Practice Efficient Cruising

35:1 at 70knots

A typical flight in the ASW-19 I would see 35:1 at 70knts (I fly on the strong days). However, the glider is really only able to achieve somewhere around 20:1 at that speed. Either this ASW-19 is really good or I was selecting a good path. So a fun goal I set is 50% of the polar (not best L/D), but anytime you are better than the polar you are doing something right.

Lack of streets

There are days where it is very difficult to find any streeting, convergence, or being able to line up the thermals. Good streeting is not required to get a good glide (it just makes it a lot easier). You will probably pull-up in some bumps and not thermal in every bump that you find. A lot of 20ft bounces in altitude help. Also trying to avoid the sink is equally important. By choosing your path wisely you can avoid the sink, minimizing your need to stop and climb.

Analyzing your flight

Advanced Soaring Made Easy dedicates a number of pages to analyzing your flight. Last week I mentioned that I try and at least get 50% better performance. There are a lot of other useful statistics that you can gather from SeeYou on your post-flight analysis. Looking at your average climb rate (it is normally less then what you think it is) is another good reference.

Thermal exit and entry

Not only do you need to be efficient in entering and exiting thermals by not losing any altitude (you can see that statistic on See You), you also want to be decisive. Deciding after you passed the thermal is not a good time to make the decision to take it. You want to make the decision to leave before your desired heading to roll out on. Many times I have seen people start wondering out the core then roll the other direction more than 90 degrees to get back on task.

More Lift, Less Sink

The longer you spend in rising air and the shorter you spend in sinking air the better. I remember a day in Slovakia at the Pribina Cup. Marc (the guy I was flying with) and I both decided that cutting across the valley at about a 45-degree deviation was the best thing to do. To continue down the clouds were getting to be a more than 60-degree deviation. So we headed across as the 2 Diana’s continued with their deviation. The next time we saw them, we were digging out of the dirt and they were passing overhead at cloudbase. They had flown a much longer path and taken longer, however, they minimized their time in the sink and spent all of their deviation at cloudbase. They then were able to connect with the stronger thermals higher and continue on.

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Schempp-Hirth Decal

Schempp–Hirth is a leading manufacturer of high–performance gliders with more than 80 years of experience. A team of nearly 100 highly motivated employees are building single-seaters and two-seaters that can regularly be found in top positions of international championships and record lists around the world. 

Advanced Soaring Made Easy

Advanced Soaring Made Easy This 4th edition is now the all-encompassing book on advanced soaring. New topics have been included, the structure of the book was changed, the page layout and graphics were much improved, the text has been revised or extended throughout, and the quality of many new photographs is simply spectacular – all courtesy of my editor, who until recently was the 35–year editor of the Canadian gliding magazine, Free Flight.

 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.