Private pilots and gliding experience
The Original Whirly
Join Date: Feb 1999
Location: Belper, Derbyshire, UK
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An acquaintance of mine recently had a serious accident while doing a go-around in a powered aircraft at a short strip. He had no idea what happened, and was amazed to be alive (just), but having read an account of the accident it sounds like he stalled or spun in or similar. I mentioned it to a friend, saying how surprised I was that it had happened, as he had thousands of hours, even though most of them were on gliders. Her comment? "You don't do go-arounds in gliders".
Food for thought.....
Food for thought.....
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Suffolk
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I'm surprised he tried a go round.
A huge part of the glider pilot training is fixing circuits and approaches which have gone wrong. On my pre-solo flight the insructor suddenly announced, as I began the diagonal leg (we cut the corner off square circuits) that two of the three runways had suddenly become blocked. This left me exactly overhead the point where I would have to touch down. This led to some fairly abupt low-level manouvring at about 50-60 degree bank angles, the final consequence of which put me on approach to a runway at right angles to my original choice and with a 90 degree crosswind. The fact that this all worked out fine must have been the reason that I soloed 15 mins later.
If we all revert to primary training when flying goes pear-shaped, I'd have expected him to adjust his circuit and approach so as not to go round at all.
BTW, it's useful for pilots landing at a gliding site to realise that the circuit pattern is only a rough guideline, and that about the only people flying "normal" circuits are early solo pilots. Everyone else is improvising constantly to fit in with the conditions (6 kts of sink is interesting) and the traffic.
Many times I've been number one in the circuit and landed number three, as I improvised to allow other gliders to make safe landings and give me time to work out which parts of the runway were left for me to use.
A huge part of the glider pilot training is fixing circuits and approaches which have gone wrong. On my pre-solo flight the insructor suddenly announced, as I began the diagonal leg (we cut the corner off square circuits) that two of the three runways had suddenly become blocked. This left me exactly overhead the point where I would have to touch down. This led to some fairly abupt low-level manouvring at about 50-60 degree bank angles, the final consequence of which put me on approach to a runway at right angles to my original choice and with a 90 degree crosswind. The fact that this all worked out fine must have been the reason that I soloed 15 mins later.
If we all revert to primary training when flying goes pear-shaped, I'd have expected him to adjust his circuit and approach so as not to go round at all.
BTW, it's useful for pilots landing at a gliding site to realise that the circuit pattern is only a rough guideline, and that about the only people flying "normal" circuits are early solo pilots. Everyone else is improvising constantly to fit in with the conditions (6 kts of sink is interesting) and the traffic.
Many times I've been number one in the circuit and landed number three, as I improvised to allow other gliders to make safe landings and give me time to work out which parts of the runway were left for me to use.
