ASI unservicable! Now what do I do?
Okay, it was only a glider. But it does get your attention! This sort of thing would never happen in a power plane, would it?
All my fault, actually. When I parked the glider overnight without derigging, I taped up the pitot and the statics with WHITE TAPE. Wrong tape. Red or black might have been noticed. Removed the static tapes before flight.
Forgot to remove the pitot tape.
Very very turbulent airtow for first 500 feet. Other pilots noticed that as well, so wasn't just me. After hanging on for grim life, began to wonder how fast this blankekty blank tug was flying, so glanced at the ASI. It read zero.
All right. I knew right away what I had forgotten to do. As we were still boring through the atmosphere, no doubt we were doing better than zero mph. Decided to hang on to cloud base, 2,500. And then think about it.
Yes, the alt seemed ok. Cows about the right size. The vario said we were in lift, turned, and the alt. recorded improvement in altitude. So 2 out of three not bad.
I practiced gentle stalls. Simulated approaches with and without airbrakes. Even in a slick glass glider, the wind noise gave a good indication of airspeed. So what the heck, I flew locally for 2 hours, and then made my most careful circuit and approach in years.
Confessed to the CFI. Red tape from now on.