under the turbulence for a few minutes and eventually saw him disappear below the tops of the tree. The road that brings you to the top of the launch site makes a bend at that saddle and gave Greg an open area to shoot for for an emergency landing. He clipped his control bar and the right down tube on a insubstantial branch at the top of a small tree and crashed the glider into the leaves and tall grass at the edge of the clearing. The pilot sustained some kind of ligament damage in his shoulder but no other injuries. The only damage to the glider was a bent downtube.

     Greg spent the rest of the day at the Hospital making sure he didn't break anything while we waited to see if the conditions would relax as they typically do in the evenings. At about 4:30 we decided that the winds were clearly backing off while still blowing strait into the launch and would be ideal for the other 2 of us new pilots to do our first foot launch. Noel went first and made 3 or 4 turns before heading away from the ridge to setup for his landing. I set up on launch and observed the slow cycles of faster then slower wind. The idea is to time your launch in the cycles when conditions are smoothest. When conditions were just right, I announced my launch with "clear, clear, clear" and ran downhill. I guess it's more like leaned downhill though since it only took a step or two before the glider started flying and lifted me up into the air. As planned once I was far enough out from launch I started making a few figure 8 turns (making passes up and down the ridge and always making turns away from the ridge) just to feel the ridge lift. And eventually pointed away from the ridge and headed out to setup my landing.

     My first foot launch/first ridge soaring flight went fantastically. However, watching another novice pilot crash their glider right before I was supposed to launch gave me a harsh reminder that the sport is dangerous and that I will have to be constantly focused on all the conditions around me (weather, terrain, equipment, ...) in order to minimize the chance of an accident happening. I will also have to give myself healthy safety margins in order to keep myself flying in conditions that are well within my ability.

The GPS track of my 5:50 second flight. Also shown at the beginning of the video.

     My 5 minute and 50 second flight left me wanting more! After watching the other pilots soaring the ridge, I'm sure I still have a lot of work to do. I'm still over controlling and making inefficient turns. The experienced pilots look so graceful and slow moving, while I felt like I was darting all over the place and couldn't stay in one place to take advantage of the lift. I really want a few more good weekends scooter towing where I feel most comfortable and the conditions are appropriate to work on specific maneuvers.

November 5 and 6

Another excellent weekend weather forecast!

I showed up Saturday morning with some good ideas about what I wanted to work on: Landings, and smooth control. I think the calm conditions helped quite a bit in the smooth control department so I had a bunch of what I thought were gentle and controlled flights. Occasionally though, I would get a little bit of rough air and I would find myself over correcting and oscillating again. As for landings I think I made a huge improvement by the end of the day on Saturday. I'm more reliably rounding off the approach and timing an aggressive flair in order to put my feet down with minimal ground speed. Landing into a nice steady breeze helped too though!

I was also able to progress from straight flights to boxing the field (making a series of 90 degree turns to fly around the perimeter of the field) and setup for a landing into the wind. Once though, I misinterpreted the wind-Tee and thought that it was pointing in the direction the wind was blowing, so I had to run out a down wind landing. I now know that the wind-Tee points into the wind! I was also getting longer and higher tows and have been racking up the flight time at a minute or more each flight! This also gave me the chance to try a more intermediate maneuver, a 360 degree turn. I also took the Hang 1 written test on Saturday and missed 3 of the 48 questions. I have a few concepts to study up on but I have a good enough understanding of the topics to qualify for a Beginner rating.

When I came back on Sunday morning we had a slow start while I found a prone harness that would fit me. The conditions were a bit windier than the day before. I took one flight before noon and found it to be somewhat rough or at least stronger than I had flown in before. I made no attempt to get prone, and touched the control bar just for a second, just to see how it would feel. One of the other beginner students with a few days less experience than me had too much trouble with the strong and somewhat variable conditions, so he called it after a couple attempts at tows. After a flight each we decided to wait around in the hope that conditions would improve. I almost drove home, but decided to just relax for a bit and wait. Boy am I glad I did wait.

Around 1:30pm it improved slightly and we decided to try flying again. But there were only 2 of us students left at that point. So He (a new H2 pilot) and I traded long tows into somewhat buoyant conditions (there was lift occasionally!). I'm absolutely loving the longer flights. I think my longest was more than 3 minutes! I got to work more on longer and faster turns both 180 and 360 degrees. The faster turns are a skill that will be necessary to stay in columns of thermal lift or to use in order to loose altitude before setting up to land. I'm now getting my feet into the pod harness (a harness that looks something like a sleeping bag in that it encloses you up to the chest.) and using the control bar instead of the down tubes during flight. I'm also getting more consistent with landings, repeating Saturdays good landings and even achieving a few no-step landings.

The final achievement for me this weekend was learning to cart launch. Instead of running the glider into the air when the winch starts pulling, the wheeled cart lets you set up the glider and start off prone, this way, when the winch starts pulling at full tension, you roll along the ground until the glider flies off the cart. This is how aero-towing is accomplished since you couldn't possible run along the ground far enough and fast enough for an airplane to take off while pulling you along. I had 5 cart launches before the end of the day but only recorded the first of them on video.

Despite the fact that this is the longest video so far, I still didn't manage to capture all my flights. Another student had a similar camera to mine, so we were able to record ourselves from 2 different angles. Both of our cameras ran our of batteries before the end of the day on Saturday and Sunday. I especially regret this because some of my last flights at the end of the day on Sunday were fantastic.

Here's my video, it's lengthy this time since I ended up getting so many flights but check it out. I think the most interesting flights are on the second day at 13:37