:) :)
Make that a K18 and I would be happy :) - surely a K18 is one of the nicest gliders ever built,I did manage a few flights in one in the early 90's - very very nice :)

Shortest Glider flight

Has anyone done a shorter first X Country flight? I took off from Dunstable in a club K23 on my first silver C distance attempt (50km flight). I got to about 10km away when I realised there was insufficient lift to complete the flight so turned back to Dunstable. I realised I would not make it back but that there was a model glider slope at Ivinghoe beacon so thought I may get slope lift off there to then get home. But the lift was insufficient and at a rather low height I decided to land in a small sloping field near there but adjacent to a road. Successfully landed across the slope and was only 4km from Dunstable field. Unfortunately too small for an aerotow retrieve so waited for the trailer whilst the instructors flying at Dunstable could easily see my poor landing spot. I did a successful 50km flight a day or two later when conditions were good. Merry Christmas.

Spinning
 

A short clip of my first Spin in an open top K6cr out of St Rémy en Provence after I did a re qualification to fly my grandkids.
and one the other way

Three-quarters of a turn each way! Does that really count? :E

Agree with #161. I "retired" from Gliding when the club sold their K18s and replaced them with far more boring K23s.

Since the CFI had just flown an air test after major maintenance and decided that spinning it wasn’t a good idea and it was my first flight ever in an open top single seater I decided prudence might be a good idea.
I will add that I very early left a smoking hole in the ground in the mid 70s when someone had adjusted the brakes up on a Condor which limited the rudder movement and it took three full turns to recover. My then student wasn’t so lucky 20 years later and did leave a smoking hole and a re kitted Christian Eagle somewhere in Hampshire.
ps I’m a woose
and if you are counting

Nah...now THIS is a spin:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1bf1ea99c.jpeg
Don’t like walking too far to my car in my 70s
Dengie marshes by any chance?

While full spin demonstrations are useful in early training so that students understand them including how to recover, the hazard of emphasis on keeping the stick all the way back on entering a full spin is that it builds muscle memory that can kill you in a spin entry turning base or final.

The ground will get in the way of a recovery from a low level full spin.

The emphasis needs to be on never allowing a wing drop in the circuit to develop into a spin.

We lose many more pilots from spins in the circuit than spins from altitude.

The Brits do a very good demonstration of spinning off a failed winch launch which is very similar to what kills pilots getting low in the circuit and « trying to stretch the glide ». It basically starts with the correct attitude but not the right speed; whilst looking at the threshold blogs starts a turn but with insufficient bank because he is aware of lack of energy and uses too much rudder to increase the turn rate; the nose starts dropping and bank increases which leads to blogs applying out of turn aileron and stopping the nose dropping with elevator…voila..rolls on its bank and its all over.
Demonstrating a full spin as low as safe is about giving blogs confidence and demonstrating the different visual horizon compared with a higher altitude.
When I went back into gliding after a break of 25 years the CFI demonstrated a full spin at 1,000ft which I thought was reckless…later I joined the realms of the converted.
My K6 spins were the first ones I had done in at least 5 years and maybe 10 since I stopped instructing. Far too many pilots are unnecessarily frightened of them.

I will do a couple of replies to some of the above posts in the next couple of days but meanwhile it appears to be that time of year again so just to wish all the pprune glider guiders past and present a Merry Christmas and for some good flying in the New Year.

rgds LR :)

Given the CFI had decided spinning wasn't a good idea as you say, surely prudence would have been you not spinning just for the sake of doing so.

Nahhh
 

CFI brought up on glass and from the later generation who haven't had the try it yourself spirit.
My first spin in glass was in the Pyrenees whilst under the wing of Spreckly with the world and his dog saying you don't spin a first generation 30 year old glider..My phoebus C..Spreckly insisted you should spin everything you fly within reason..so after a couple of days going through how to get out blindfolded I climbed up to 4 grand above the airfield and tried it several times until I got the hang of a smooth recovery. It wasn't as viscious as my later pilatus B4 which went through the vertical during recovery but still exciting.
I wouldn't spin a star ship especially the big Nimbus 2 seater which had a propensity to shedding bits of its wing but everything else and why Not?
The biggest load is in the recovery and generally I didn't get over 2.5g. I've had a lot more flying in the alps, one time I was knocked semi conscious with the airbrakes opening and the undercarriage lowering during a transit between mountains.
PS a CofA air test should cover all of the flight envelope.

