My path to Pilot

I made it! That is to say, I managed to finish (with very generous help from a number of people) the last of my many preparations for my week long trip to Colorado Fly Week. I also (since it is now July 10th) made it home safely too, so I now have the chance to write it all up. The Colorado Fly Week was held at the Smith Ranch outside of Villa Grove, CO and was absolutely fantastic. I learned a huge amount, met lots of fantastic pilots, saw some spectacular weather and had some nice flights too! Below is a lengthy summary. To be honest, I had expectations of attending Colorado Fly Week and racking up huge amounts of air time soaring up and down the Sangre De Cristo mountain range. It turns out it isn't quite so easy, although a number of people did it over the course of the week. I only ended up with less than an hour of air time over 4 days and 4 flights. But the discrepancy between my expectations and the reality doesn't really disappoint me at all because like I sai...

So, I've been putting off writing up my last day of flying. There have been a number of reasons for this but I guess the biggest reason is that it was my worst day of flying ever. How does this sound: I had 2 more blown aerotow launches which resulted in a belly landing once, and a nice controlled flare the second time. I was still making the same mistakes I was on my first few attempts but couldn't figure out quite what the problem was. On my third tow I launched successfully, towed up to 2100 feet and soared for an hour, climbing to cloud base once at 6000 ft AGL. Sound like a bad day so far? Well, I even had a nice landing on that flight. However, at the very end of the day I decided I didn't want to carry my glider all the way across the field to the hanger where I would be packing up. Instead I took a short scooter tow thinking it would be nice to boat around for a few minutes and land back at the hangar. It really was quite pleasant in the calm air late in the eveni...

On Saturday of this weekend I went out to fly again. The day looked fantastic with large cumulonimbus clouds popping up all over. The wind was relatively calm too but only a few pilots came out to tow. I got an early Aerotow on the Falcon to 2100 which let me work lift for 20 minutes or so. I climbed to 3070 and decided I would try to go find another cloud to work lift under. I mean, that's what cross country pilots do right? They fly from cloud to cloud, or anyway, from thermal to thermal and try to get as far as they can. Anyway, I saw a large looking cloud that appeared to be forming over Darbyville, only two miles away. So I headed out of my lift and cruised in that direction. It turns out the cloud was farther than I though, by about 6 miles or so. I kept an eye on my altitude so that I could be sure to get back, but I didn't get any lift at all. I flew back to where I expected it to be but couldn't find the lift I started in. I flew in to land and had a nice stron...

I meant to write this up that evening but I got distracted by other things. Anyway, after my first three attempts at Aerotowing on Saturday, only one of which was successful, I came back on Sunday to get a few more in. I again used the Falcon 170 for both of my tows on Sunday. We started out a little bit late but my first try around 11:30 went smoothly. Although I borrowed another students vario and misread my altitude so I ended up releasing at around 1100 feet instead of a full tow to 2000. I tried again immediately and towed to 1600 before I got a hand signal from frank waving me off. I assumed frank waved me off because of a bit of turbulence that the tug had just moved through. He gave me some serious advice before we towed that the conditions were likely to be much rougher and that I needed to be really careful about handing the rough air. This advice made me double my effort to watch the tug for signs that it flew through lift, or signs that would mean I was about to fly thr...

This weekend an event was organized in memory of a club members Mom. She was a big part of the community many years ago when the Ohio Flyers would fly from her property. It was a great weekend of flying, food, and drink. The weekend was forecast for 2 decent days of flying and most expected to see some soaring. I was also looking forward to this weekend because of the possibility of doing my first Aerotows. John has been hinting at it for a few weeks now but this week was the first I seriously considered trying. I arranged to be out early to take advantage of the calm and cool air and Frank and I set up my glider for towing. To cut strait to the chase: my first two attempts went very poorly although no harm was done. On my first launch, I stayed in the cart too long. I over reacted to the advice that I would need to hold on to the cart much longer than I normally do while scooter towing and ended up trying to stay on the cart well after I was at an appropriate speed to take off. ...

Saturday of this weekend was forecast to be very foggy and rainy. So no flying was possible. But Sunday was expected to be much more sunny. Indeed we had mostly clear skies all day. A few cumulus clouds were popping up here and there but it was very humid and we had very little lift to work. Again, a number of other club pilots came out for Aerotowing so we had our crowded setup of scooter towing down one runway and aerotowing off the other and a total of 15 or 16 gliders set up to fly. I got 4 scooter towing flights today for a total of 14 minutes of air time. Unfortunately there was so little wind that our scooter tows couldn't possibly get us high enough to work lift. So all 4 of my flights were sledders with the occasional meager effort to search for lift. Although another student named Matt did manage to extend his flights on 2 occasions to more than 10 minutes. 15 minutes in one case I think. So he managed to find what I could not. Anyway, I think I had 4 great landings t...

Saturday was windy and rainy in places but Sunday had a decent chance for clear skies over wesmar. And despite being a little strong, 5-10 mph on the forecast, we expected to be able to soar. Our tug pilot and 6 other pilots came out today. And while us H2's scooter towed, the experienced pilots aerotowed. Few people climbed much, but were able to work lift and extend their flight times. My best was a 15 minute flight off of an 1100 foot tow. I climbed to 1600 at the highest but quickly sunk after that. In general the lift was small and punchy and hard to stay in. One of my fellow H2's, named Matt, brought out a newly acquired glider, a Wills Wing Sport 2. John test flew it and Matt had his first flights on a glider other than the Falcon. I think he got a longer flight than any he had had before and the landing was decent, so I'm sure he's happy with his new equipment. I also acquired a used, but very fancy, Flytec vario and flew with that today. It's got loads of f...