My path to Pilot

Casual day at Wesmar this weekend. It was actually something of a Fly In and a birthday celebration for a number of club pilots so there was a gathering all weekend. I was busy on Saturday but went out on Sunday to try to fly. The weather looked great in the morning, and Larry W. had a decent flight early on, but the conditions deteriorated to marginal. And in fact it was literally marginal since you could draw a line right down the middle of the sky and to the north, there was a dense field cumulonimbus clouds popping up and to the south, clear sky and high cirrus clouds. So we were right on the margin. My big goal for the day was just to get some more time on the new harness. I have been making adjustments to the shoulders to try and get a good feeling but it always felt slightly small when I put my feet in the boot. However, it was mostly just the 1 inch thick block of foam in the boot that was restricting my shoulder room. Removing the block gave me too much room. Now I have to g...

Finally, the harness I ordered arrived! Frank was Aerotowing on Sunday so a number of people came out to take advantage of the fantastic weather. It was also the first opportunity I have had to fly my brand new Moyes Contour Harness. I have to admit I wanted to just jump right in and Aerotow on the new Harness but everyone advised against it. And I agreed that it would be sensible to get some scooter towing in on the new harness first. This meant that I sat around all day and watched everyone get 3+ hour flights off Aerotow while I waited for the scooter to be brought out. That was hard to do. So, the Contour harness: It's a single suspension harness, which means it has a back-plate in which the main riser can slide back and forth. This also means that you can hang with your bodies center of mass (about at your belly button) either fore or aft of the hang point. If you have the slider all the way forward, your center of mass is behind the hang point and you tilt upright so that...

Last Weekend I had 3 great Aerotow flights. They were great primarily because I've finally figured out my launches, but one of them also led to a 1 hour flight playing around in decent lift. The first tow on Saturday started off with my typical poor launch. I have had this tendency to leave the cart and dip back down, sometimes touching my wheels to the ground, and sometimes my feet hit the cart as it starts lagging behind me. Some people thought I was leaving the cart early and getting hit by a tail wind or something but as I saw this over and over we scratched that idea. It turns out that I have a tendency to pull in immediately after leaving the cart, and I end up diving the glider after lifting off. Of course I'm not doing this intentionally, I think it's caused by how I'm sitting in the cart, how far off I am from trim position, and my experience scooter towing. While scooter towing I end up applying a lot of bar pressure (pulling in) in order to control my cli...

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...