/\ What he said. Unless you are deliberately doing glider aerobatics in a certified aerobatic glider and have the appropriate training, keeping pro spin controls in after the departure from controlled flight has no use in conventional gliding. It also as was mentioned, is negative training. IMO the most useless exercise in glider training is when the Instructor says "show me a one turn spin". Spin training both during initial and recurrent training should be scenario based on how glider pilots get into trouble in the real world. The recovery should be started as soon at the break and performance is measured on how quickly normal controlled is regained and on how little altitude lost. The muscle memory you want to develop is the instinctive stick forward ailerons neutral control yaw with rudder at the moment the glider starts to depart from controlled flight.

Couldn't agree more with your post overall and certainly scenario orientated. That said, and I'm not being contentious, I also feel a one turn spin entry and recovery demonstration has it's merits when an instructor is assessing a pupil irrespective of whether this is for initial or recurrent training.

My rationale for this is for the instructor to be able to monitor the process from start to finish which is beneficial for both parties and certainly for the debrief.

Aerobatics are fine, if, as you say, the pilot is fully trained / authorised as is the aircraft but given spinning has a well established notoriety to kill even experienced pilots, then why would anybody risk doing them just for the sake of doing so. There are plenty of other ways to demonstrate good airmanship and flying skills without participating in an inherently dangerous action just for the " bravado" of doing so.

In our local gliding areas the thermals can be very narrow especially at lower altitudes. I have had the glider start to depart from controlled flight once when I was trying to force it into the core with excessive bank and the very low airspeed required to reduce the turning radius enough to stay the thermal. It was a non event as I recovered immediately at the wing drop, gave myself a mental slap upside the head, and went looking for a better thermal. This scenario makes a good training exercise as does setting up the killer base to final turn with bottom rudder used to drive the nose towards the runway. In this scenario knowing how to recover from a one turn spin is going to be absolutely useless as you will likely hit the ground before one rotation has occurred. The only way you can save yourself is with immediate recognition and recovery. Once any significant rotation has occurred you are done like dinner.

The bottom line is any aircraft needs to be stalled and yawing to spin. If the stall is immediately broken and the yaw rapidly countered, no aircraft will spin. If you glider is actually in a spin then it is because you put it there.

Yes.
I was once given a good piece of advice by a very experienced chap (graduate of ETPS, that sort of thing). He said if the aircraft does something you didn't expect, don't wait to work out what's going on - just move the stick forward to lower the nose first, then think about it.

First X/C
 

I attempted my first X/C on a hanglider, by going downwind, on an intermediate glider, with no vario, and dropping onto a tiny ridge 2.5 miles from take off. I didn't get up from there and so was faced with a walk back to take off, carrying all my glider and harness, or a 3 mile walk downwind to the nearest road, on a blazing hot July day. The next attempt, also from the same site, was with a borrowed vario and I doubled the site record, flying 25 miles.

