Gliding stories
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I became a PROFESSIONAL WINCH DRIVER at a renowned gliding club on top of a Cotswold. Not too far from Stroud.
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Dear Mr Exascot
would you care to provide more details of the incident? Then we can possibly decide for ourselves which of the two of you was the
would you care to provide more details of the incident? Then we can possibly decide for ourselves which of the two of you was the
Thread Starter
Because of my Air Cadet background and a disagreement with the RAFGSA 'god of gliding' in the early 70's - when I went back to gliding in the 80's I still had no idea about thermalling LOL
I ended up doing some gliding in southern Africa - boy did they have a good laugh at my 300+ launches and 25hrs TT
Anyway they gave up trying to teach me to thermal so I carried on 'bashing the circuit in our Swallow and then Skylark 3b...and of course one day - it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left - I eventually got bored with that and straightened up - closely followed by the strongest feeling of me going to fall out of the right hand side of the cockpit LOL !
I had to sit there and tell myself not to be so stupid because I was strapped in and the aircraft was still in one piece !
I suppose it was some sort of 'Leans' and I never experienced it again but it would probably have been more worrying for somebody with a non aviation background !
I ended up doing some gliding in southern Africa - boy did they have a good laugh at my 300+ launches and 25hrs TT
Anyway they gave up trying to teach me to thermal so I carried on 'bashing the circuit in our Swallow and then Skylark 3b...and of course one day - it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left - I eventually got bored with that and straightened up - closely followed by the strongest feeling of me going to fall out of the right hand side of the cockpit LOL !
I had to sit there and tell myself not to be so stupid because I was strapped in and the aircraft was still in one piece !
I suppose it was some sort of 'Leans' and I never experienced it again but it would probably have been more worrying for somebody with a non aviation background !
Join Date: Aug 2012
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Quote.... 'it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left'....
Well at say +400ft/min that would be a height gain of 24,000ft.... Sure you were not just running out of Oxygen???
btw, I get giddy just riding my bike around in circles on the back lawn....
.
Well at say +400ft/min that would be a height gain of 24,000ft.... Sure you were not just running out of Oxygen???
btw, I get giddy just riding my bike around in circles on the back lawn....
.
Thread Starter
Quote.... 'it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left'...
Cannot get the 'quote facility' to work
The turning left was not always thermalling upwards you understand - it took me a while to form a rough mental picture of a 'thermal'
Cannot get the 'quote facility' to work
The turning left was not always thermalling upwards you understand - it took me a while to form a rough mental picture of a 'thermal'
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The turning left was not always thermalling upwards you understand
Join Date: Nov 2000
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I must be the only glider pilot that can thermal downwards
(Unless of course this is simply a regular tall story told by gliding folk to non-gliding folk.)
One that always creases me up was long ago when we had a club Ka6E. Some unfortunate had landed it out, no problem, and a posse of club members had gone off to retrieve him. On getting back to the club, they drove past the bar and stopped on the apron. One of the drinkers came out and asked where the glider was? “Ha Ha Ha” went the pilot, "very funny, get back to the bar." “No, where is it?” enquired the holder of the pint, pointing to the open back door of the trailer.
Sure enough, of the fuselage there was no sign! Wings still bolted in but fus & dolly not present. Oh ****. The club drive was very steep and the glider had (luckily, considering the drive back from the field) chosen that moment to break free of the trailer and roll back down the hill. We found it on its side at the bottom of the slope, miraculously undamaged without even a scratch on the canopy...
Sure enough, of the fuselage there was no sign! Wings still bolted in but fus & dolly not present. Oh ****. The club drive was very steep and the glider had (luckily, considering the drive back from the field) chosen that moment to break free of the trailer and roll back down the hill. We found it on its side at the bottom of the slope, miraculously undamaged without even a scratch on the canopy...
