Improving Your Soaring Skills

I sometimes get asked, "How can I get better at this sport?" Or more frequently, it is "I'm stuck on a plateau, and I don't feel that I am improving anymore as a pilot." The answer to both issues is quite simple: Relentlessly practice what you do not do well...

Divide Into Segments

When a musician is learning a difficult piece of music there are usually some parts that flow easily - and some parts that are difficult or may even seem at first impossible to play.  But it is pointless for the player to only focus on the parts of the music that sound good or come easily - you will never be able to perform the complete piece that way. Instead, the serious musician breaks down the difficult parts into the segments that cause difficulty and practices the segments relentlessly until the parts that once gave trouble flow as well as the rest of the music.  Sometimes you may spend a whole day or even a week on a particularly hard sequence until you get it right.  But when you do get it right, it all seems effortless, and you do not even remember when you could not play that hard part well.

Components of Flight

Soaring is like that too. Every flight has components that we perform well and other parts that we struggle with. Do you thermal better (or more often) in one direction compared to the other? Do you have trouble centering thermals quickly? Or have trouble mastering thermals that require very steep banks?  Are you thermalling too frequently for short gains because of nervousness?  Or are you milking the thermals for height long after the best rate of climb is gone? An honest assessment of what you do not do well is the first step in getting better.

Drill Down on Weaknesses

If you thermal better (or most of the time) in one direction, then on your next flight practice only thermalling in your weak direction.  If you cannot fly steep bank angles well, try practicing "15 second turns" (that is a turn where you complete one full circle in 15 seconds - really tough to do) until you are good at them. If you have trouble centering thermals quickly and effectively, then on a local flight leave the thermal once you have it centered and gain a few hundred feet, fly away for a minute, and then go back and center it again, and then, do it yet again (and from different directions). If you are climbing too frequently on your XC flights, then practice rejecting all climbs (no matter how strong) for some reasonable distance after each thermal. If you are milking thermals, then leave every thermal at a pre-designated height no matter what the climb rate is.  You get the idea.  Learn to really drill down on any weakness until it is gone. Then find another one to work on.

 Roy Bourgeois is a well-known US and South African glider pilot who serves as the Chief Pilot for the Greater Boston Soaring Club. He has held several US national records, competed in many US and Canadian Nationals, and has flown over a quarter million XC kilometers in his 4200 hours of gliding. He can be reached at royb@bw.legal