The Soaring Engine V4: Airframes and Avionics (Softcover)
The Soaring Engine V4
by G Dale
THE SOARING ENGINE Volume Four
By: G Dale
Airframes and Avionics
General Description
The Soaring Engine V4 - Airframes and Avionics - Volume four is about the equipment. Gliding is an unusual blend of technology and artistry, and today’s sailplanes are aerodynamically refined and optimized. Current avionics suites are equally sophisticated, with powerful processors, moving maps, complex user interfaces, electronic conspicuity systems and internet connectivity. This high performance comes at the cost of significantly increased complexity.
The Soaring Engine is a series of textbooks that explain how the sky produces the energy that pilots can exploit to fly cross country. Volumes one and two cover the various forms of lift: ridge, thermal, wave and convergence, and how best to use them in flat land or mountain environments. Volume one is also available in German. Volume three is all about the pilot: what he or she needs to know and how best to manage the personal resources that are so necessary for sporting success. Volume four is a primer for pilots who are learning to operate the exquisite but complex high-performance sailplanes that are now available.
With hundreds of simple clear diagrams and a consistent page layout that delivers the information in bite-sized chunks, this series is a straightforward guide for any pilot interested in how the sky works and how to use it.
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| Author | G Dale |
| Dimensions | 5.98" X 9.01" |
| Page Count | 144 Pages |
| Edition |
First Edition Copyright 2021 |
The Airframe
- Shape
- Weight
- Balance
- Strength
- Handling
- Safety and Good Practice
- How to Make Your Glider go Better
Avionics
- The Variometer
- Variometer Settings
- Flight Computers
- Electronic Conspicuity
After a childhood spent building (and crashing) model airplanes, G Dale finally started learning to fly aged 20 with the Dorset Gliding Club. Ten years later he landed his first gliding job with Lasham Gliding Society and progressed rapidly to the role of cross-country instructor thanks to the support of Phil Phillips, the manager of LGS at that time. With a Janus C to fly and a constant supply of keen students, and with the help of the British Gliding Association’s National coaches John Williamson and Chris Rollins he was able to rapidly develop the required skill set to become that rare bird: a soaring coach.
Since then he’s followed the endless summer, working for the British Gliding Association, The Gliding Association of New Zealand and the Gliding Federation of Australia, always teaching cross-country flying. He’s also flown and worked at various gliding clubs around the world: at Nympsfield as Chief flying instructor, at Booker again as CFI, at Lasham as DCFI and soaring coach, and at Glide Omarama as head coach, with visits to Minden, Serres, Takikkawa, Narromine, Lake Keepit and many other clubs as a peripatetic soaring instructor and mountain flying coach.
All this has supported a racing career: having won several British national championships he is currently a member of the British Gliding team. He flew at the 2019 European gliding championships where he earned his first silver medal whilst his team partner Tom Arscott achieved first place. G is also a coach for the British Women’s gliding team and for the British Junior team.
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The Project
There are many books on “how to fly gliders” and even some on flying cross country or racing, but few on how to soar. I want to engage those people who are passionately interested in the way sun, wind, terrain and the airmass combine to create all the varied patterns of air movement that we collectively call “lift”. Ridge, thermal, wave and convergence lift are all familiar to soaring pilots, but to look ahead at the sky and predict what will happen as you fly through it has always been a hard skill to acquire. Fear not, it isn’t a black art and no talent is required, except for a hunger to know what is going on. There is a solid, well understood body of knowledge and a set of well-proven techniques that you can employ to play the great game of soaring successfully and safely, in all kinds of terrain, and in all types of lift.
This knowledge may exist already, but it isn’t widely disseminated. Yes, there are books, videos and magazine articles, and plenty of stuff on the internet. But is difficult to dig out the information in any coherent way that hangs together as a set of lessons, any scheme that makes it easy to learn and to make progress with your flying.
I believe that you should learn and teach in a logical progression: from the easy to the difficult, and from the known to the unknown. Straightforward concepts and easily remembered, clear images help this rather abstract soaring stuff stick in the mind to be recalled when you need it. And when it comes to the science of how the air masses behave it’s important not to get too deeply involved in the maths and the physics. Leave that to the meteorologists: we only need to find the rising air. - G Dale
