Me and my Faux-Pro
I've been getting a lot of flying in lately, which is great. The only issue though of course is that it's burning through my flying fund. I had built up a bit of a buffer (especially in those annoying months where I kept having 3 week breaks between flights), but now, I've pretty much burnt through it. So I realised that I was going to have to carefully budget my flying, to make sure that I don't run my flying fund dry. Given that there were 3 Saturdays left before I get paid, and 1 of those I won't be able to fly because I'll need to be taking younger sprog out for her outing, that left 2 flying days. Divide my flying fund (£100) by 2, and I realised that I would be able to afford a flight of about an hour and 20 minutes if I winch launch, or aerotow no higher than 1000 feet. Here, an aeortow to 1000 feet costs the same as a winch launch (£11). Glider rental for the Junior is 45p / minute.
Still, I'm at a very enjoyable phase of my training. The BGA have this currency barometer here where you draw a line between your launches and hours, and work out where you fall on it. The ideal is to stay in the green. I'm not in the green yet, mainly because although I have many launches (52) in the last year, I have relatively few hours (12). Looking at the barometer, I think that that puts me pretty firmly in the Yellow section, and what I need to do is build my hours to get into the Green. This gets brought up in the daily briefing. The instructor of the day always asks, "Is anyone in the yellow or red?" and I always put up my hand, in a room full of liars, because although my hand is the only one that goes up, I'm pretty certain that I'm not the only one who hasn't built the time yet to be in the green. Every time I explain to the instructor that I have the launches, just not the hours, and they're pretty happy.
Teenager took a picture of me with the Junior with a fancy camera
Looking at the weather guess, it seemed that the wind would be in the right direction and strong enough in the afternoon for a ridge soaring flight on Bishops. My plan was to take an aerotow to 1000 feet, and spend an hour in the air, before coming in to land. Coming out of the briefing room though, the Haar still hadn't cleared (even though the wind had switched from East to West). We got everything set up and one K-21 launched for a look around, but it came back fairly quickly saying that the visibility was really bad. The duty instructor, John H, decided to stop operations for an hour and to reconvene at 11:45.
3 K-21's at the launch point, stashed while we wait for visibility to improve
Once we'd reconvened, visibility had improved a bit and was clearly getting better. I helped launch some gliders and then looking at the windsock and the clouds, it looked to me as though conditions were good for launching. I had decided to take an aerotow because it was something that worried me. 2 weeks ago I'd had a bad ground run on an aerotow, and last week I'd opted for an aerotow check-flight which was okay, but then later just winched. I knew that the only thing that would help me get over my nervousness of the aerotow was practice. Once in the air and flying behind the tug, I'm fine... it's the ground run. The night before I kept having nightmares about aerotow. I dreamt I was flying behind the tug and we were having to dodge between trees, and then I lost sight of the tug and so I released, and there were just trees everywhere, and I was trying to find a soft place to crash. Clearly, this was weighing on me. So while the winch was perfectly capable of getting me the height I needed to get to the ridge, I opted for an aerotow instead, purely to practice it.
A year or two ago my wife had bought me a CamelBak and a Faux-Pro (not what it's called, just what we call it) and I thought that this would be a good time to use them. So I filled up the CamelBak with water, and spent some time mounting the Faux-Pro in the glider to try record my flight. I was very concerned to not forget to switch the Faux-Pro on, and to not forget to start my stopwatch on launch, so that I could tell how long I'd been up for, that I forgot to start my XCSoar. One day, I'll remember everything, but clearly, today wasn't the day. Still, 2 out of 3 isn't bad.
This time the ground run was fine. Bumpy, but that's expected. Back in the old country, I always flew aerotows off runways, so I was more used to them being smooth. A grass field is really bumpy. This time, when the glider lifted off, and then I could feel it going down again, I didn't make the mistake of pulling back on the stick. So there was one bounce (and you can hear the wheel being spun up in the video), and then I was flying, and happy. No forest of trees to fly through, no losing sight of the tug. We flew off towards Bishops, and before long I was at 1000 feet and pulled the release. Bruce was flying the tug, and I really love watching him dive away to the right. Back in the old country, the tug always turned left after release, so the first time I flew aerotow here, I turned right, then saw the tug was turning right, so turned left. Here it seems, the tug turns right and dives, you don't actually have to turn at all, just fly straight on. Still, something to remember when I fly at different places, good idea to ask them which way the tug turns on release.
Once on the ridge, I climbed to about 1700 feet. In the video I'm pleased to see my head moving all the time. I'm not concious of it, but it's clear that I'm really trying to focus on lookout, continually doing the scan cycle. Left up/down, forward left up/down, up, instruments, right up/down, forward right up/down, up, instruments, repeat. At one point I counted 4 other gliders on the ridge, so keeping an eye on the traffic is really important. Once while flying south with the ridge on my left, my flarm sent out an alert. I looked but didn't see a glider causing the alert, so after a second or so, I turned to the right, as advised in the Bronze lectures. After turning, I then spotted the other glider, heading north on the ridge at about my height. I mentioned lookout to my brother (after posting the video on the family group), and he asked what I was looking out for, so I replied: "Other gliders mostly, other aircraft, the ridge (and other solid things I don't want to hit), the instruments (airspeed, height, yaw string), my location, landable fields (in case I hit heavy sink and can't get back to the airfield), what's going on on the airfield (gliders launching, landing, tug taking off or landing). The clouds to see if any look like they might have lift under them.", to which he said, "Ah, is that all?".
