Monthly Archives: August 2018

Number 8,472 student is trying to kill you. I have a phrase I repeat on landing, "Am I high? Am I low? Is my speed ok?" These are 3 separate questions requiring 3 different things to be done to resolve them. If I am high I need to use more spoilers. If I am slow I need to lower the nose.

But my student this morning tried to stay on glide by slowing down. This could be very subtle at first.

Effective deviation is covered a lot in cross country flying. Deviating too much and making little distance towards the goal, not deviating at all and not finding a good thermal, and partially deviating under the clouds but not going to the good side are common errors.

At the WGC last week Mike and I saw ourselves doing those a few times. Where the non-flying pilot would comment, ‘why are we

This has been the phrase used repeatedly by the contest organizers. Despite that, on Day 8 we had someone not looking out. I am not here to speculate what happened. You can download the IGC files and make your own assessment of what happened. What I will say is that the entering glider impacted the thermalling glider and had not seen him. Both gliders flew back to the airport and had very minor damage.

We finally made it to the last practice day at the World Gliding Championships. It has been a string of difficulties from car delays, to weight issues, missing paperwork, phone issues, missed connecting flights, etc.

But we made it and took to the skies. Mike learned of an issue in the tail battery during his training flight in Terlet, so we are just using them as tail ballast. So an easy fix