sink
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- September 14, 2022
Is There Anything To Learn?
Editors note, this week continues with our final of the five-part microburst series. You will find parts one, two, three, and four in the links.
By Clemens CeipekI believe the answer is clearly “yes”. The following summarizes my personal takeaways. You may need to adjust these based on your flying environment, your experience and skills, and your glider.
Recognize
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- September 07, 2022
There’s no doubt about it, there is a growing popularity of gliders with retractable engines. They come in all sorts, ‘sustainers’ or ‘turbos’, which typically take us towards home with a few hundred feet per minute climb rate through a 2-stroke or jet engine. The other method is the self-launching type, which offers greater independence and convenience than the previous type mentioned. A massive
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- June 01, 2022
One of the best things that can happen to us whilst we are climbing, is to be joined by another glider. Better again if it’s a similar type as the one we are flying, and a pilot of a similar or better standard than ourselves. This rings true when both pilots know how to take advantage of one another, and can see each other all the time. Why is this true? Because we are able to compare our rate of
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- May 04, 2022
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
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- May 19, 2021
One thing that is said time & time again is that the greatest improvement in our achieved cross-country speed will come from increasing our average rate of climb, but how can we work towards this? Practice makes perfect of course. In all reality, once a thermal has been found and centred, most pilots will climb at around the same rate, and most gliders are reasonably similar in performance. So are
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- March 07, 2019
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
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- January 10, 2018
For all of you following Adam Wolley's Gliding Adventures. He had a video after Day 1 at the Australian Multiclass Nationals. Interviewing Peter Temple the day 1 winner. Peter mentions his strategy to align his legs into and down wind. With a 12 kph faster speed, I think he made it work.
G. Dale has some great illustrations in The Soaring Engine volume 1 on what it will look like when the wind forms
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- October 25, 2017
One of the most common un-centering techniques that students demonstrate to me is switching directions in a thermal. It always happens, a student is not completely centered, the ADHD kicks-in, or something kicks-in and they decide to switch directions. I make sure to look around really well and let them fly right out of the thermal, generally not finding it again. Makes for a good debrief.
Typically