Training & Practice
There are two ways of thinking, practicing until you get it right, or practicing until you can’t get it wrong. That’s the difference between amateurs and professionals in the end. First, we must arm ourselves with the knowledge, then add ongoing training and practice, this is a sure way to see success. Serious training must be aimed towards specific problems, whereas less ambitious pilots confuse this with a joy flight in the vicinity of the airfield – naturally, there’s a time when we need to stretch ourselves. We need to identify weaknesses first so that we can find a way to eliminate them. Training in the right way is a long-term investment in our gliding future.
What can we do to improve our skills, to turn a weekend joy flight into something with meaningful practice, what can we do to improve our practical skills towards our cross country flights & skills?.
- Fly with a coach in a two-seater, it’s great fun to share our sport, but also a great way to take notice of their flying techniques, ask questions to get detailed answers that you can’t always get over the radio. Equally, you can do the flying and ask for constructive criticism in return on your approach to the segments flown.
- Try to practice final glides from certain distances out at differing speeds, note the time taken vs the height lost vs your heart rate!
- Set yourself a strict limit with regards to thermal strength cut-offs, as soon as it drops below your set figure, leave to find another one. This or flying below half convection height all day, to improve your ground source reading regarding finding the thermals.
- Make every landing a spot landing, imagine some powerlines or a high tree line on approach to simulate a tricky situation.
- Practice thermalling on a particularly weak day, or see how long you can stay up in the afternoon with weak thermals to simulate coming home slow, late in the day.
- Fly at different sites other than your hometown airfield.
- Encourage others to do the same as we are talking about here, this way you’ll have someone to compare notes with. Perhaps you’re well ahead on some things, but behind on others that you wouldn’t have otherwise known.
- Once you get to cloudbase, open your airbrakes to half convection, then try to find another thermal as quickly as possible, then repeat.
- Thermal in the sink, try to find the most severe sink as possible, it’s equally important to know and learn about sink for obvious reasons – so we can better avoid it!
The list goes on as you could imagine! Always look for opportunities to learn, don’t always fly on the good days. If you’re into competitions like me, then you’ll know that they are generally won and lost on the poor days, rather than the easy ones. The more you practice, the luckier you get, strange that!
Banner photo by John Absolon, 'Got that shot' Images
Adam Woolley was born into the gliding world, being the 3rd generation in his family. Going solo at 15, his thirst for efficiency in soaring flight & quest for a world championship title to his name has never wavered. One big passion is sharing his experiences & joy with other glider pilots all around the world. Adam is an airline pilot in Japan on the B767 & spends his off time chasing summer around the globe. He has now won 7 national Championships & represented Australia at 5 WGC's & 1 EGC.