Gosh….I was just having a bit of fun wearing my paragliding helmet with GoPro attached to see what a spin in an open top glider felt like… it’s child’s play compared with what most paraglider pilots do and even at my ripe old age it was an non event.
One of the top civil UK aerobatic pilots …a mate who got me into competition level Aeros…commented in that I entered on one with two much energy (aka similar to a partial flick) and was cheating.
I will comment on what to do if all goes wrong and that is I put all of the controls in the middle to start with…stuffing the stick forward killed a fellow Trident pilot at the Châteauroux worlds many moons ago as he went into an inverted spin before digging a hole.
‘I’ve had that fall out of the sky feeling a couple of times below 200ft when mountain soaring both in the Alp Maritime and in South Africa, the latter where the glider flicked inverted, the second time in a heavier than air flying machine in 40 plus years. Controls central, allow nose to drop, build up speed and roll …it worked and was helped by terrain that fell away which is one of the prerequisites of mountain flying as taught by the french. IMHO it was the correct way.
The cause? Probably a massive thermal kicking off from the quarry adjacent to the slope I was soaring which formed a rotor at the quarry edge. I would guess we flew through the edge and the recovery was away and underneath the air mass.
I always regretted that my instructor never showed me spin recovery on a limited panel including identifying whether positive or negative as was in one of my training syllabi. I’ve only read about it in books but during my initial training limited panel instrument readings were demonstrated in upright spins.
You might be right about learning the position but I’ve seen line copilots and occasionally captains so frightened that they’ve frozen..we even had one of the latter lock himself in the toilet when he couldn’t cope with a situation. AF447 would appear to be one of those situations and one could argue that Gonesse with the copilot calling speed repeatedly and being ignored by the captain obviously out of his ability might have been another.
‘Flying is about having fun and not taking yourself too seriously’

A question,'longer ron' - is that Ka 8 you are flying 'Dervish' (DRV), once my wife's favourite wee wooden sailplane ?

It might be :)
I am not sure if any of our current syndicate members have a pet name for the old girl,the average age of the members is on the 'mature' side and I am happy to report that I am not the oldest :)
Just need the rain to stop/cloudbase to lift a bit so's we can do some flying LOL

Never flown an open top 'Six' but did fly an open top Slingsby Swallow from Moffat Field,Gwelo a few times.
Dec 83 climbed the thing up to 5,400' AGL (which was approx 10,100 AMSL - as the field was at 4,700'),nice and comfy on the ground in shirtsleeves but effing cold at cloudbase LOL.

Haha - Well. if she is DRV, she used to have 'Dervish' written on the port side of the nose. She still did last time I saw her sitting dustily in the hangar, about five or six years ago.. My wife still reminisces about the gentle hooting she made while gently hill soaring. And yes, the syndicate in her day was a large one, mostly consisting of folk who only turned up to fly once in a blue moon.

It would be nice to get a spot of better weather, for gliding and power flying. There are a couple of (power, obviously) aeroplanes still stranded at Perth by the grotty weather & low cloud since before Christmas.

Aha - the old girl had a complete repaint a couple of years ago so the name had obviously disappeared before I 'joined up',I never used to meet many of the syndicate members because we used to fly on different days,however the bad weather over the last 12 months has tended to 'squeeze' us into the same flying day,I think the record last year was 6 members on one day :)
A couple of the syndicate I have still never met LOL

I'm both intrigued and amused by your wife's memories. Did you ever find out what made this hooting sound by any chance ?

Plenty of hours in Ka8's, probably the best early solo single seater ever built. Wouldn't bite you, would soar in next to sod all lift, you could actually "hover" it if the wind was right and so very easy to fly as well rig / de-rig

+1 - just make sure early solo pilots are briefed to stay upwind of the airfield!

If anyone's looking for a restoration project, drop me a PM; we have 2 that you could probably have for the value of the canopies...

On October 16th, one of the members of my gliding club did the best flight in the world that day, flying 1600 km (863 nm) in the wave in an Arcus M, averaging 180 km/hr (97 kts).

I've just listened to a very interesting podcast where Chester described his flight and Tyler, another club member and air traffic controller, described the necessary ATC arrangements.
https://thethermalpodcast.libsyn.com...mal-episode-29

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....7630a10a3f.png

An amazing achievement. I was at the airfield that day and was watching his progress on FR24. I didn’t think he was going to make it back before sunset, but he was helped by a tailwind component on his last southerly leg, which gave him a groundspeed of 124 kts!

