PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Gliding Question (Mary Meagher)?
View Single Post
Old 15th Jan 2015, 10:11
  #20 (permalink)  
mary meagher
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 1,546
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
A Falke is NOT a glider, it is a motor glider. It makes an irritating noise that interferes with conversation. ( I wonder if the chap who did the long Falke flight along the Morning Glory turned off his engine? hope so!) It smells. It carries avgas in a tank somewhere it can spill over the whole arrangement if it goes splat. And sometimes on taking off, even with a very very experienced person in charge, the engine has been known to stop. which if there is not very much room to land ahead, you enjoy the experience of EFAT....

In a glider, this is known as a launch failure. The winch cable breaks, the winch engine suffers indigestion or the tug dumps you.

You have trained for this eventuality, over and over, BEFORE you go solo in a glider. At 30 feet, at 150 feet, at 300 feet, etc etc. And it is REAL.

It is the PERFORMANCE OF THE GLIDER that you use in this case to get yourself on the ground nicely enough to use the glider again. Meanwhile the guy in the spam can or the motor glider if he is well practiced in the real EFAT, will of course immediately land wherever. Won't he? or will he be trying to restart his engine? or return to the airfield, using the impossible turn?

Confess, you Falke fliers, do you turn it off or don't you?
mary meagher is offline