speed to fly
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October 14, 2021
Prepare for Landing on Final Glide
As you approach your finish use the last 15 km or so to police up the cockpit for landing and get relief systems, oxygen tubing, and other stuff out of the way of the flap, spoilers and landing gear handles. Drink the rest of your water or sports drink, have a bite of something to eat and go through your checklist early - you
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September 30, 2021
In these articles I have avoided reference to specific times of the day - because so much can depend on a particular day, how far east or west you are in your time zone, and what time of year it is. In this section of the article, I define “late in the day” as whatever period your achieved climbs are beginning to trend down in strength because of lower surface heating. As this occurs you have to make
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June 03, 2021
Typically when we start with our cross-country flying, we feel like we need to take every thermal, this habit is often a hard one to break. Even pilots who are quite experienced still want to stop and climb in thermals that are less than optimum. We have to be selective when it comes to increasing our overall achieved cross-country speeds. Take the below graph, it’s for a typical 15m ballasted racing
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May 06, 2021
When we soar across country we are inevitably treading a fine line. On one hand, we want to go as fast as possible, but on the other, we need to stay airborne! As time goes on & as our experience grows, there are times when we have trouble finding that balance. At first, we need all of our attention to simply stay afloat, then we realise to make any headway we need to push a bit harder. What
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September 20, 2018
Netto vario sometimes called the airmass vario just shows you what the airmass is doing, regardless of your sink rate. So if you are cruising at 100knts, descending at 5knts and the airmass is not moving then it will read 0knts. There are many pilots (now including me) that use that as their preference when in cruise so they can get a better view of what the airmass is doing. Many pilots fly
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September 13, 2018
The Nimbus pilot who will not be named is at it again... I almost feel bad because I charge him shop rates to fix his problems, then he gives me a wealth of material for the newsletter. I received a frantic call that I need to fix the vario in his glider, because it is screwed up, again. Honestly, the computer has had its share of problems and has been back to the factory, installation errors
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December 01, 2016
You got low (you probably made promises to anyone you could think of) and now finally have a weak climb. You switched to survival mode and only cared about climbing, no matter how slow. You haven't mentally recovered from that low point and you are still happy with that weak climb all the way back to the top of your working band.
You probably threw in the towel and are just thinking about getting
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August 11, 2016
A few weeks ago I mentioned setting a MacCready setting of 2 (MC=2) for flying between thermals and follow your speed director. Remember too much time and energy can be spent looking inside to fly the perfect speed. If you miss the next thermal you land-out or get stuck.
But what about getting home? How do you establish a safety margin? Back as a new student you probably cut the
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July 28, 2016
Speed to fly was the topic of our newsletter two weeks ago. One of our readers emailed us and pointed out an important aspect of speed to fly and achieved speed, which we will discuss today.
First, I would like to apologize for those of you that landed out last weekend because I may have told you to fly too fast. When I wrote it I more had the new pilot in mind where they want to float
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July 14, 2016
Some think speed to fly means looking at your flight computers up and down arrows. Others think it's installing a ring on your Winter vario. If you don't' have a speed ring, make sure your Winter vario has a beveled face plate, order the speed ring and 4 weeks later it arrives. Open the box from W&W, suck on your Jolly Rancher as you pop the speed ring on your vario. Bingo! Instant