I went to tow him back to the hangar after he landed. I’m amazed he could stand up after 9 hours in the cockpit.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1e5515db39.png

To put the flight into a UK perspective, it would be like taking off near Peterborough, flying to Eastbourne and back TWICE, and then flying to Dumfries and back.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....15c03d3736.png

Blimey 9hrs is a long time in a glider cockpit - good effort.
My longest flight was 6hr 16m during my 300k badge flight but my barogram/barograph trace was nowhere near as high and predictable as the one posted above :)
It was an out and return and the return leg was hard work due to seriously changed conditions compared to the outward leg :cool:

Agree with the earlier comments about the K18 - I did my Silver C in one, 25 years ago, no electric varios etc, just a basic mechanical vario and feel. Lovely handling and pretty good performance for a wooden ship. I loved her. Also agree with the need to stay upwind of the airfield in a K8. I got a well deserved bollocking for drifting downwind in a weak thermal and scrapping back over the hedge instead of making a field landing (lots of good options.) Got away with it, by luck, not skill.

Hah - she thinks it was probably just the air whistling through small gaps between canopy and fuselage, or at the wing root junctions, possibly where some slightly loose fabric edges vibrated. A very friendly noise. The last Ka8 I flew - at Eden - did likewise occasionally, most probably due to lazy sloppy flying and slipping by me.

I agree, a fun early solo machine, very relaxing and confidence inspiring to fly. Hard to penetrate upwind in, but pleasant for early cross-country 'drifts' down or cross wind for a Silver distance. The thought of doing a restoration is tempting - it is a shame (but unsurprising) that so many older wooden ships are disappearing now.

You probably weren't flying near Vne* most of the time either! :eek:

* 151kts at SL in the Arcus M, reduces somewhat with altitude.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....013aa16e9.jpeg
K18 looking towards the Connor pass after auto tow from Fermoyle strand county Kerry
My first flight in a K18 was a couple of years prior to taking this shot from my first Kerry safari. Fabulous machine..iirc one of our CFIs got enveloped in cloud whilst ridge soaring and inadvertently turned into the mountain. Said it suddenly got dark and he heaved on the stick, pancaked into the mountain slope. Fortunately no injuries but it took the best part of a day carrying the glider off the mountain. Kerry taught me a lot wrt micro meteorology as I too was enveloped when orographic cloud started forming upwind and below me…one of those sixpence /half a crown moments.
photo taken with hand held, wide angle canon through the DV of my phoebus C. Prior to GoPro days so some of the most memorable flights not recorded but stored in my bonce.

Absolutely spot on IFT :)
Mine was sometimes the opposite end of the scale LOL,it was an Out and Return from Old Sarum - Ha'penny Green - Old Sarum in Sept '89 my Launch time of 1230 was kinda late - my Club at the time were not interested in x country flying and kept feeding club gliders into the launch queue in front of private owners and when I finally got to the front it just happened to coincide with the brand new (homemade) Winch appearing,I refused to be launched in my little libelle by this totally untried contraption (it would have been its first ever launch :) ) and I had to drive our dump truck up to our tried and tested old winch to get my cable.
Anyway I got away ok and the outbound leg was good fun with a fairly classic climb/cruise sawtooth profile on the barograph but as I neared the TP I could see the sky behind me changing to flat Battleship Grey,there was a decent thermal near my TP so I got my photo and headed south.I had a dodgy 30 mins or so just south of the TP where I was tiptoeing along at 46/50 Kt just trying to stay airborne (near Kidderminster on the barograph below),I reached the Cotswolds ok and had to fly a compass heading due to the bad vis/haze into the afternoon sun.I popped out of the haze just south of the Cotswolds and there were just 2 clouds visible to the south - I headed for the slightly darker one near Pewsey and joined another glider searching for lift ( something like an Astir) - he found it first so I went over to join him,I remember thinking to myself ''I am not going to fail now'' so I took the thermal for every foot I could and got my highest climb of the day (5,600'),of course when I left the thermal I soon realised that I had plenty of spare height to get back to OS so I gradually put the nose down and flew much of that last leg at near vne,I still had enough height to dog leg around to the west to cross the Caravan at 50 feet/120 Kt to announce my arrival and a gradual climbing turn into the circuit.The club were surprised to see me back as a Sea Breeze Effect had penetrated that far inland and they had no local soaring after 1530.I could not walk after I landed as there was an air leak around the nose hook and my feet were frozen in my light summer shoes :)
321 Km on the map I think and by far the furthest I had ever been from the airfield,of course the downside of an O/R is the distance from home but it was a really easy turn point photo and fairly easy nav except for the haze over the Cotswolds.

https://i.imgur.com/xrHaZQP.jpg

Great write up longer ron. You’ve obviously got a good memory! :)

I love the picture of your barograph trace. Today’s pilots have no idea how lucky they are - no more smoking barograph drums, no more grease marks on the canopy nor struggling to get a TP photo from the correct quadrant.

