Changing Gears While Soaring

You see a hill ahead, as you approach the bottom of it you downshift to keep the RPM high so you can maintain your speed up the hill. You do not wait until you are rapidly slowing down and the accelerator is floored before downshifting.

Do you shift gears while soaring? You can see a dissipating sky ahead, you can stop and take a weaker climb now, so you can avoid an even weaker climb ahead down low. Despite the fact that you have been climbing in good climbs for the last hour. Remember the saying in previous articles. Can you beat the average ahead?

This is what got Boyd (pictured above) home at the JWGC 2016, actually, he was the only one home that day. The key was when to downshift. Many pilots downshifted too soon and ran out of day. We assumed it would be a distance day. However, he still had good climbs and kept racing. Eventually, he had to downshift but it was many km ahead of the others. Turned out the day died as he had final glide... barely.

One of the days in Finland at the WGC I remember having beautiful clouds and a clearly defined line of crappy air. I pushed too hard, 'putting all my eggs in one basket' and the last cloud didn't work. I then had to cross a river valley low. The pack (behind me) took a weak (for the day) climb and drifted over my misery and gained many km on me. I should have downshifted about 3 clouds before I did knowing it would get really bad really quick.

At the SGP I did a similar mistake by not noticing the cycle-time. I finally got into the good air and was racing at Mach 1. I caught 7T and bumped him and laughed. I was on a roll. The gaggle I could tell (FLARM) went left, I kept cruising at Mach 1 to the right. I was at the turn-point ahead of the gaggle but under 1000ft AGL... Everyone saw the cycle and the weather deteriorating and downshifted earlier to stay high and wait for it to cycle back up again. I hung out with some Vultures for a very long time.

An almost equally horrible offense is not up-shifting. But more on that next week.

 Garret Willat holds a flight instructor rating with over 8000 hours in sailplanes. His parents have owned Sky Sailing Inc. since 1979. He started instructing the day after his 18th birthday. Since then, Garret has represented the US Junior team in 2003 and 2005. He graduated from Embry-Riddle with a bachelor's degree in Professional Aeronautics. Garret represented the US Open Class team in 2008 and 2010 and the Club Class team in 2014. Garret has won 3 US National Championships.