Planning Ahead Might Mean Turning Around
Planning ahead might mean turning around
First, you should be starting off your morning routine for the next ten days by checking out: The US Junior Soaring Team.
https://www.facebook.com/UsJuniorSoaring/
https://ussoaringteams.org/#news
There are three flying in Club Class and 1 in Standard Class. A lot of prep goes into these contests, and they will bring back a lot of experience and knowledge. Both Sean and I got started in the Juniors.
Blinkers
Have you ever watched a pilot climb into the glider and as they get their safety harness on they put their blinkers, like a horse, so they cannot look backward? Why else do pilots forget to turn around to a safe place to land when they are headed out on course? With such excellent visibility and fantastic technology, it is incredible that anyone is ever surprised by a situation where they cannot make it. You can see the numbers unfolding for the worse typically a long time before.
Technology
It is very rare to see someone going cross country without the use of technology. There are many different ways to display your safety margins and glide to an airport. It is very common though to see someone flying cross country with no clue how their technology works or what it is displaying. Please take time to know what the numbers being displayed are telling you. The manufactures spend a lot of time making features to help keep you safe.
Glide Cone
A new student learns to fly within their glide cone and knows when to turn around and start heading towards home. When you start flying cross country, you have to become a lot more optimistic that you will find another thermal. But of course, sometimes you will not. However, back to that initial planning as a student pilot, you have to remain within glide of a safe place to land. No matter how inconvenient the result will be. What will be inconvenient is trying to get your glider into a repair shop before the season is over.
You can’t get caught up trying to make it home or trying to find the next thermal, or where that thermal could be. At some point, you have to abandon your task and stay within your cone. You might still be able to find lift, even while you are heading to the airport to land. It’s not over yet.
Land-able fields
I talk about airports mostly because we lack farm fields here and hop from airport to airport. However, you could easily rephrase this to land-able fields. My landout day at the WGC in Finland required some deviation to get to it and a little backtracking. But it wasn’t worth a few points to glide off into the unknown when I had already visited the field from the ground.
Nobody remembers 4th place or 5th or 20th; everyone remembers the pilot that landed in the trees though.
Think Safety
Always stay within glide of a place you want to land. Seems obvious... however pilots do it all the time, and sometimes the results are bad. Other times pilots luck out and continue on after finding a thermal.
The other way this article could have gone after the first sentence is clear your turns!! But that will be for another week.
Banner photo by aeroklub krnov z.s
Rhön Adler
Certainly, there is no lack of information about the evolution of the small workshop founded by Alexander Schleicher to the mid-sized company led by his grandsons Ulrich and Peter Kremer at the foot of the Wasserkuppe in the Rhön, the most famous soaring site in Germany and the world. |
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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.