I forgot to mention that after my friend Chester landed from his record flight, I asked him why he had flown around the airfield for 15 minutes before landing. “To get used to flying slower than 100 kts.”

Thanks IFT - I have a great memory for things 30/50 years ago - more recent stuff Hmmmm not so much ;).
Agree about barograph smoking etc - I had a Winter Battery operated one which was in lovely condition but soon realised my mistake buying it LOL - unlike the clockwork baro's there wasn't that reassuring tick tock from over the shoulder to confirm the damn thing was working :)
I got back into gliding a couple of years ago after a 22 year break and it has taken me a while to get my head round (and catch up with) some of the advances in peripheral technology - Hell I even have a 'Smart Phone' now with a GPS moving map display which is really handy for 'Wave' flying when lucky enough to trip over some wave,as B Pew alluded to with his recent post and pic.

I like that :)

Nice picture BP :)
We were over that way for a road trip last september but unfortunately we got some inclement weather in the Dingle area - so never got the view.
Not complaining though we only had 3 days of rain in our 2 week hol so well pleased with that :)
We managed 2 aviation museums and drove down most of the west coast staying 2 or 3 days at some locations,our rough route was ferry Cairnryan to Belfast and then drove west to County Donegal - then in stages down to Baltimore for a lively Boat Trip,we did a little of the South Coast but had a time restraint because of my OH's work and we returned via Rosslare/Fishguard to drive north via a couple of steam railways :)

L Ron…lucky with the weather..normally wait for three forecast dry days before we wander over to the other side of the ireland..sometimes we wait months.
One kerry safari was virtually no wave flying as too hot and sunny!
Another I flew over from the south of France and hired a car for ten days..didn’t get airborne as it lashed down everyday and one of the guys towing the K13 hit a bank so we all chipped in a score or so towards repairing his Volvo.
I was generally one of the volunteers de Kerrying the gliders which involved a lot of drying, brushing, hovering followed by washing all of the bearings out and regreasing.
‘But the flying was great..auto towed my pheobus of Inch..slope soared with just enough height to get back to the beach and after a while I found a sweet spot where two low wave systems met…Airspace is 7,000ft and club rules are that you have to go through the beach master to contact Shannon to climb higher…quit at 12,000ft as light fading and I needed enough time to de rig. Rather dark especially with the canopy misting up so sideslipped using the DV window which continued to the beach.
But even best was flying along the seaward side of Mount Brandon (3,000ft +) with a cloud base of 1,000ft at VNE….and 500 yards from the mountain over a force 5 sea state to avoid going into a stronger lift band and cloud.
and you tell that to the youngsters…..
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....9d0250d7c.jpeg
Inch strand ..phoebus C ..first glider to do a 300km in uk according to late owner who had a mid air at La Motte du Caire..club gliders in the background

Not just Luck BP - we did some planning and had a shortlist of Hotels/BandB's etc + places/sights to visit but we did not book anything until the weather forecast started to improve for our holiday dates,I also had to MOT one of the cars which was a bit delayed due to heavy bookings for mot's at our local garage (a hangover from covid - he was even getting bookings from further afield than usual).
So as soon as the car was done and the weather was looking at least 50/50 we did a flurry of bookings 2 days before departure LOL
Thanks for the Ireland gliding pics - we did have a quick look at Inch Beach - knowing its gliding connection,but we did not have the time to do any flying/club visiting.

Glad you got back to the field ok JC - I saw it happen many times with older gliders - there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that I might have had to land in an unusual part of Halton Airfield in a T21 whilst returning from the 'Bowl' (which we were verboten to use anyway LOL),no truth either that I might have been banished to the winch for 3 weeks because of it :).