Originally Posted by
cats_five
The initial part of your circuit will be a bit higher and steeper, but not the last bit. Also you are burning away height when there is still the possibility of hitting sink (possibly major sink) in the circuit. The UK circuit will be shallower until the point at which airbrakes come out, then steeper. There is also a diagonal leg so the landing site is always in view, which I gather is not necessarily done in the US.
True, I am burning away height when there is a possibility of sink, but I have height to burn. If you are low and hit sink, what do you do? Do you have height to burn, or is there just no sink that comes up low? We typically don't do a diagonal leg, but I have never lost sight of the runway. I mean, it's right there out my window.
Originally Posted by cats_five
A friends description of flying at a US glider site left my blood running cold - he saw a lot of landings with very little airbrake and quite a lot of PIOing.
In my 20 years I've seen some, but not a lot. I would bet that is not a US thing. It's just a bad pilot thing, or at the best somebody screwing up.
Originally Posted by oversteer
cats_five I did wonder if this sort of approach was normal in the States, being honest it scares the hell out of me!
This approach is not normal in the states, as most of our sailplanes here have spoilers or divebrakes and not flaps. The glider in the video is a Schweizer 1-35, and has only flaps. Most people who see the 1-35 landing are startled as an extreme nose-down attitude is required with full flaps. I own one! Great glider. Spawn of the tin elephant.
Originally Posted by cats_five
There are a few clubs in the UK where gliders and power share, and they deal with it by separating the traffic - gliders fly left-hand and power right-hand circuits or vice versa.
Every club I've been in, and the one commercial operation I've flown at, did this. Typically the soaring operations over here dominate the operation at the airfield where they are based. We still have to share, if we want the towplanes to come back.
I can assure you that the FAA cares little if I fly a square pattern with my glider or not. The regulations here are not very burdensome, whether I fly a glider, power, helicopter, IFR, whatever.
I'm beginning to think (hope, actually) that my impression of the practices across the pond are as skewed as some of your impressions are of flying over here!
Like OC619, I'm relatively inexperienced with a couple hundred hours or so. Probably about half in the Blanik L33 I used to own.
-- IFMU