Thread Starter
Lots of little laughs to be had in a glider GTW...like the time I was getting a little low and then saw a glass glider bank steeply into a turn - so beetle off to join him - thinking he had found lift - but as I got near he 'popped' his engine out of the top of his fuselage and sailed orf into the distance - leaving me scratching around and cursing gliders with retractable engines LOL
Full wings - not the only occurrence. A long time ago a distinguished doctor (who later got a student to take his glider all the way to Nepal to soar the Himalayas, couldn't get permission to fly so the student had to drive it all the way back, but that's another story) borrowed the Surrey Gliding Club brand new glider for the National Championships. Having done a field landing in East Anglia, returning round the North Circular they were at a set of traffic lights when a boy racer revved his engine beside them. Determined to be competitive, B******g J****s took off smartly on the amber and won the grid start. A mile or so down the road they were flagged down and informed 'something fell off the back of your trailer'. Inspection revealed an open door and missing fuselage. Returning to the junction, no sign of the fuselage, but a search of the area found it rolled down a side alley by some well meaning passer by. There were only a few paint scratches, and the crew were sworn to secrecy, but somehow the story was revealed and substantial beer fines paid.
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Many, many years ago on a Cranwell gliding camp at Weston Super Mare, went out on a retrieve in the Mendips. Found the glider in a field that even our tug pilot refused to tug it out of, so set off with glider in the trailer. Stopped at a pub - 4 of us in the old blue fabric flying suits. "Aah", said the blonde behind the bar, "You are glider pilots, I can tell from your flying suits and the glider trailer outside". "No" came the flash reply from a member of a more senior entry than mine. "This is the uniform of the stud for dachshund racehorses, and that is a dachshund horse trailer". She is probably still wondering..............
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A long time since I flew a K4, but I do seem to remember that the cable release was a lever and the airbrakes were activated by a cable with knob on the end. The knob also had another knob on the end that day. !!!
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A coupla years ago I was just doing the power checks prior to a much anticipated days' flying from our own strip, when a glider suddenly landed ahead of me:
Than another, then another, then a fourth, with a fifth in the crops nearby.
They'd all been competing in a competition at a well known E Anglian glider field 20 miles away when they all suddenly 'ran out of lift'
Completely b*ggered my day, that did.
Never found out why they didn't chose a closed but flyable RAF base 5 miles away with a massive concrete runway......
Than another, then another, then a fourth, with a fifth in the crops nearby.
They'd all been competing in a competition at a well known E Anglian glider field 20 miles away when they all suddenly 'ran out of lift'
Completely b*ggered my day, that did.
Never found out why they didn't chose a closed but flyable RAF base 5 miles away with a massive concrete runway......
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On a cross-country flight and over North Yorkshire, ran out of lift and ideas. Chose to land at the ex RAF Melbourne airfield and whilst flying a conventional circuit remembered that it was now a drag racing strip. The only bit of runway I could have used had 'stuff' all over it which turned out to be mostly traffic cones. So landed to the side on an area of grass that had recently been cut - no problems. Along comes a chap in a 4X4 pick-up who had a face like thunder telling me I was the seventh glider to land that afternoon and he was p****d off with us all. He said that they had all moved his traffic cones to allow a tug to land and take off with the retrieves. 'And, he thundered, none of them put the bl**dy cones back'!!! I explained that I wouldn't need to move the cones as I'd got someone coming with a trailer to take my glider away.
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Gliding on the gravel plain east of Sharjah in the mid 60s, we could only launch to about 450ft due to lack of winch cable. We would wait for the approach of a dust devil and launch our Ka8 into it. They were visible to about 4000ft, but then continued up to 10-11000 ft. Soaring round the edge of the funnel looking down the hole in the centre gave me the only feeling of vertigo I've experienced flying. Good fun followed by suitably fortified deep sleep in the open back of a 3-tonner.
I am not soaring now because in our last move I lost my wife's support to pursue my passion. I would say you are better off!
One of my current syndicate partners used to reply to enquiries regarding whether his wife objected to how much time he spent gliding 'My first wife did!'
Evening all! Today was forecast by our Club Guru to be a Day of Days, so what are you doing reading about it when you could be doing it?
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One of my current syndicate partners used to reply to enquiries regarding whether his wife objected to how much time he spent gliding 'My first wife did!'