At 1700 feet I decided to push out to try find a thermal. Ridge lift will only get you so high, and of course, it's limited to the ridge. In order to fly cross country you need to be able to thermal, which at least gets you higher (up to cloud base), and of course isn't limited to where the ridge is. There's a house thermal on the south side of Bishops, and I flew there and thought I could feel it, but didn't want to thermal there because of all the traffic on the ridge. So I pushed out towards Kinross. I would find lift and I'd slow down and it seemed almost linear, as though I was flying under a cloud street (the clouds above me looked like they were forming), but when I tried turning, I'd almost immediately lose the lift. At about 1200 feet I headed back to the ridge for a top up. I also tried pushing south of Bishops, but then I found that I didn't want to land up thermalling too close to the airfield, and definitely not in the circuit (though often we find lift on the downwind leg). I was also concious of the fact that the wind was predicted to get stronger in the afternoon, and I didn't want to find myself blown downwind of the field and then not able to get back. So I headed back to the ridge, topped up, then tried again west in the direction of Kinross, each time going a bit further from the ridge before scurrying back to the lift as my height dropped. It is quite something when you fly back to the ridge, and you're below ridge height, and you're in steady sink, and you're just hoping that you'll find lift soon. Fortunately, the lift on the ridge was reliable, though later on I couldn't seem to climb higher than 1500 feet.
Throughout the flight I'd take sips of water from the CamelBak every time I felt a bit thirsty, and this worked really well. I remember back in the old country, on my first, and so far only, cross country flight, I flew for 4 hours 59 minutes and 12 seconds from release (longer if you count the tow), and the CamelBak I had then worked really nicely. Last week after landing after an hour and 11 minutes, I found that I had a headache. I mentioned this to one of the other pilots mentioning that I think it's the sound of the vario for all that time, but he said that it was more likely mostly down to dehydration. Problem being of course, if you drink a lot before launching, then after a while you find yourself desperately needing to pee. A CamelBak solves the issue quite nicely. Obviously you don't take off dehydrated, but once in the air, a few sips every time your mouth is feeling dry is enough. You tend to sweat it out since you're sitting in an enclosed space, surrounded mainly by perspex, protected from the wind, with the sun often shining directly on you. There's a reason why glider pilots wear the stupid bucket hat. Back in the old country, many pilots would also fly with white cotten gloves to protect their hands from the sun. Here, I had put on factor 50 sunblock before launching.
Using my Dad's watch to keep track of how long I'd been flying, after I'd seen that I'd been flying over an hour I decided to head back for landing. I flew out over the loch towards the island with Mary Queen of Scot's castle on it (the one she was imprisoned in), though I found a lot of sink over the loch, and once down to about 1200 feet I headed back. I flew the circuit and landed in the north field. Originally I called the centre field, but then saw that the tractor was out mowing the grass in the area I wanted to land! I aimed for 55 to 60 knots approach speed, being mindful of the controls being very sensitive at those speeds, so not to make too big movements. The approach was quite turbulent, but I landed safely, for a total time of 1 hour 13 minutes. Later Ramsay, who took the glider after me, said he'd watched my landing, and I hadn't "stuffed it into the ground" in his (slightly edited) words, so he wasn't expecting there to be any issues with the glider... high praise indeed. It wasn't my best landing though, wasn't fully stalled, but not too far off, so I'll take it, given the conditions.
Unfortunately, after I'd landed, I think that I let the CamelBak leak somehow, because when Ramsay took it, the seat cusion was wet. It hadn't leaked on me though while I was flying (I would've felt it). All I can think is that I should've taken it out of the glider once I got out. Fortunately, Ramsay has to fly with his own (thinner) cushion, because he's so tall, so it wasn't too much of an issue. The other issue is that the sound on the video isn't great, but I figure that next time I won't use the waterproof casing, instead opting for the more fragile looking open mount. That should improve the sound... but all these things are learning experiences, I never expected it get it completely right the first time. Also might tie up my hair to improve the camera's visibility (in two minds about this though, it does help protect my neck and shoulders from the sun). I'll try it and see.
Afterwards I helped launching gliders until it was time to put them back in the hangar. A productive day and a massive weight off my back, now that I've flown a semi-decent aerotow launch. I've taken Friday off to go help out with Walking on Air, so if there's time I'll hopefully get a flight (if given the option, I'll winch this time). As thanks for helping out with Walking on Air, they often pay for you to have a flight (if there's time). While welcome, it's not why I do it, but if I do get to take advantage of the free flight, I try to keep it relatively short (20 mins or so) so's not to take advantage of their generosity. Still, a winch launch and circuit won't go amiss in keeping my hand in. The idea is to basically try alternate winch and aerotow so that I stay current on both forms of launching.